Erik Kormann (Эрик Корманн). Эрик Корманн совместно с Ксенией Трост владеют немецким магазином «1000 & 1 Seife». Из хобби по изготовлению мыла и выросло громадное производство. Все мыло изготовлено вручную, оно является качественным продуктом на рынке и из большого изобилия, представленного этим брендом, выбрать становится все труднее и труднее.

BEAUTY FOUNDER STORIES: ERIK KORMANN, MAKER OF PERFUMES
Erik Kormann’s dream wasn’t exactly to become a perfumer – he had a lot of different jobs. But after finishing his MA in cultural studies, and having to deal with only short-term contracts afterwards, he found himself working in his partner Xenia’s soap shop more and more. That was the beginning of a slow immersion into the world of scents and perfumes. By now, he has created 14 perfumes. His blog shows in detail how to make perfumes and mix scents – a transparency that is nearly unheard of on the realm of fragrances.


How did it happen that you founded your own perfume label?

[size=2]Erik Kormann:[/font] Some things happened simultaneously: The first one was that our good friend Edith wanted to retire. She was an aroma therapist for hospices, midwives, and everybody else who was interested. She made really good aromatic blends. I wanted to know how to make them, so I asked her to teach me. First we just worked with natural ingredients, but Edith told me already then that I should work with everything I could get hold of.[/size]

Second, I watched a famous perfumer on the TV. He told the audience in incredibly arrogant way that it’s totally impossible to create a perfume without proper training. He claimed making perfumes wasn’t something you could learn easily.

A few days afterwards I saw a documentary. There were 16 people that had just built a submarine from scratch, just because they wanted to try building one. It had a proper license, everything. Just imagine that: There’s somebody claiming that’s impossible to make perfumes and then there’s this group of people without any knowledge about mechanics that build a submarine. That was the point when I really wanted to prove that it’s totally doable to create a perfume without having the ‘proper’ training. I talked to Edith and started to mix my first perfume.

How did you do that? Talk us through your first steps.

]Erik Kormann: I knew already where to get supplies to make soaps. I had worked in my partner Xenia’s soap shop ‘1000 & 1 Seife’ (‘1000 & 1 Soap’) and mixed scents for her for quite some time. I didn’t know that much about head, middle and base notes yet, but I knew which scents belong into each group. I always had a minimalistic streak and a tendency to work with only a few materials. I gave the scent I had mixed Berlin based perfumer Geza Schön I had just met. He pointed me in the direction of chemical ingredients. I hadn’t concerned myself with chemicals before, but when I got the first ones, I added them and – wow! There was immediately airiness and lightness and life in the mix. That was my first perfume called August (like the month).


]twindly: Did you ever research the chemical background or read textbooks about perfumery?

Erik Kormann:Yes. I also grew up with parents whose background is in natural sciences, so I knew some basic scientific facts. I also got to know other perfumers und could profit from everything they told me. Perfumers like Geza Schön, Mark vom Ende and especially Doctor Sebastian Reuter at Bell Flavors & Fragrances.

twindly: Did you always have a special relationship with scents and perfumes?

Erik Kormann:I rather like living in a big city like Berlin, but I love visiting Botanical Gardens and go for walks in the woods. I also like to get my hands dirty and to repot my plants. I especially love herbs and scent gardens. This zest for scents belongs to my daily life. For me it’s just a normal kind of curiosity that my parents gave me.


]twindly: How do you create a new scent or perfume?

[size=2]Erik Kormann: I know circa 350 scent notes, and I can distinguish about 150 to 200 by their scent. Of course I have some favourites. I start with one favourite note and in my mind, and an idea evolves. It’s like baking a cake. When you know how baking works and you don’t just follow a recipe, then you can create recipes on your own. And that’s how I do it. When I have the whole thing in my head, I take my big box of raw materials and dip toothpicks into the single notes. I take dip three toothpicks into lime, and two into something else and take it from there. I put all those toothpicks into a small container. I smell it every few days, and then I actually mix a very small dose of the fragrance itself.[/size]

twindly: That sounds like a long process.

]Erik Kormann:I let that idea ripen for some months, maybe even half a year. The process of actually mixing it together is very quick. But for me that’s no work – that starts maybe with mixing and writing down the exact measurements and weighing the formula. That’s a long process. I’m maybe able to create one perfume a year. I’ve got ideas for a new Steampunk fragrance and one of the monthly fragrances, but both are coming slowly into being.


twindly: Do you have a special relationship with Steampunk?

Erik Kormann:Not at all. I devoured Jules Verne novels as a teenager, but I’d never go outside in a Steampunk outfit. But I like the style. A lot of styles that are around in fashion are much more trivial.


twindly: If you aren’t into Steampunk that much, can you describe where your inspiration comes from? Not just for your perfume Steampunk, but in general?

Erik Kormann: The making of perfumes is really just a hobby for me. My fragrances aren’t either badly made, nor unprofessional, but I depend very much on outer influences. When a professional perfumer makes a pear fragrance, he can write down the formula on a sheet of paper on prompt. I can’t do that. An idea blossoms very slowly in my mind. That’s the difference. For me, making fragrances is the result of all other things that interest me. Perfume has nothing to do with the piano, or a saxophone. But for me, it has! When I’m alone on my surfboard out in the sea, I’ve a lot of great ideas. And colours are important. Very important, same with the notes that the colours create in my head and all the books I can’t get enough of. That’s the point where Jules Verne comes into! Sometimes letters are the starting point of everything.

]twindly: What do you think about classic fragrances and fragrances that are supposedly a must-have?

Erik Kormann: For me there aren’t any. Everybody has to decide for themselves what they like. I don’t like people who claim to be really interested in fragrances, but then wrinkle their nose when they smell a fragrance or put it away in a blasé manner. Who’s really into fragrances doesn’t have that bored attitude and arrogance. I don’t understand people who value only expensive fragrances or who say outright, without having smelled it, that they’re not interested in this note or that accord. It seems very presumptuous to me. That’s like loving a particular red wine and somebody comes and explains that a particular 40$ Barolo is much better. There’s no better. For me, diversity is the key. I really like when someone has decided what they like and what they don’t like.

]twindly: Do you have any favourite perfumes?

Erik Kormann: Of course! I’d like to bath in Serpentine by Comme des Garcons, I love it. Paco Rabanne Energy was great, I don’t get that it’s discontinued. Sad. I don’t like Paco Rabanne XS on my skin, it’s too sweet, but it’s a great fragrance nevertheless. Mainstream, you can buy it at every Douglas or Sephora, but that’s not important for me. It’s maybe not the most unusual of scents, but I like it.

]twindly: What does beauty mean to you?

Erik Kormann: Oh, that’s hard. I think beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Regarding fragrances I think it’s difficult to answer. I myself define beauty in a classical sense. Beauty is an art which subject is the expression of beauty itself. The statue of Laocoön and his sons is the expression of highest beauty for me. Or a thought through chess move, like an elegant mathematical formula. Apart from that, a walk in the woods gives me a lot of happiness and the feeling of beauty.


Find Erik’s perfumes in his partner Xenia Trost’s shop ‘1000 & 1 Seife’ in Berlin (Hackesche Höfe, Ehrenfelsstraße 9, 10318 Berlin) or at Aus Liebe zum Duft

His blog is here: aromatisches-blog.de

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