“Perfume is a story in odor, sometimes poetry in memory.”

– Jean-Claude Ellena

 

Scent making is an art in its purest form based on an artisans’ skill. One can always remember a painting, and where they saw it, same with sculpture. But a fragrance takes you back to the moment you first experienced it, that is the truest art.

As humans, our sense of smell allows us to identify food, friends and foes as well as sensual pleasures such as perfume and nature. The olfactory system is located in the brain which is why the sense of smell is closely tied to memory, mood and concentration. Fragrances allow you to perceive reality differently by taking you on a journey that almost forced a unique experience on you. 

 

To explore Mazeej’s scent and the art of scent making, we sat down with Mustafa Moneir, founder of the fragrance house Conservatoire for an insight into his life growing up and how he became a scent designer and furthermore, for a look into the process of how a scent designer finds inspiration and transforms it into a scent and how the scent has been embodied into Mazeej’s rooms.

 Q: Can you please give us a little introduction about yourself?

 I’m the founder and scent designer of the perfume house Conservatoire. It’s a fragrance brand based in Cairo and due to launch by Autumn of 2020.

I left Egypt at the age of three - maybe three and a half - and grew up and lived between Berlin, Copenhagen, Sydney and Vienna, before coming back to Cairo in 2018 to develop the concept for conservatoire. 

 

The word Conservatoire comes from the latin “conservare”, meaning to conserve/ preserve.The idea was to create a museum in a way, that houses memories of places, events, feelings and things. I just wanted to create a kind of archive housing them, interpreted in the form of scent, but also to elevate the importance of the sense of smell in the overall human experience. We create eau de parfum, with a home fragrance line planned soon after. We also do commissioned work and collaborations with artists as well as selected clients, like this one for/ with Mazeej White Hotel.

 

Q: What inspired you to become a scent designer? 

 Scent has played an important role in my life, growing up. Moving around so much as a child, scent memory helped me hold on to and recall moments and things I had left behind. To me, Berlin will always smell of jet fuel, tarmac, pretzel and gingerbread; while Copenhagen of liquorice, a cold, salty sea breeze and algae, mixed with vanilla soft ice; Sydney of boronia flowers, soy sauce and my damp school uniform after rain showers; while Vienna smells of cold tobacco on a winter coat, Aperol and linden blossoms, apricot jam and juniper berries.

I studied pharmacy in Vienna, Austria, before taking on perfumery at the Cinquième Sens in Paris. What fascinated me about scent design is the ability to evoke feelings, recall memories through something completely invisible, yet so meticulously put together.  

 

Q: How does one become a scent designer?

 Scent design involves chemistry, art and good taste. For a fragrance to be good, you cannot have one without the others. Note that I’m not saying “for a fragrance to be successful”, but rather, for it to be good. Commercial success in fragrance is a topic for a different day and naturally of lesser interest to niche fragrance design. So personally, I believe that a minimum understanding of organic chemistry is of great aid to any scent designer, as is a good amount of experience, both with the fragrance materials as well as with one’s own sense of smell and the way it’s intertwined with memory and the other senses. The more you’ve experienced in other disciplines, the more memory you can draw from.

 

There are thousands of materials out there in the perfumer’s organ – both natural and synthetic – and one should be fully aware of the capability, strengths, weaknesses and versatility of each raw material in one’s palate. All of this comes from experience, discipline, patience and most importantly, curiosity. A scent designer never ceases to learn.

 

Q: What was the inspiration behind the Mazeej Scent? How would you describe it?

The fragrance for Mazeej White enjoyed an interesting creation process, as it involved me developing a scent for an entity that was in itself still under development, as the hotel wasn’t finished by the time I started formulating. This led to the creation of something beautiful, in my opinion, because the fragrance really got shaped by the place, as it was being made. 

 

For Mazeej White, we wanted to create a fragrance that was very local but modern at the same time. What’s more Egyptian than jasminum grandiflorum (also known as Egyptian jasmine)? Because Conservatoire has the ability to produce in relatively small batches and is not limited by budget, we had the liberty of using natural jasmine absolute in the formula in such high amounts that are usually unthinkable in fine fragrance, let alone home fragrance. This narcotic, animalic white flower is married to spicy cardamom in this modern ode to the Egyptian north coast. It’s a combination that ends up being both, enchanting and memorable.  

 

Q: Can you please walk us through the process of making the Mazeej Scent?

Natural jasmine absolute (jasmine oil) does not smell of the flower. It can‘t supply the whole olfactory experience of sniffing a living jasmine flower at night, because what you‘d smell there is not just the oil, but also the petals, the green notes of the leaves around it, perhaps even the freshness of the morning dew. All of these notes contribute to the final orchestra that is the fragrance of a jasmine flower. A scent designer must add them him/ herself, based on their own interpretation and what facet of the jasmine they want to portray. With Mazeej White, I wanted the jasmine to be present, but not overpowering. I wanted the fragrance to reach a point of equilibrium between the animalic, but floral notes of the jasmine and the sharp, spiciness of the indian cardamom. I wanted the person sitting near it to smell, the jasmine at times, the cardamom at times, and at times both. Overall, it took a formula consisting of around 60 different raw materials to reach this result. 

 

As for the vessel, I wanted it to be as Egyptian as possible, but as subtly as possible. I chose for it to be made of two materials: Glass and ceramic. Glass represents the sands of the western desert and Siwa, where local glass makers get their raw materials from, while the clay for the ceramic is gathered from the Nile banks of Aswan and shaped into the wings of the desert fox, that is Mazeej‘s logo. 

 

Q: Since scent is linked to memory, what does Mazeej scent remind you of?

Summer, white sand, clean, soft bedsheets, great nights at Kiki’s Beach Bar and Mazeej White. Plus of course the countless hours of work it took to bring it all together. It’s hard to separate the two sets of memories but I’m very fond of both.

 

Q: As a scent designer, what are your tips to best enjoy fragrances and make them last longer?

 

There is no silver bullet. If the fragrance was not formulated to last long, it won’t. Longevity largely depends on formulation, expertise and the size of the molecules used to formulate the fragrance. But there are ways and best practises to ensure better evaporation, diffusivity and longevity.

 

First off, the dryer your skin, the shorter the fragrance will last on it, so make sure you apply your fragrance to well moisturised skin. This might be less of a problem in summer, but in winter make sure you moisturise frequently, especially the areas of your skin you usually spray perfume on. 

As for where one should apply the fragrance, I find the collarbone to be a great spot and right opposite it, just under the hairline on the back of the neck. This ensures you leave a nice trail behind you when out.

 

I personally like to perfume certain items of clothing like the scarf in winter, as well. Let’s not forget that for centuries, the gloves and leather goods of royalty and aristocracy were dipped in fine perfume, leading to the fragrance category we know today as cuir, or leather notes.

 

To follow Mustafa’s incredible journey and business, you can find his instagram account here.

Love,

Your Family at Mazeej