Michael Nordstrand: The moment that I realized I wanted to be a perfumer, I had been working as artistic director at Calvin Klein and I was very stressed, overworked, underpaid. And I took an aromatherapy class and at the end, the woman said, you know, you can blend these oils together and make something that you would like to have. And I thought, huh, what a novel idea. didn't think of that myself, very original. ⁓ But about six months after that, there had been just sort of a read every book that was out there. And years ago, there weren't that many books. ⁓ But. It's kind of a rabbit hole. think a lot of people will agree with me that once you go down that road, you don't really turn back. And I realized when it was a profession, when I sort of the light went on in my head, what if I tried to do this? Then I thought about school and work and all of the real world things. But I realized in that moment that it was a job. So the moment that I knew perfumery was a job that you could do. I thought, I have like a snowball's chance in hell, but I'm gonna do it. Damn it. I'm gonna try.

Michy: for those who might not know you are, can please introduce yourself?

Michael Nordstrand: Yes, I'm Michael Nordstrand and I'm the perfumer and founder of Mythologist Studio. We're an independent studio, small but mighty. And I guess everyone has Google, so I will put a pin in it neatly there and let everybody discover if they would like it. You'll know enough about me by the end of this that you'll probably never Google me, which is great.

Michy: Yes. Yeah. Hahahaha

Josh: What kind of digital footprint do you have? Do we need to Google?

Michael Nordstrand: ⁓ there's nothing untoward, I don't think. It comes up quickly. Like if you wanted to know a fragrance that I made or what I've been faffing around with outside of, you know, commercial fragrance ⁓ research projects, things like that, talks that I've done. There are some things that are evergreen on the internet that they're not bad, but you know, I don't go listen to myself talk. So they're out there though.

Michy: There's a, I'm really fascinated by some of your non-commercial work that we can definitely get into a little bit ⁓ as well, but ⁓ kind of going back to it, what do you think that people misunderstand about what it takes to become a perfumer?

Michael Nordstrand: posted a few things about this over the years, but I'm ⁓ just speaking ⁓ a general way. ⁓ but I think the Dunning Kruger sort of chasm, ⁓ between, ⁓ know, not understanding what you don't understand and then, you know, kind of achieving mastery by realizing that you don't know anything actually. ⁓ I think that's, there's a big gap. in education that's not institutional. And I don't mean like mental institutional. I maybe sometimes feel like I belong there better, but ⁓ there's not a lot of in-between. And part of what I do outside of my regular day-to-day job is ⁓ work in education. I work with museums. ⁓ I've worked with underprivileged youth. I've worked with schools. ⁓ Because I wished that

Michy: Mm-hmm. Thank

Michael Nordstrand: you know, 15 years before I decided my whole life when I was 17 that somebody told me perfumery was job, I might have had a different trajectory. ⁓ So I think that the training in perfume, there's a lot that you can teach yourself, but there are also things that I think you need a little bit of help. And that's where community can come in, where the industry kind of, I don't know. ⁓

Michy: Mm-hmm.

Michael Nordstrand: They're very dialed in, but the things they're dialed into are specific, and we'll definitely touch on some ways that they're specific later on.

Michy: Yeah, I really wish I would have known when I was a young person that you know perfume was a was a career path that I could have taken because now as an adult and I'm also in education and I work with them I run community centers, but I In being in the world of perfume in the aspect that I am is sort of the It's everything I've done in my life all wrapped up into one. mean, making content, I went to school for photography, I went to school for culinary arts, I went to school for education. it's all sort of in this ball together now. And it's like now all the all the puzzle pieces seem to fit when perfume was added into it. So I agree, it'd be lovely if young people knew that there's there are careers in this in this industry and that they can explore.

Michael Nordstrand: ⁓ that's actually really an excellent way to put it. I've found, you'll find when you speak to different perfumers, whether they're independent or they work in a larger company or in between, a lot of them have a sort of what might be considered an oblique path to perfumery. And I think a lot of those perfumers have a really enriched ⁓ methodology about what they do. Their practice is enriched by all of the things that they love. And there are also perfumers who did the traditional route, the school. when they were younger and then graduated up into going into a company directly. ⁓ That path is not, you know, better, worse or otherwise. But a lot of them find that other things that they have as hobbies, as interests enrich their practice too. So when you say it's the glue that sort of keeps the puzzle pieces all together, there, there's something in that that I've definitely found to all of those sort of weird interests that I have, the sort of seemingly disparate things that are not connected. They're only connected through me. ⁓ Perfumery kind of allows me to touch all of those worlds simultaneously. And I think that is what I don't know when I wake up at 530 in the morning and I think, ⁓ another day, I can immediately remind myself you get to go do this thing that people wish they could do. And you're so lucky. And you just have to remember, doesn't matter if you have a headache, go anyway.

