Klaudia Heintze is an expert on perfume, its history and craftsmanship. She is also an educator who is not afraid to express her opinions and challenge stereotypes. She founded one of the first Polish perfume blogs, Sabbath of Senses, in 2008. She is a frequent speaker at universities and conducts workshops to introduce attendees to the secrets of the art of fragrance. As soon as the opportunity to interview her came up, I didn’t give it a second thought.
Where did your passion for perfume come from?
I was a child back in the days of Socialism, when the sale of luxury goods (and non-luxury goods in general, too) was severely limited in our country. At that time my mother used Masumi, which somehow did not captivate me. Then, when the free market arrived, my mother became enamoured with ’alternative’ perfumes, counterfeits. Our democracy was young, people didn’t fully understand the difference between original fragrances and those copied by ’inspired’ bottlers, based on all the misinformation that they were the same fragrance as the original, only without the labels. So when my mother bought perfumes described as Chanel, Dior or even Gabriela Sabattini in identical bottles, I – a kid – thought they were Chanel, Dior and Gabriela Sabattini. Many people did at the time. Thanks to these liquids, for many years I thought that perfume smelled bad – it’s obvious that the imitators worked in a different way, reconstructing the smells with a chromatograph. Raw materials were also different. The counterfeits did, and will never smell like the original, they don’t have the hand of an artist to refine the fragrance, to trace the development of the solution with time, to give the fragrance that finishing touch of the artist’s hand.
My first own fragrance was Theorema from Fendi, which I still consider a very good perfume. But even beautiful selective perfumes – that is, those widely available – did not ignite the passion in me. Not until I got into the world of niche perfumery! While I was working as an interpreter at one of the Polish literary festivals, a friend (who at the time ran the first Polish perfume blog, „Moja Wielka Pachnąca Przygoda”) applied something to my hand that did not smell like a normal perfume. It was Jaisalmer by Comme Des Garcons. I realized that perfume is not a polite, safe art to complement beauty – this does not interest me at all. Perfume is just art. It can tell stories, paint mental pictures, be the entire thing, not a complement to an image. Hunger and madness awoke in me. I began to explore the subject.
Where did you look for knowledge back then?
The most important source of knowledge is always experience. I tried to smell, learn about perfumes, imported them from abroad. Independent, niche, even European creations had to be imported from the States. I also had the opportunity to visit a guerilla store (a minimalist temporary store that exists for a year – ed. note) by Comme des Garcons in a shoe polish factory in Krakow, from which I left with a garbage bag full of flacons. They were packing their flasks in garbage bags at the time, and that was also a part of the atmosphere. I discovered perfume forums and sample exchanges. I searched on the Internet, read everything on fragrance, at that time there were still very few Polish sources, but I acquired, for example, German lexicons of incense and herbs. I will emphasise again: nothing can replace experience – reading guides that tell us what we should like is a road to nowhere. The process should look like this: you smell a perfume and know whether you like it or not. No, so-called, experts can decide for you what you should like. Learning about your tastes, sniffing and experimenting is the way to develop a passion, but also to give yourself olfactory pleasure.
How has the world of perfume changed over the years?
To answer this question I would have to start much earlier. How has the world of perfume been changing over the centuries? For hundreds, even thousands of years, fragrances had a symbolic meaning. Fragrance was associated with the divine, something perfect, even inhuman. In ancient Egypt, there were aromas that were thought to be reserved for the gods – such as oud, reserved for pharaohs, and oud incense burned to carry prayers to heaven. It was from the Arab countries that the Europeans brought incense – an example is frankincense the Franks “discovered” during the Crusades. Why exactly did the Franks get to know olibanum? Because it was used to incense their chambers. If women traveled to the Crusades, they would have brought myrrh, because the women’s chambers were being incensed with sweet, warm myrrh. Perfume for centuries was a luxury for the rich – obtaining natural essences was, and still is, very expensive. It’s a good thing that we have this wonderful chemistry that can mimic and reproduce aromas. The main thing that has changed over the past century is that with the invention of synthetic aromas, perfume, like other arts, has gone public. These are often beautiful perfumes, works of art, created by real perfumers. This is the most important change.
Are there any changes that you don’t like?
