Barcelona Olfaction Week (BOW) saw more than 2,000 participating professionals from 16 countries from June 29 to July 4, 2020.
The event, initially planned as a series of face-to-face activities, originally scheduled for May 2020, was carried out mostly online.
The event mission is to promote the world of perfumery, olfactory science and the culture of beauty and its special historical interrelation with Barcelona, the region of Maresme and the Mediterranean coast.
Perfumery workshops, virtual events on digital technology for retail in the beauty sector, a presentation of studies on sensoriality, workshops on logistics and regulation in perfumery, keynote presentations and a round table with experts in synesthesia sensorial and pairing of perfume with areas such as music, art or gastronomy took place over the week-long event.
The II Olfaction Science Congress (Barcelona Olfaction Congress) saw high international participation.
Furthermore, thanks to the historical collaboration of the Beauty Cluster Barcelona with Ainea Perfums and the Teià City Council, the awards ceremony of the III International Perfumery Contest (Mouillette d'Argent) was held in person, with strict safety and health measures.
A total of 65 perfume creatives from 15 countries have entered the contest in this edition, of which 39 managed to overcome the international limitations derived from the pandemic and send their 48 creations to the jury.
The perfumes each year must be around a specific note, with pepper being the protagonist in 2020. The jury award winning perfume, chaired by the master perfumer D. Rosendo Mateu, is Pepper & Pear by Julia Rodríguez Pastor.
The perfume chosen by the general public, who have been able to smell the perfumes in different cultural spaces in Teià or shops in Barcelona such as Las Topettes or Isidro Cosmetics Shop, is Agartha by Sandra Lucas Haro.
The jury was made up of master perfumers, sommeliers, creatives, artists and specialized media such as Beautyprof.
The president of the jury also announced during the gala the olfactory note of the 2021 edition of the contest: the violet.
In addition, within the framework of the BOW, prizes were awarded to students from different design and art centers who, within the “Creative Talent and Company” program of the Generalitat's Department of Education.
The students have designed the best packaging for the winning perfumes of the contest and three other challenges launched by the organization of the Maridatge dels Sentits.
Also, within the framework of the BOW, the II NASEVO International Prize for plastic artists was presented, promoted by the Ernesto Ventós Foundation and which, in this edition, had an enormously emotional character due to the death in early 2020 of the master perfumer and art collector Mr. Ernesto Ventós.
According to Ivan Borrego, manager of the Beauty Cluster: “Barcelona Olfaction Week has allowed the perfumery sector to project itself, even in complex times in which we have been forced to reinvent ourselves. The BOW was born naturally, as the great 'party' of the perfume industry, of creativity and innovation in beauty. We are convinced that we have only just begun a journey full of opportunities to project the universe of perfume, the sensorial, floral and olfactory tradition of the Mediterranean and - why not - the capacity of a clearly exporting industry with roots in Barcelona. We hope to count on the collaboration of the entire perfumery industry in 2021 in an event in which no lover of perfume can miss.”
Irene Gisbert, founder of Ainea Perfums and one of the promoters of the BOW highlights that: “One more year we promote creativity and the participation of the great fragrance houses but also of young people so that they fall in love with perfumery. Through the contest around 40 creatives from around the world have created a fragrance for this event. Also, students from different educational centers have imagined and designed products for our sector, exploiting its full creative potential and discovering, in many cases for the first time, the world of perfume.”