Josh: I do think about, you know, we've interviewed quite a number of, especially self-taught perfumers and so many of them kind of stumbled into it where they always liked perfume. Some of them didn't even have this long love affair and stumbled into it. And we keep hearing repeatedly that there weren't a lot of resources, especially it's not even to say that there are a lot of them now, but certainly are more now than there used to be. And it kind of keeps coming up, the read every book you can find and then go on to some internet forums. And then if you're lucky, talk to Sarah McCartney over in London, and then find your way into, you know, either the Institute of Art or an old faction or an online course and just kind of feel your way through it. ⁓ So there is that sense of community where all of these people are now very happy to help share educational pieces because they're aware that that's missing.

Michy: Mm. Mm.

Michael Nordstrand: Yeah, it's a combination of, you know, there's a long tradition of secrecy with our industry because we don't have intellectual property protection for formulas and things. Some things you can, you know, trademark, copyright, et cetera, patent, but not everything. And so there's that historical secrecy. And I think it kind of has played. out in a very interesting way over the last century since perfumery advertising really became a thing. Thank you, Francois Cotie. I think the market now is really creating a lot of noise and that's something that intrigues me, but it also... makes me nervous because just like there are a lot of new voices in perfumery, there are a lot of new brands, a lot of new perfumes being launched exponentially more than even a decade ago. ⁓ There's also a lot more noise. So there's noise in content creation. There's noise in, you know, perfume marketing. ⁓ It's really difficult even more now than it was when there were less resources to, I think, focus on which ones are viable and valuable resources. And that's why I do teach with Institute for Art and Olfaction. ⁓ try to do as much as I can. I try to be responsive on social media. I mean, I only have Instagram and I can barely manage, to be honest. ⁓ But when people ask questions, I definitely try to answer them when I can. And I started working with Christina Lough, who does dry down diaries on a monthly column, which I thought I was super hilarious and clever to call it, Dear Perfume, but it's kind of ridiculous. ⁓

Michy: ⁓ We love Christina so much.

Michael Nordstrand: the Dear Abby stuff was fun when I was a kid and now I'm now I'm Dear Abby. So people do write in about things that are general things that a consumer would want to understand, but also butting perfumers, people intrigued by the art form. There are a lot of variety of questions that we get. We are spoiled for choice, essentially, when it takes, you know, take, when we go to the spreadsheet to look at what questions we're going to answer for the month. I try to be really in depth and I can be a bit verbose. ⁓ So you might have to cut even this answer, but I always try to give people, even if I can't give them a huge long answer to give them some resources where they can find an answer as well. So yeah, I think it's cutting through all of the sort of BS of looking for just good information is something that I'm always trying to get around so that people can just go direct to the source.

Michy: Yeah, it's so important to have these resources accessible. I think, you know, because of the secrecy of it, I think we've led to a lot of ⁓ hobbyist perfumers that are maybe not well-educated enough to be making something that should go on people's skin. And I think it's really easy to make a brand look put together and push it out to the masses, especially with social media being with what it is. And it's dangerous, but it's good that we have better resources now, but we definitely still have a long way to go.

Josh: I mean you also have a lot of the charlatan perfumers that are showing up and slapping, you know, something very basic or even dangerous in a bottle and touting it around as luxury and wanting $300 a bottle when they've only been doing it for like a year. So.

Michy: yet.

Michael Nordstrand: Yeah, it's really tough on a perfumer who does it day in, day out to see, even say and acknowledge that is a reality because they think, ⁓ if you think of we do as an ecosystem, it very much is, and maybe we'll on some points about that. But ⁓ if you think of perfumery as an ecosystem, ⁓ all the actors in an ecosystem, ⁓ create a sort of ripple effect that touches all of us. I think, you know,

Michy: Mm-hmm.

