'Men and (wet) sheds': dipping into The Library of Fragrance in a focus group down the pub

Note the 'Drinkaware' presence of cycle clips

Following the arrival of a set of eight scents from the new Library of Fragrance collection (aka Demeter Fragrance Library) which launches in Boots today, I decided to host a mini-focus group at The Vine pub in Stafford this weekend. My (very loose) aim was to check out the brand's stated unisex orientation, and generally get some feedback on any aspect of these perfumes from my mates. The group comprised my friend Clare and her husband Tony, our painter friend David, and his friend Jim, whom the rest of us met for the first time that night, though we'd all been Facebook friends for a while. I wasn't expecting Tony to come along, so he was a 'bonus respondent', albeit tipping the gender split slightly into the masculine camp at 3-2.

For anyone who just wants to know the topline findings from the focus group - as clients are wont to do with real life research exercises - skip straight to the end. For a blow by silly blow account of what went down, please read on...

I should state right off the bat that despite being a researcher by profession, this wasn't a focus group in any meaningful sense of the term. I was voicing my own opinion for one thing - occasionally even before I asked the others(!) (which as everyone knows is highly irregular behaviour in a market research exercise). But I did at least pose a few market research-type questions about the whole positioning and marketing of the brand before we got stuck into the business of sniffing proper.

Where would you expect to see this range displayed in store?

Aware of the unisex premise, the group puzzled over this question, as The Library of Fragrance range clearly falls between the two genders, so in theory needs a separate area. We concluded that it might have its own display in a prominent place where people might fall over it - not even necessarily in the perfume section as such.

What do you think of the bottle?

The men in the group were particularly exercised by this question, and leapt straight in with comments about things it reminded them of - none of which were perfume as it happened. Tony said 'nail varnish remover', while images of Windsor & Newton's range of artists' supplies immediately popped into both David and Jim's minds. Clare thought it looked like 'reed diffuser bottles'. I am of course familiar with many different styles of fragrance bottle, including smallish rectangular ones like these, and am greatly in favour of smaller formats. To the others in the group, however, it didn't really compute as a perfume bottle, partly down to the shape, but also the size. Jim said he would have expected a bottle of men's aftershave to be a lot bigger. On the other hand, it was deemed too bulky to be construed as a handbag-sized perfume. I still think it is great that someone is offering a 30ml size, so it will be interesting to see what Boots' customers make of it.

Source: hobbylobby.com

On a more whimsical note, the coloured strips on the bottles reminded David of Monopoly, and he imagined amassing a whole load of perfumes in the range and inventing games on a Monopoly theme. Picking up the orange banded Amber bottle, he remarked: 'I could put a house on that one.'  (He was perhaps thinking of the aptly named Vine Street...) Oh, and speaking of 'picking up', the bottles are all labelled as:

'Pick-Me-Up
Cologne Spray
Vaporisateur Naturel'

Because of the layout - with the three terms listed underneath one another - we weren't sure if 'Pick-Me-Up' was an adjective governing 'Cologne Spray' below, or the American equivalent of 'Cologne Spray'.

The eagle-eyed David (spot the artist!) noticed that on a couple of the bottles, the text below the fragrance name was in lower case and employed commas, while on most of the bottles it was capitalised, with full stops, making for a punchier, more abrupt style.

"Simple, subtle, singular scents.
Each day. Everywhere."

OR

"Simple. Subtle. Singular Scents.
Each Day. Everywhere."

There was a strong preference for the lower case version, and the capitalisation of 'Day' in the bottle pictured above especially bothered people. 'It's a bit shouty', observed Jim.

Having discussed the packaging in a lot more depth than I was expecting to, it was time to start sampling the perfumes themselves. I had devised a handy map of a left and right hand and forearm. I thought that if everyone applied each fragrance to the same spot, we could critique them in an orderly sequence, as we would all know where to sniff. I was also assigned the role of presiding over the spraying, administering two sharp squirts to each person's skin to give as consistent results as possible. Nevertheless, there were considerable variances between group members in terms of how each perfume smelt.

So here is the feedback, in the order in which the scents were tested...

How did they all smell?

