Tag: creative

Issey Miyake Fusion – make your own music on the nature-inspired drum machine!

The new Issey Miyake fragrance, Fusion d’Issey, has inspired an immersive and interactive experience created in partnership with The Perfume Shop, to celebrate the launch…

We’ve been banging our drum about the many ties between music and fragrance for years – in fact, we recently dedicated an entire issue of our magazine, The Scented Letter, to Music & Perfume  – so we’re delighted to see Issey Miyake showcasing Fusion in such an imaginative and multi-sensory way…

Sounds of Fusion is, they explain, ‘the first drum machine inspired by nature in Fusion, where users are invited to create their own music composition using the sounds of elements in Fusion.

 

 

The experience immerses into an interactive home page inviting users to take part in an intuitive and easy creative soundscape page where they can create their own unique piece of music.

“Sounds of Fusion” offers a new playground for both novice and experienced music creators. It takes its roots in the popular organic and nature-inspired music genre.

The experience is composed of:

4 main themes inspired by nature: air / lava / water / stone sounds

8 different sounds representing the main themes, as different interpretations of each one

A play and pause button, there to start or stop the player

A record/share button allowing to download the composition when one’s done, and share it on different social media channels

The digital platform is live now and open to anyone who is keen to become his/her own music creator inspired by organic sounds.

Be inspired & share your Sound of Fusion!’

 

 

 

So, why not spritz your scent and get inspired to create your own track to share with friends online? With Issey Miyake you’re invited to ‘Dive at the heart of the elements where the strength of nature is expressed through images and for the first time… through sounds. Just listen: water flowing on rocks, wind blowing through leaves, boiling lava, crackling rocks…’

For those of you who’ve not managed to get your noses on the new fragrance yet, Fusion juxtaposes hot and cold, a fascinating exploration of the perfumer’s alchemy in conjuring coolness from citrus and coconut milk, the breeze of a solar-filled mineral accord (think sunlight sparkling on water). Earthiness exudes from the smooth sandalwood, while resinous patchouli provides the heat of the base.

 

Issey Miyake Fusion d’Issey £49 for 50ml eau de toilette
theperfumeshop.com

By Suzy Nightingale

Rook ‘Moments’ – the niche house encouraging creative togetherness

ROOK PERFUMES are the perfect meeting place between art and science – with more than a little rock ‘n roll in their DNA. Launched by a frontline doctor/actor (yes, really), Nadeem Crowe, who became enraptured with the world of perfumery,he’s now reaching out to other creatives and asking YOU to share your talents with the world…

‘No one could have expected coronavirus, nor could anyone expect the impact it would have on businesses worldwide,’ says Nadeem, ‘The creative industry is struggling, with projects put on hold and freelance designers, artists and creatives scampering for remaining work. The government support for the self employed has been a slow-burn leaving artists in a creative limbo with financial uncertainty.’

Nadeem has a unique position with insight in the medical and creative worlds, explaining that ‘I feel lucky to be a doctor in a time where people are isolated and struggling financially. I have a job and wonderful colleagues around me. Even if I do feel exposed, I realise I am in a very fortunate position as I watch friends I have shared the West End stage with lose their jobs and struggle to support themselves and their families.’

 

 

After a long discussion with famed British photographjer, Rankin, ‘who as a creative can relate to this situation as much as anyone, it was clear that what we could do was use this time of conflict to create a piece of art. A social statement.’ Nadeem and Rankin wanted to start an online movement – ‘a conversation to get these creatives talking’.

And so Rook Moments was born, ‘asking fellow creatives and people of the community to discuss who they are, what they are missing out on and the limitations corona is putting on their creativity and in some cases livelihood.’ From actors, to photographers, designers, and directors – they say that ‘these are stories that need to be heard…’ Asking fellow creatives to upload short videos of themselves, Nadeem urges, ‘Show us you talent or skill. Sing, dance, recite a monologue, play an instrument – do whatever drives you creatively!’

This isn’t a competition with some reality show judging panel – this is real life, a snapshot of creative people, inspired by fragrance or simply sharing whatever talent you have in a Rook Moment of your own, and for the love of art itself.

Some further suggestions, and instructions how to submit your videos, are available on the Rook Moments section of their website, but if you’re really seeking creative inspo, can we recommend you immerse yourself in the delights of the Rook Perfumes Discovery Set?