Michael Nordstrand: everyone from the highest echelon of perfumery at DSM Framonish to me down to somebody who just found out that perfumery was a job yesterday. We are all part of something. I mean, I'm not going to sing circle of life now, but that's definitely how it actually is. So when somebody sort of has a debacle about, I wasn't EFRA compliant or I didn't follow this regulatory thing and it comes out and it's public or I see There was a brand that shall go nameless years ago. The perfumer behind the brand was tincturing asphalt and poisonous plants and all of these very intriguing things that should not be in a perfume. So there's definitely the safety side. It does concern me a little bit because again, Dunning-Kruger doesn't discriminate. If you don't know that that's what you're supposed to be doing, you will not do it and you won't know that you aren't doing it. You know, it just goes round and round. So I've... I've opened up a certain percentage of my business to look at that. So for people who are sort of coming up, I've tried to say, let's have a look at your, like, I'll just screen for you for, because at this point, it's just baked in. Like, I can just see it in the formula when I look at it. I know, ⁓ this is going to be out. You're going to need to do this, ⁓ which is an adaptation that comes from. you know, years of not having the software that just tells you automatically. So you keep it in mind. ⁓ but there's another update coming. So every few years we have updates and we have to kind of everything sort of, you know, shuffles again. like when you get the one time pass code and then it reshuffles like that every, as soon as some people learn it, it's changed again. So our industry is always changing. And I think again, resources are not. as abundant as they could be for people who want to do this work. And I wish that there were more. But again, most of the money and most of the power in the industry has historically been sat with around six companies. You could open that up to 12 to 15 if you want to count the sort of medium sized players, but they don't really have a big motivation to have other perfumers. It's something that, you know, the astronaut quote. I think we've now probably exceeded the number of astronauts. I don't know if you know this quote, but anyway, so there's definitely not a huge motivation to better educate the public. mean, they don't even better educate them in the most frictionless way that they could, which is just perfume marketing.

Josh: So talking a little bit more about, you know, kind of demystifying the craft of it. Obviously you've been in the industry for quite a while. What does the day to day of being a perfumer actually look like?

Michael Nordstrand: ⁓ So I mentioned I get up at 530, that is true. I, so I have a small team that I work with and they're not all in every day, but typically they're in regularly during the week. So I like to get up and do my morning routine and everything like that. And then I usually get to the studio between seven and 730. And the first thing that I do is smell. always, whether that's just raw materials or current projects, your nose is really at 100 % early in the morning and that is typically also a very tranquil moment for me. The sun is just sort of rising and there's nobody there. It's you know, and I can just be a bit meditative. So like some people do actively do meditation. This is sort of mine. I do it within this sort of scent evaluation brain. But I start the day that way. And then typically I have to, you know, do the regular look at email, what, what things are on the docket for today. this sort boring admin stuff that is not that exciting, even if you're a perfumer. ⁓ And then just trying to dig into some of the current projects and things like that. Sometimes I need to do research. Sometimes I need to just sort of explore formulas that we were working on before. We were looking at ⁓ And then there's, you know, once we're, once we're out of that sort of R and D phase, if you will, and then we're kind of actively working on the project, we engage with our clients in a number of different ways. So because a lot of people that come to develop a fragrance don't necessarily have a firm, strong background in how to talk about fragrance, how to communicate their ideas to us. We try to, we'll do guided smelling sessions with the client. will do visual and written translations in, in, you know, that sort of artistic way to help paint a picture of what it is we're thinking about to do for their project. So we do a lot of that, ⁓ multi-sensory kind of engagement with the client to get them to understand the process. So we're typically doing, you know, 49 things throughout the day, but my day to day is pretty wrapped up in all of that. Once we kind of get to the finalized, you know, approved version of a fragrance, then, then the fun of, you know, sending it off for production and all. of those like headaches that can come with that kind of ensue. So typically pepper throughout the day, I'm figuring out, ⁓ this raw material, they've just randomly decided to discontinue. So here we are and I have to find a solution or, ⁓ you know, something comes up with new regulatory and I want to dial something else in. So ⁓ you line up all your dominoes and then every once in while the industry just taps one out of line and you've got to sort of triage that before you can do anything else. So sometimes I have to just drop everything and go to the fire and put it out. ⁓

Michy: Yeah, I know they ⁓ were announcing a potential like quite a few, ⁓ is it naturals or synthetics that are gonna be deemed no longer safe for use? That was happening a couple of months ago? Mm-hmm.