FIG LEAF

Only Clare (a major lover of the fig note in perfumery) and I recognised this as any part of a fig, and even Clare took a little while, though it ended up being her favourite of the bunch, and she took the bottle home with her. Here are a selection of comments:

Jim: 'If I sprayed this on in the dark, I would wonder what it was.' (Editor's note - Jim seemed rather preoccupied with darkness throughout the discussion, as you will see.)

David: 'This smells like the sort of varnish you used to be able to buy in the 60s, but can't get anymore.'

Those really are meant to represent arms, not rolling pins

I was concerned that they might have been smelling the initial blast of alcohol you experience with any perfume, but even though they revisited it later - when to me and Clare it smelt most definitely of fig leaf - the men in the group never made the vegetal connection, didn't care for Fig Leaf, and persisted in using vocabulary along the lines of 'lacquer' and 'tanning solution'. Somebody observed that their nose may have been confused by the shiny look on skin of the perfume. Sure enough, the scents all lingered on everyone's skin as a sticky translucent shine, and in the case of Tony in particular, seemed visibly to have darkened his skin where I had sprayed the scent. I admitted to the group that I couldn't recall that ever happening with perfumes before. The shine was long gone the next morning, mind, but persisted for the duration of our trials.

ORANGE BLOSSOM

This one initially proved more popular, and was considered to be 'more like a cologne'. It was variously described as 'pleasant', 'dry', 'orangey', 'citrusy' and 'quite sweet'. There was one comparison to 'lemon meringue'.

Jim: 'If I picked that up in the night and smelt it, I'd put the light on.' Praise indeed from Jim, the nocturnal operating, non-perfume wearer in our midst.

It was still shiny, however, and went quite indolic on several people's skin during the session, which put Tony right off. None of the men would wear this, but Clare - whose second favourite perfumery note is orange blossom - was happy to take this bottle home too.

Clare and Tony perfectly executing the perfumista's salute

RAIN

Jim: 'Now I would expect this one to be very shiny!' It didn't disappoint.

Beyond that, Rain didn't smell like rain to anyone, but rather of mint and the pith of a satsuma. Clare couldn't smell anything at all to begin with, but her anosmia was suddenly broken by the satsuma reference, and - whether or not thanks to the power of suggestion, who can say? - she could just about smell a slight acerbic orangeness from that point onwards. David also got a bit of the Indian yoghurt dip with mint, raitha. This perfume was quickly renamed 'Satsuma', and on resniffing it much later, Tony pronounced it to be 'really quite nice', though nobody said they would wear it.

Source: thecabbagebox.om

THUNDERSTORM

This is the perfume which people were most intrigued to try, and although everyone found the opening offputting (to put it mildly), it provoked a great deal of lively debate. Images came pouring out along the lines of 'wet leaves', 'wet moss', 'wet gardening', 'rotting leaf mould from leaves that you forgot to burn', 'dry rot', 'wet rot' and 'wet shed'.

Jim: 'It's the smell of taking up the floorboards and seeing what is really going on....'

David: 'Probing at the back of your shed...or sorting out your wood pile - you know there's going to be woodlice and wriggly things.'

Me: 'It's the smell of my Dad's old car coat that had been lying in his damp abandoned caravan for four years.'

Jim summed up the feelings of the group when he inquired: 'Do I want to smell of wet wood mould?' Much much later, when this earthy, patchouli(?) scent had quietened down, Tony said it was actually at a wearable point for a men's fragrance, however, in his view it had taken far too long to get there. This was the most challenging perfume in the selection and Thunderstorm was swiftly renamed 'Wet shed'.

Source: junbosea.net

FRESH GINGER

Clare's immediate response on sniffing this was to say it would make a nice room fragrance for a kitchen. Fresh Ginger was generally considered pleasant, and was one of the scents that smelt most differently on different people's skin, with additional notes of 'lemon', 'sherbet', 'almonds', 'pear drops' and 'Dolly Mixtures'. Tony described it as 'ginger Edinburgh Rock', while David thought it a 'bit Christmassy', and also like some kind of fabric conditioner, in a good way. Jim said he would also have it in the house - as a room fragrance again - and probably more in winter.

