Piano Perfumed

How you ever noticed how fragrance and music are connected. Perfumes have notes and chords, just like music does. Perfumes also have stages (top, middle, and base) and so too does music (verse, bridge/hook, and chorus). You need to ensure the composition is right for both music and perfume for it to blend beautifully to our senses So, it’s not surprising that Annick Goutal who dedicated her early life to playing the piano, with the dream of being a pianist should turn, instead, to creating perfumes. Enjoy reading Piano Perfumed here. Image Harry Stonehill.

Annick Goutal was born in Aix-en-Provence in a family of eight children her father was a confectioner as a kid, she didn’t care for anything in a way that is better than tying up chocolates and little parcels of sweets with excellent ribbons when she wasn’t rehearsing piano. At the age of 16 she won first prize for piano at the esteemed Versailles Conservatory however not long after, surrendered her musician dream when the pressure turned out to be excessive. Annick Goutal moved to London and found work as a caretaker where her classic beauty and slender silhouette was spotted by legendary photographer David Bailey. Who launched her modelling career.

she had questions about her new career so She moved back to Paris, opened a antique shop (Folavril, after a character in a Boris Vian tale). She had her first daughter Camille. The door of the antique shop shut, another opened Annick started helping a companion launch a beauty store selling plant-based creams.

The beauty products needed a fragrance so Annick headed to Grasse, still the heartland of perfumery today. And it was meeting with a perfumer, Henri Sorsana from fragrance house Robertet, which opened Annick Goutal’s nose and she gave up modelling, and instead became a perfumer, showing exceptional talent. She spent four years training, rediscovering the musical language she’d left behind, translated to the world of smell.

In 1981 her first shop opened rue de Bellechasse, a little haven on the Left Bank steeped in a certain Parisian charm. She created a style of her own, made of delicacy and brilliance, freshness and character. Her first creation, L’Eau d’Hadrien, composed in 1981, put Annick Goutal as a pioneer of the Niche Perfumery.

In 1998, the creation Petite Chérie is a tribute to Camille Goutal, Annick Goutal’s daughter. Camille Goutal grew up with the artistic influence of this extraordinary woman. She inculcated above all to her daughter the importance of having fun and living of her dreams. Thus, Camille Goutal became passionate from an early age for photography. It was in 1999 that Camille continued the work of her mother following her death. Today, Camille is the Director of Creation of Goutal, and works on the composition of each perfume with Isabelle Doyen, a perfumer who has been an accomplice of the Maison since forever.

The brand has introduced its new fragrance.

Le Temps des Rêves

The new sunny fragrance

Le Temps des Rêves is a stroll through this city of a thousand bitter orange trees, where the founder Annick Goutal first learned to play her olfactory scales. It distils the sunny and tenderly nostalgic scent of the orange blossom, emblem of the sweetness of life under the Mediterranean sun. Like a reverie to the origins of perfume.

Fragrance notes include:

Top – Orange flower absolute, sits with Néroli

Orange blossom and neroli. They both are from the small white flowers that blossom on the bitter orange tree. which is much more fragrant than the orange tree which produces the fruit for eating.

Heart – Bergamot, Myrtle

Bergamot smells like other citrus fruits in that it has a sunny, sweet aroma with notes of tartness and acidity. However, its unique floral, spicy edge distinguishes it from other citrus scents. The essential oil extracted from the leaves of the myrtle bush gives herbal fresh aromatic nuance to the middle.

Base – Flower milk accord, Bran absolute, Sandalwood accord

This selection of accords and absolute in the base brings an almost biscuity, hay, dried-grass layer with a hint of flowers, woods and honey to hold the scent together.

This perfume is a perfect pick for all those who love the sunny and tenderly nostalgic scent of the orange blossom.

Find out more about the brand here Goutal Paris.

If you loved reading Piano Perfumed then why not read Eco painting here.