Making scents

When Paris Hilton released her first fragrance in 2004 in collaboration with Parlux Fragrances, most of us rolled our eyes at yet another lame celebrity scent. Perfumer Geza Schoen went one step further. "I thought, 'enough - enough of stupidity'," he explains from his home in Berlin.

Schoen, of Escentric Molecule fame, had the idea of creating a fragrance in collaboration with someone who had a special skill - as opposed to someone who was just, well, famous. And it wasn't just poor Paris Hilton who sparked him off: it was celebrity scents in general. He wanted a fragrance that celebrated smart, talented women, "someone who actually has got a real skill". Thus, the idea for his new fragrance series was born: The Beautiful Mind Series.

It wasn't until a year or so later that Schoen found a beautiful mind he wanted to work with for "Volume One" - Christiane Stenger, a 22-year-old German political science student who was awarded the rather impressive-sounding title of Grandmaster of Memory at the age of 12. "I thought that was really interesting, she obviously has a skill that is really helpful - and she doesn't go to bars and let her trousers down," says Schoen, who says his love of scent began when he was 13 and started collecting perfume samples.

The pair met up and in 2007 spent a month or so smelling every day, while Schoen gave Stenger basic training in perfumery. "It was a new experience for me to work with someone so young, and someone who had nothing to do with the industry - but that was the fun. If you have no idea or paradigm when it comes to perfumes ... she was completely fresh and it was a good grounding to create something on."

The Beautiful Mind Volume One is a bold scent with a light summery touch - think summer blossoms or walking through an orchard of mandarin trees.

Schoen - currently working on the third instalment in his cult Escentric Molecules series - says his "nose" and his work aren't inspired by mood boards or briefs, but by simple themes - "a topic of what you want to translate .

"There are already so many fragrances, there isn't really any need to come up with more, unless the idea is different."

Schoen's new and different idea for The Beautiful Mind Volume 2 is currently taking shape; he has found a muse in a classical ballet dancer. "That's the biggest surprise of all; after the first one which just seems like the perfect Volume, I thought, who is next? I had just been on my couch at night zapping through my TV channels and I got stuck watching something that featured a classic ballet dancer. I got in touch with her and she loves the idea, and we are going to meet her this Saturday for a smelling session. That is another beautiful mind; someone who is a classic ballet dancer embodies the idea quite perfectly of someone giving beauty and grace to something - a beautiful mind, which I think she is."

Of course, famous people can be smart with beautiful minds too, so are there any celebrity fragrances that Schoen does like?

"No. But that is not a surprise. It is really sad, those fragrances that carry a celebrity's name - they don't get to see the fragrances until they are done; they have nothing to do with it. They are just a vehicle to create a selling point by giving a perfume a name. You could argue that all the designers have nothing to do with it, and yes, that's right - the designers these days are too busy doing their own stuff, that they can't look at the development of their own fragrances.

"I think that is really sad, because we could take any name and throw it on to any bottle of perfume and sell it, but there is no integrity. The integrity of a product is important if someone wants to fall in love with it - you want a story with it, you want to know people have been thinking about something behind a fragrance and the story. Otherwise it's just soulless."

* The Beautiful Mind Volume 1 is available now exclusively through Karen Walker boutiques, for $360.