GIN & TONIC

Gin & Tonic was unanimously pronounced to smell of shampoo or bubble bath. One of the men mentioned 'Matey', which led to a brief nostalgic digression about bath time products from our childhood. I got a hint of lime, and then remembered how soapy Jo Malone's French Lime Blossom is, which could be why we were 'reading' this scent as being more like a bodycare product than an astringent aperitif. There was no discernible juniper, for example. Much later, after it had softened considerably, Tony announced that he liked it and would be happy to wear it, whereupon he promptly copped for the bottle. Someone else thought it would make a pretty room scent for a bathroom.

At this point, Jim started to engage in a banned activity we had previously dubbed 'nose buffing', whereby you press your nose deeply into one scent, then drag it down to another scent location, thereby risking possible olfactory contamination. We watched as he slid his nose from Thunderstorm down to Gin & Tonic, before remarking: 'I am having a bath in the shed. Perhaps that is why the shed is damp...??'

Once again, this perfume one went on - and stayed - shiny. 'I'm way the shiniest I've ever been', mused Jim.

Jim and David

SEX ON THE BEACH

I requested this one from Clare the PR lady specifically on account of its titillating name, only to find to my chagrin that Sex on the Beach is a cocktail, and nothing at all to do with salt, sand in every interstice and scratchy marram grass. The general consensus was that this perfume smelt of sweets, ranging from that traditional favourite of 'sherbet lemon pomegranate' to 'rhubarb and custard' and generic 'boiled sweets'. The imagery then moved to 'powdered orange juice you used to get when we were kids', while I was reminded of the sweeter end of the J2O fruity mixer range.

Source: fearing.co.uk

People found this pleasant, but not something that a grown-up would wish to smell of. We judged it to be another possible contender as a room fragrance, though we could see it appealing as a perfume to young girls. At this point in the discussion, I mentioned how some US-based readers of Bonkers had talked about spraying Demeter scents on their sheets, which the group heard as 'sheep', prompting much merriment.

AMBER

On first application, everyone got a big whoosh of vanilla, before the scent settled down into a distinctive amber groove. Jim admitted though that based on the name, he wouldn't have any preconception of how amber does smell. After the general consensus of the vanilla opening - and despite most people's recognition of amber as a perfumery note - this scent conjured up some quite contradictory images. Despite these differences, Amber proved to be my and David's favourite of the selection - David took a decant of this one home.

Tony: 'Middle Eastern incense; the souks of Baghdad; a belly dancer in Turkey...this is the sort of thing the sales assistants in the aiport at Dubai try to spray you with.'

David: 'Almonds, pepper, something a bit antiseptic - what they rub on you before they give you an injection? - or the kind of floor cleaner you add water to.' (Editor's note - he did really like this.)

Once everyone had tested all eight perfumes, Tony got up to get some more drinks. On his return, he announced brightly; 'So.... the bar lady liked Wet Shed, Amber, Sex on the Beach and Fig Leaf.' We commended him for gathering this bonus titbit of consumer feedback.

Source: redbubble.com

QUICK SYNOPSIS

For anyone who has jumped to this part - or who would simply welcome some attempt at a synthesis of our very Singular Discussion, here are the Topline Findings (sorry, I am really not feeling these capitals...):

- Everyone found at least one scent out of the eight they said they would wear - except Jim, who doesn't wear aftershave anyway, but nevertheless went home with a decant of Fresh Ginger on the offchance that a cologne-wearing urge might randomly come over him (in the night, presumably...;) ).

- In general, the perfumes were seen as pretty straightforward and borderline functional - there were several suggestions that they might make good room scents.

- The perfumes smelt slightly different on each person's skin - nothing new there!

- Layering is very likely a good way to add depth and interest to these scents - especially as you can buy four 30ml bottles for the price of your average 50ml designer perfume.

'Shiny, happy respondents'

There was no time to layer on the night - people were arguably a bit punchdrunk by this point - and the notion provoked ribald comments along the lines of: 'Sex on a beach on top of a wet shed.' and 'Goodness, you'd be so shiny if you did that!'