Profiling of perfumes by gender. This is a turn-of-the-century issue, when modern marketing emerged. It was discovered that if you tell a customer that a product is just for them, the customer is more likely to spend their money on it. They began to say that a particular perfume is for your gender, age, hair color. Before, there was no such thing. Queen of Hungary’s water (the first known alcohol-based perfume – ed. note) was used by both Elisabeth Lokietkovna and her husband. Napoleon smelled of intoxicating flowers, while Marie Antoinette smelled of musk. It is interesting to note, for example, that Guerlain’s Jicky was created as a men’s perfume. However, women were more likely to buy them, so marketing specialists discreetly relegated them to the “women’s” side. To date, men have used them, for example, Sean Connery did. Was Sean Connery un-masculine wearing a skirt – a Scottish kilt, and wearing “women’s” perfume?
Is niche perfume also a relatively recent phenomenon?
Understood as a separation of mainstream and independent art – yes. Perfume by definition used to be niche, because not only was the world “bigger” and there were fewer global brands, but also perfume as a very expensive product was available to a few, the wealthiest clientele. Over time, when perfumes from brands like Dior or Guerlain began to sell in the hundreds of thousands, they had to become easier to receive, to have a lower threshold of entry. Is this a bad thing? I don’t know. Is it a good thing? I don’t know. I like the fact that it’s easier to take advantage of the beauty. However, when the mass consumer starts smelling like fresh Polo or sweet Dior – for picky people who want to smell different from everyone else, something else has to emerge. People began to look for discontinued fragrances, they were gaining value not only through sentiment, but also through legend and exclusivity. Perfumes targeting those who feel special were created – you want to be different, then choose niche. This has resulted in the fact that rebellious, unusual, sometimes even anti-aesthetic fragrances like Donna Karan’s Black Cashmere have disappeared from the mainstream, because people looking for them no longer look at selective perfumeries. Nowadays we can find mainly indestructible classics (alas, heavily reformulated) and a preponderance of perfumes that are fashionable and simply pretty in those stores.
Sounds simple, but except that with niche it’s not so easy either. People look for niche options for various reasons – not at all necessarily because they have a particularly unusual taste in fragrance. And niche branches out differently. The expensive niche tempts with exclusivity and such perfumes will simply be… more expensive, beautifully packaged, sometimes of better quality than in the mainstream, but not at all necessarily less pretty and less polite. The distribution niche tempts with limited availability, which tickles vanity, and an example of this will be Tom Ford’s Private Blend line, laced with outrageous advertising. This niche – like Ford, Armani’s private series, Atelier Cologne or Serge Lutens is also – paradoxically – entering the mainstream, as it is available in Douglas or Sephora. And finally, we have truly independent brands, where the decision-maker is not a marketing team, but the perfumer – an artist who is himself the designer and maker. And this niche I, personally, appreciate the most, although there are some works here that are quite… well, amateurish. But this does not bother me at all, because for such concepts there will also be a place in my capacious perfumery heart.
The most beautiful thing is that nowadays there is actually something for everyone.
You mentioned that you do not treat perfumes in the category of cosmetics. In what category would you place them then?
Perfume is art. What paint is to painting, fragrance essence is to perfume composition. Of course, as with any art there will be the roaring deer, the popular art and high art (let’s say that). And any subcultural phenomena as well. I myself am heading in this direction with the brand I am currently creating.
Oftentimes, it happens that people equate high or “real” art with being niche. I don’t think such a simple equation is true. It just so happens that in the mainstream there are sometimes great works, and in the niche there are things that are quite bland. The other thing is, who should mind if people wear them with pleasure?
What do you see as the key to discovering your own taste?
Freedom. Openness, Self-Awareness. A person who has their own taste knows what suits them. But there are also people who have no taste. I call them „tasteless”. Let me explain.
Usually we call a person ’tasteless’ when they simply have a different taste than we do. Because, unfortunately, people tend to think that their taste is good and others are… lesser. (Laughter) Meanwhile, I believe that if a person looks different from what is generally accepted, they have taste. Just a different one. “Clueless” people can’t quite decide what they like and they need an authority, an expert on the subject who will tell them. A fashion, trend, magazine or stylist who will explain to them what is currently pretty and why what was pretty two years ago now is no longer. Guileless people overly often wear fashionable, beautiful, modern clothes.