 

Rook Perfumes Discovery Set £15

Created by Nadeem to transport you via textural, intriguingly overlapping scent memories of verdant forests, drifts of incense, leathery birch-tar; fascinatingly visceral sensations of herb gardens and wet earth – we wonder where you’ll be taken, and urge you to share your own creative journey…

By Suzy Nightingale

Marty The Mighty Nose Awards – open for entries

Get those nostrils flapping in preparation, for The Fragrance Foundation‘s Marty the Mighty Nose Awards are once again open for smell-inspired poetic writing…
The annual competition invites Key Stage Two pupils (aged 7-11) to ‘take an aromatic approach to creative writing, as we invite them to write their own smell-inspired poems for the chance to win prizes for themselves and for their schools.’

The Fragrance Foundation say: ‘Whether it is inviting children to develop their use of simile and metaphor in English by writing smell-inspired poems or learning about history through the stinky aromas of the past (Ancient Egyptian Mummification anyone?), structured activities incorporating fragrance and smell can truly support and inspire pupils of all abilities.’
Entries can be made by schools, by individual parents and guardians, and details of the competition and how to submit an entry are explained, below…

The Fragrance Foundation encourage pupils to write poems inspired by the sense of smell (the whiffy socks of an older brother has been a previous winner’s poetic theme!) and these are then read and chosen by a distinguished panel of judges each year, with awards being presented to the children and schools during the prestigious Jasmine Awards ceremony, held at BAFTA.

Known as ‘The Oscars for fragrance journalism’, The Jasmine’s are highly sought after, celebrating innovative and creative fragrance writing from the top-selling glossy magazines, newspapers, independent blogs and beyond. And when The Mighty Nose Awards are read out during the ceremony, there’s always a ripple of absolute delight within the industry professionals present.
Teachers can view and download materials to aid the scent training, and request t-shirts and scratch-‘n-sniff stickers from the Marty the Mighty Nose website, but for now, why not sit back and relax while Richard E. Grant guides you through your very own workshop in the film, below?

Entering The Mighty Nose Awards is easy – download the entry pack here.
We’ve been highly honoured at The Perfume Society to be nominated for and win several Jasmine Awards, and always wonder if the talented children who enter the awards with their smell-inspired poems could well be the fragrance writers – and noses behind the fragrances of the future! So get those kids’ noses in training…
Written by Suzy Nightingale

Do you Cinéhaïku? Enter the MEMO Paris weekly poetic short film competition to win $500 or $10,000!

Cinematically inclined scent-o-philes are encouraged to indulge their creativity with a plunge in to the world of short films… As Clara Molloy, founder of MEMO Paris perfumes breezed through town, today, to launch Eau de Memo (watch this space!), she told us all about a rather exciting competition that we know many of our artistic readership would love to get involved
MEMO Paris perfumes have established a weekly competition of poetic films – merely between 20 and 30 seconds in length, yet expressing timeless stories far deeper than the actual time frame may suggest. Through MEMO’s dedicated Cinéhaïku website, film directors both amateur and professional are invited to express themselves through a simple exercise: adapt the rules of haiku to an audiovisual format.
So what, exactly, is a Haiku? Well, Jack Kerouac put it as ‘A sentence that’s short and sweet with a sudden jump of thought in it, is a kind of haiku,’ though if you want a more in-depth description, there are countless websites dedicated to the art and history of this poetic medium. But how to translate this in to a short film? The rules to follow are on the Cinéhaiku competition page under how to participate, but basically it’s a 20-30 second snippet of something that ‘captures a lived moment.’

Each week, from March 6 to June 29, 2017, a winner will be chosen by Cinéhaïku members and awarded a $500 prize. The prize-winning films are then automatically entered into the Cinéhaïku Festival to compete for the annual prize. The overall winner of the year’s best Cinéhaïku will be invited to France to receive a quite incredible $10,000 prize awarded by a professional jury selected from the world of art, film and literature, and the winner will also be given a separate, dedicated space in the festival.
Cinéhaïku say: ‘The annual Cinéhaïku festival will showcase all of the weekly winning films at a temporary exhibition held from July 7 to 21, 2017 throughout the town of Gordes, in the Luberon region of southern France. The Cinéhaïkus will be broadcast on screens along an aesthetic trail, providing festival-goers with a true moment of poetry suspended in time.’
Our film would just have to be about perfume and the sense of smell, of course – but what would you haiku…?
Written by Suzy Nightingale