As I write, however, I am wearing Orange Blossom + Amber, and Fresh Ginger + Amber, and both are rather pleasant with - just as you would expect - greater complexity than either scent on its own.

Let's keep the focus group going! If you have had your nose in one of these 'fragrant books'- whether as Demeter in the USA or under the new UK name of The Library of Fragrance - do let us know in the comments.

Tony reviewing the right arm trio

'Read my scent': The Library of Fragrance (aka Demeter Fragrance Library) gets a UK boost in Boots

That perfume looks decidedly fresher than my knob of ginger

I first encountered the New York-based perfumery, Demeter Fragrance Library, under (by any yardstick) very odd circumstances. It was during my visit to fellow blogger Bloody Frida's home town in the Mid-West, in March 2011. The full story of our extremely full-on weekend is recounted here, but the bit about the two perfumes from the Demeter line that I discovered back then bears repeating - to set the scene (and the requisite oddball tone) for this latest post about the line.

"As the night wore on, and my two bottles of beer somehow managed to be chased down (note the careful use of the passive voice) by a vodka martini that had been abandoned by one of our party (rude not to drink it, really), I started to feel a bit merry. Indeed I was probably not far off the state to which I refer in my 1984 diary rather more bluntly as 'pissed'. The rest of the evening is a fabulous blur, but we ended up back at the house of the Yorkshireman and his wife (friends of Bloody Frida we had bumped into earlier that evening), who live in a warehouse conversion tastefully decorated with a surreal assortment of art works in every conceivable medium, vintage 50s furniture, and reclaimed industrial materials repurposed as quirky ornaments - in short, a stunningly strange collection of artefacts that had been lovingly curated over many decades. We sat cross legged on the floor knocking back - and partly also, OVER - rather too many glasses of red wine, crunching wholegrain crackers with the gusto of people who hadn't eaten for a week, not just a few hours earlier, and spraying the entire length of our hostess's arms with the assortment of perfumes we had had the foresight to bring with us in case just such a consultancy opportunity should arise. We also got to try the only two perfumes she currently owned: Demeter Snow and Fireplace, and empathised over a lost chypre scent she had once loved."

Source: oberlinedu.com

That is rather a long preamble, I know, but I will forever associate the Demeter brand with the extraordinary house of the quirky artist whose perfume collection was so sparse by comparison, comprising just this duo of Snow and Fireplace. I remember Snow as being a cold, watery, slightly other worldly and faintly spring floral scent, that did a good job of conjuring up the sensation and smell of burying one's head in the white stuff. Fireplace I can't recall, but I think it might have been a woody spicy number.

In the intervening three and a half years I can frankly say I haven't given the Demeter range a single thought, mostly because it hasn't really been available over here - or only in fits and starts in places like Liberty's, say. But the brand popped back into my mind this week, when I received an email out of the blue from the MD of a distribution company called House of Blend, who is charged with launching the brand in the UK under the name 'The Library of Fragrance'.

As it happens, I have been doing some thinking lately about the various approaches I receive from what I shall loosely and collectively term as 'PR people'.  I alluded briefly to this topic in my recent Papillon Perfumery post, because exchanges with Liz Moores are a shining exception to the bland, impersonal, automaton-like communications I often receive from such quarters. Clare Rees, the MD of House of Blend, has a similarly down to earth manner. Hence I was immediately 'engaged' by her email (there goes another quid in the 'orrible business speak equivalent of a swear box...), also by the fact that she addressed me by name (a small thing you might think, but by no means a given!). Moreover she had clearly read my blog, and not just pretended to have done so in some glib throwaway reference. So the 'real sounding' and personalised nature of her overture immediately warmed me further to this offbeat brand I dimly recalled from that drunken night in Ohio...

Source: pinterest.com

In a press release accompanying Clare's email, I learnt that a 'capsule collection' of 28 'best selling' scents from the Library of Fragrance will be launching on 9th September in 400 Boots branches nationwide. Hmm, not sure why 'best selling' should be in inverted commas - unless there are some interpretation issues with the sales figures - but there you go. The rest of the range (there are a staggering 101 scents overall!) will be available to buy online from the Library of Fragrance's UK website. The price will be a snip at £15 for a 30ml bottle, and there will additionally be a '2 for £25' promotion at Boots, possibly as an indefinite basis.

