Three courses, one organ
Every course runs in the same room, on the same 240-material organ, in groups of no more than eight. What changes is how long you have and how much of the formula is yours. All three end with a composition you keep — the formula on paper and the perfume in a 30 ml flacon.
I
La Première Nuit
One evening · 3 hours · No experience needed
An introduction for people who have never held a pipette. We start at the organ with about twenty materials on the bench — a few citruses, a rose, an iris, some woods and a musk — and you spend the first hour simply smelling them on blotters and learning to say what you are smelling.
The second hour is construction. You build a simple three-movement chypre from a teaching formula, weighing in parts per thousand on a jeweller's scale, and you learn why the proportions are what they are: why the base is more than half of it, why the top note you can smell in the bottle is nearly gone in twenty minutes.
The last hour is yours. You adjust the formula — more iris, less pepper, a different wood — and bottle the result. You leave with 30 ml of your version and the written formula, so it can be made again.
Included
- All materials, blotters, scales and glassware
- A 30 ml flacon of your finished composition
- Your formula written up and archived here under your name
- A glass of something at the end — the class runs into the evening
II
La Structure
Six sessions over three weeks · Tuesday and Thursday evenings
The working course, and the one most people come back for. Six sessions, each three hours, built around the part of perfumery that is genuinely difficult: not choosing nice materials, but making them hold together over time.
Sessions one and two cover the olfactive families and the organ itself — what the 240 materials are, how they are grouped, and which ones are dangerous in quantity. Sessions three and four are accord building: you construct and dismantle a rose accord, then a chypre, then something of your own choosing. Session five is tenacity and diffusion — why a formula that is beautiful on a blotter disappears on skin.
Session six is correction, and it is the reason the course exists. You bring a formula that is almost right, and you learn the moves that get it the rest of the way: what to remove rather than add, how to tell a material that is fighting from one that is merely loud, and when to abandon a direction. Nobody teaches this part, because it only comes from having ruined a few hundred formulas.
Included
- Six three-hour sessions with full access to the organ
- All materials across the course, including the expensive naturals
- A bound formula book — yours, with everything you write during the six weeks
- A 30 ml flacon of your final composition, plus 5 ml samples of your intermediate versions
- Standing invitation to the Thursday open bench for a year afterwards
III
Composition Libre
Twelve weeks · By interview · Six places a year
For people who have finished La Structure, or who already compose and want a bench, an organ and someone to argue with. There is no set brief and no teaching formula. You arrive with an intention — a memory, a material you cannot place, a commission — and you spend twelve weeks making it hold.
The structure is deliberately loose: one scheduled session a fortnight where you present what you have and defend it, and open bench access the rest of the time. Between sessions you are expected to make things and throw most of them away.
We take six people a year and we interview first, which is not a formality — twelve weeks is long enough that a mismatch wastes everybody's time. If your intention is still vague, La Structure is the better place to start, and it counts toward this.
Included
- Twelve weeks of open bench access during opening hours
- Six scheduled one-to-one sessions with a working perfumer
- Full run of the organ, including materials we do not put out for other courses
- Two 30 ml flacons of the finished work and a properly typeset formula sheet
- Help placing the work, if that is what you want from it
The September intake opens on 12 September
Eight places per course. Write to us with which course you want and we will tell you what is left — no deposit until you have a confirmed seat.
Ask about a place