Such people will reach for fashionable perfumes and feel good in them. Which, after all, is the most important thing. People with taste on the other hand will choose to use whatever suits their taste, regardless of fashion and regardless of what gender, age, zodiac sign or hair color the image specialists designate the perfume for. This, in my opinion, is a path worth pursuing.
You conduct fragrance workshops, where you introduce people to the world of perfumes. How do you do it?
The workshops cover many topics – history, cultural aspects, creation of the so-called fragrance closet, sensory aspects related to smell, creation of perfumes, composing your own perfume with my help…. A workshop for cosmetology students will be different, a workshop for cultural studies students will be different, a workshop for a group that is on a team-building trip will be different, and a workshop for enthusiasts will be different. I will approach from a different angle when leading a workshop on fragrances in Lesmian’s poetry, and a different workshop for chemistry students who are learning how to extract essences. I also conduct individual perfume selection sessions, a series of conversations and then many tests, during which I guide individuals through the process of learning about their own tastes and enjoying their own choices.
What does this process look like?
At the beginning we talk – about perfume expectations and preferences. Expectations matter – you can’t choose a perfume just to meet society’s expectations, we have to feel good in it first and foremost. If social expectations are important to a person, we learn to work out a compromise. When they are not important to them, we learn what they like, what to focus on in the process of discovering how to feel comfortable with their choices. And, of course, making the choices themselves as well. Sometimes it ends up simply building a collection, and sometimes it is just an opening of the way. Everything and always depends on the expectations of the person I am working with.
On the market we have hundreds of designer perfumes, niche perfumes and new launches every day. How to keep moderation in this?
It depends on whether we want to keep this moderation. A little bit of madness is not a bad thing. (Laughter) Sometimes I explain to people that the journey is the goal. Discovery, after all, doesn’t have to have an end. Even if we already know the most beautiful perfume, which is the ideal one for us, we don’t know if someday we happen to get to know another one, or our taste, expectations, needs change, and as a result of this change we decide that we want to smell like something else. If we feel like exploring, developing and experimenting – let’s do it, preferably for the rest of our lives. If we don’t feel like it, or we have found our perfume Holy Grail and want it to be our signature scent, then we have the right to stop searching and celebrate our pleasure in the way that suits us. Let’s listen to ourselves, let’s not succumb to pressure, let’s not worry about what (someone thinks) we should do.
What myth would you like to dispel?
The myth that our sensitivity is determined by gender. Gender is a construct. There are so many factors that affect gender awareness and expression – psychological, biological, genetic, social…. So why should we suddenly consider that we have two binary types of perfumes: for men and for women. How is this supposed to work? Do we look at a man and tell him what to like? And what he is not allowed to like? After all, women have the right to have traits stereotypically not described as female. Men have the right not to be one-dimensional and always macho. A man has the right to like flowers in perfume, because that’s his taste.
We are made believe that a man who smells of flowers is unmanly, indecisive. After all, the opposite is true in our culture. It requires courage to break out of rigid norms, it requires self-awareness not to define oneself by gender. It is more attractive and courageous to define ourselves by our passions, talents, tastes, whether we are good people or not. This is true uniqueness. Pseudo experts, who tell us what we should smell by gender, or what we must wear at a certain age, sacrifice freedom for an imaginary order. It’s worth mentioning that in the niche, perfume artists who create fragrances rarely target a specific gender. And this openness, freedom of choice is something I wish for everyone.
What are your fragrance dreams?
I am in the process of making my dreams come true. I’ve been working with the best lab in Europe for almost a year now, and I’m creating a truly niche brand, which is supposed to look for a fresh new way, a subcultural perfumery (not to be confused with counterculture). I’m looking for something that maybe hasn’t existed before – and that’s hard to come by, because the perfume world is full of beauty!
I also dream that people will have the courage to seek, to express themselves without guilt, freely, and that the world will stop worrying about stereotypes. That anyone who tries to limit people’s expression should be marginalized themselves. And this applies not only to the art of perfumery.
Last question – what do you smell like today?
I’ll contact you and we’ll update this answer as soon as I can share that detail (laughs).
You can find Klaudia Heintze at https://www.sabbathofsenses.com