For anyone not familiar with The Library of Fragrance, the brand is founded on the principle of creating perfumes that smell of everyday things.

"Rather than trying to capture the ‘essence’of an aspirational ideal or glossy advertising image, The Library of Fragrance presents scents that are ‘real’ and ‘familiar’ and can be chosen to reflect the preferences of the wearer, instead of those dictated by a perfumer or designer. Selecting a scent to wear becomes as easy as asking yourself, ‘what sort of things do I like?’"

Gin & Tonic the perfume cosying up to Aldi's finest

Well, I have nothing in principle against perfumes that reflect the preferences of a perfumer or designer - I just accept that I may or may not like their compositions, just as I may or may not like some of the everyday things The Library of Fragrance supposes I might care to smell. It is certainly refreshing, however, to get away for a while from that 'wafty, soft focus, chiffon-clad Keira Knightley / Scarlett Johansson' style of perfume marketing implicitly referenced in the quote above. And interestingly, this more prosaic approach to perfumery is exactly the kind embraced by my friend Clare - whom I recently featured in my 'perfumista protege progress report' series - in answer to the question about how her feelings towards perfume had changed since I started introducing her to more niche scents.

"I think that as a result of owning more bottles and trying more 'stuff' I have understood more about what I really like. I describe this as a perfume that smells of a thing. Something organic, not something perfumey."

Well, the Library of Fragrance concept looks right up her street...;)

The other aspect that will be promoted by the brand is layering. With such a humungous range to explore - even the shortlist of 28 available in-store is pretty darn extensive - I can't see me experimenting with layering any time soon. I suppose though that it is a logical extension of the philosophy of a person enjoying 'smelling of things'. You can basically mix and match your favourite smells to create more complex scented settings / scenarios. As the press release goes on to explain:

"The most basic rule of thumb is that if things smell good together in real life, they will smell good on you. For example, ‘Grass’ + ‘Sunshine’ + ‘Vanilla Ice Cream’ smell incredible worn together, perfectly conjuring a summer day’s stroll in the park, whilst ‘Gingerbread’ + ‘Marshmallow’ is a comforting duo that gourmand fragrance fans will fall for."

So in Clare's case, as a diehard fig lover and the anchorwoman of Cake Club, she could perhaps combine Fig Leaf with Vanilla Cake Batter, say. To fully meet her tastes, however, the range has a glaring omission in the shape of Wet Dog.

Hypothetical Wet Dog & Snow layering idea? ~ Source: Clare Chick

As I say, I don't feel ready to layer yet, and am not a big fan of layering generally, for even with the relatively small Jo Malone range, which also sets store by the notion, the infinite permutations used to blow my mind and increase the anxiety levels I was already feeling from having so many perfume options to choose from in my collection as a whole. So I will just toss the idea out there for the moment in case any readers are more inclined that way.

Having piqued their curiosity about the upcoming launch, I am meeting with Clare and two other male friends - who are both delightfully eccentric and generally drawn to 'weird stuff' - down the pub shortly. Here I plan to hold an utterly unscientific mini-focus group about the Library of Fragrance line. I thought my mate David would be a good test subject, as he is an artist in the realist tradition and loves nothing more than to paint juxtapositions of food and flowers with other random objects. The other chap, Jim, actually suggested that on her recent sodden charity bike ride, Clare could equally well have worn the Demeter Rain perfume in place of her choice of Bradley Wiggins-inspired Time to Draw the Raffle Numbers. At the time he had merely found a link to it in Google, but now - thanks to the generosity of House of Blend - we have a 'starter kit' of scents representing various points along the 'orthodox to well wacky' spectrum for our focus group, including the very weathers with which Clare contended on that day, ie Rain and Thunderstorm! Then in my invitation, I initially wrote 'mini-ficus group' by mistake, which of course would only work for the Fig Leaf one.

