Givaudan VP perfumer Rodrigo Flores-Roux and Perfumery student Carol Belli created what the company internally coined "Air Popped Petals" for the recent "What is Love?" creative vision. Based on years of consumer insights and social listening, Givaudan translated Gen Z's love codes into olfactive explorations through the immersive installation. The event featured 23 never-before-smelled creations from Givaudan's team of perfumers geared towards our clients and customers.
Related: Which Trends Are Exciting Givaudan Perfumer Christine Hassan
We connected with both Flores-Roux and Belli to discuss the Air Popped Petals' creation process.
What was the inspiration for this fragrance?
Imagine, sneaking out with your crush to an open-air cinema during a summer night, where the smell of gardenias and jasmine mix with the scent of popcorn. That's when the magic happens—during a movie screening, under the stars.
Can you touch on some of the ingredients/notes that were used in this scent?
This fun-filled composition is built around the encounter of two unexpected "bed buddies": salty, freshly popped popcorn, a fantasy accord, and two of Givaudan's Scent Trek (technology to capture through headspace) reconstitutions: Gardenia and Pinwheel jasmine (or star jasmine). Here, the classic gardenia (sometimes used as a gentleman's lapel ornament), but in this case, its beautiful nocturnal scent in situ in a garden in Charleston was analyzed. Same thing for the pinwheel jasmine, which is not botanically related to "normal" jasmine—it's a relative of oleander and frangipani. Its powerful floral scent can be described as a combination of feral jasmine, ripe cantaloupe and honeyed linden blossom.
How did the collaboration aspect work for this fragrance? Was there anything interesting about having two different generations work on one scent?
This fragrance was a generational duet between Carol Belli, a Gen Z student at the Givaudan Perfumery School in Paris, and Rodrigo Flores-Roux, GEN X VP perfumer.
How does this fragrance fit into the overall what “what is love?” experience?
Givaudan's "What is Love?" is all about the olfactive exploration of Gen Z's codes of love. Through extensive social listening and consumer insights, we were able to identify several major shifts demonstrating the world of Gen Z’s unique & authentic way of loving, and this generation's embracing of non-filtered aesthetics. Our fragrance fits into this universe, that we're calling The Bedroom, The Sanctuary, which reflects a space where everything happens (the shooting of posts for social media, conversations with friends, the place where all emotions can be lived and expressed freely).