David's take on things figgy

I am actually wearing eight Library of Fragrance scents at once as I write, and my initial thoughts are that each perfume faithfully smells of the thing it purports to represent, however abstract or concrete that thing may be. They are verily the Ronseal of the perfume world. Which prompted Jim to pipe up: 'There's one that smells of creosote? Oh good!" For the moment I have had to disappoint him, but who knows what line extensions may yet come down the pipe?

So I will report back with their - and more of my own - feedback in due course. I confidently predict that the comments from that trio will be as 'off the wall' as the perfumes themselves.

UPDATE - We have had the focus group now, and the predictably bonkers post about it is now up!

Oh, and the 28 scents that will shortly be available in-store at Boots may be found on their website here.

A slam dunk gunkfest: snap-prone stack pots

Travel pots going nowhere with offending sliver

It's been a while since I last wrote a beauty-related post...As you can see in the side bar, I have a(n) (wholly) involuntary Ebuzzing beauty blog ranking to maintain(!), so I thought I would take this opportunity to vent my frustration at a recent beauty product malfunction - one that has happened several times in fact, and to products from different retailers - to wit, stack pots made of such flimsy plastic that bits shear off at the drop of a hat.  Or rather they break off if you attempt to screw the pots together, which is rather the point of a 'stack', I would have thought.

The trouble started with a set of stack pots from Superdrug which I was using to decant travel-sized portions of various lotions: typically foundation, night cream and texturising 'product' for my hair (my beloved Label M to be specific).  In no time at all a sliver of plastic had sheared off the pot containing foundation, with dual consequences: air gets in and dries out the foundation to a useless crud, and a messily coated - and sharp - shard of pot drops into one's sponge bag or (God forbid) handbag, gaily smearing foundation on everything it touches.

I was irritated, but put it down to experience.  Perhaps I should spend a bit more and invest in more robust pots, which is the argument I always use when I persist in buying cheap Tupperwares from Poundland with flaps that detach from the lid with the ease of a wiggly tooth hanging by a thread.  Maybe if I put the broken flaps under my pillow the Poundland fairy would give me my pound back?  (On the premise that there must have been some inflationary effect since the sixpences of my youth.)

Congealing, not concealing...

So anyway, I toddled along to Boots and bought another set of stack pots that cost a little bit more - though it isn't exactly a premium item to be fair- and proceeded to fill them with more unguents of one sort or another.  Several days later, the same thing happened - at multiple points in the stack.  More splinter shrapnel - 'you could put your eye out with that', I can just hear my mother intone - more wandering gunk syndrome, more desiccated residue in the broken pot.

And now I feel stuck...I go away quite a bit, and would balk at the prospect of having to take full-sized containers of all my various items of beauty gubbins.  But these so-called travel pots clearly can't be trusted to travel - or not even not to travel - merely to behave as orderly receptacles on my dressing table seems to be a big ask.

Has anyone else experienced this particular travel aid malfunction or any other one involving a beauty product which they would like to get off their chest?  A claggy mascara, perhaps, or a lipstick with an ill-fitting cap?  I must say I get quite cross with bottles of shampoo and suchlike whose nozzles clog up when they are only half used.  I invariably have to take the flippy lid of the pump dispenser off and try to squeeze the stuff out through the inner tube below.  'Used by professionals' it says on the label of my Tresemme conditioner, to which I would add: 'but only once'.

Or perhaps some reader could have a crack at topping this alliterative description of the problem:

'Shockingly snap-prone stack pots shed sharply sheared-off shards'.

Oh, and my google image searches of 'stack pots beauty products' - just to check I was calling them by the correct term, you understand - threw up this unexpected image in the first row...  These giraffes from Anthropologie are undoubtedly cute and arguably more robust than small plastic containers, but conspicuously lack a reclosable lid.

Oh, and I know it is nothing to do with beauty products, but have you noticed how the walls of cheap PET bottles of drinking water are getting thinner?  Take a single swig and they contract in the middle like a wasp-waisted Victorian in an unforgiving corset.  This phenomenon is called 'panelling', I do remember from my time as a fruit juice product manager in the 80s.  But knowing its name doesn't make the imploding trick any less annoying.