Josh: Alright.

Michael Nordstrand: ⁓ Mixed mixed answers. So the problem, and this is something that if you want to air this, I'm totally happy for you too. ⁓ People... you know, talking about resources and understanding the industry, a lot of people fundamentally misunderstand perfume regulation, ⁓ how it works for the players. Ifra are the ones that get cited most often as, my God, Ifra and my beloved Oakmoss. And it's true. I mean, my beloved Oakmoss, I agree. But at the same time, it's not...

Michy: Mm-hmm.

Josh: Yeah

Michael Nordstrand: a legal organization. It's a body that exists within our industry, independent of the other companies or anybody else, ⁓ that evaluates scientific assessment and reassessment, constant reassessment of all the raw materials in our palette. And they have data points from scientists of all kinds, not just our IFM, who are the kind of research. not partner because they're not technically affiliated, but a lot of the information, it's ongoing and it's evolving and so IFRA will try to make their best call and then they publish a consultation which has been out for a little bit now so you can see the 52nd amendment. ⁓ They are not really banning much of anything, it's more of limitations and specs about what you can and can't do with certain raw materials if they have something, you know, in a natural if something's not supposed to be over a certain level, et cetera, they specify so it's not that the ⁓ raw will necessarily be totally banned. It's more about just saying, ⁓ if going to use this material, has to be used this way and in this amount. if ⁓ it's natural, can only have x parts per million of this potentially problematic compound. ⁓ On the other side of it, you have, and I think this is, ⁓ Michi, you're talking about. ⁓

Michy: Mm.

Michael Nordstrand: the EU Green Deal and EU legislation. So if one looks at like the FDA in the United States and the modernization of cosmetic regulation ⁓ act that was passed, ⁓ you can see how to be very behind the times. That's a great example is to look at the United States. If you want to look at people who jump the gun a little bit, then you can look at the EU.

Michy: Yes. Mm.

Michael Nordstrand: the EU makes laudable efforts to protect the environment and people that live in the EU. And I think that that's great. ⁓ they, they're, you know, legislate, legislatures are not bodies that are used to governing in specific industries. So the industry knowledge, ⁓ I think, Efra and other players in the industry have been able to lobby to get them to listen better. And so I think that the reactionary legislation which would have banned many materials just for having one or two sort of compounds inside of them that were potentially an issue. That's been backed off of to a degree or at least the know can has been kicked down the road just a few more blocks so we have a few more years to figure out what we're going to do. ⁓ But It's all about when you're talking about perfume safety hazard versus risk. So hazard is, is this material dangerous? Yes, a lot of perfume materials in their pure form are dangerous if you apply them directly to the skin or if you eat them or you put them in your eyes, things that you're not supposed to do. But risk is about at the level and to the degree and kind of use that you would have for something like a perfume. is that substance being inside of it truly proposing a risk. So your skin is actually meant to be a barrier to everything around you. It doesn't want to let anything in. So alcohol and a lot of the things that would be suspended in a perfume, they don't go into the skin. They don't absorb into your body. So I think there's a lot of just fundamental misunderstanding of somebody's physiology just to begin with. But then you're able to, for instance, drink orange juice, but a lot of our citruses, including orange, are limited by Ifra. So you're allowed to ingest orange juice, but putting it on your skin is actually more limited. So sometimes flavor gets away with more than perfume does. So it's an intriguing, but also very much a mire. ⁓ to kind of to wade through everything and not understand. It's a rough thing to even explain succinctly. ⁓

Michy: Yeah. It's no, it's certainly it's certainly the unglamorous side of, you know, the discussion of being a perfumer, but it's an incredibly necessary conversation to have and for people to understand, especially when the general public, mean, just their education just comes from marketing and the marketing, especially right now, is full of of lies or misleading information in so many aspects. We know whether directly from companies or what's coming from our government. it makes it really difficult for people to really dive deep and have these conversations if it's not open and accessible for them. So it's really important for us to talk about it.

Josh: I like the fact that you, call it an ecosystem. ⁓ I think in our notes talking about this episode, I had a whole section on like the system. Talking a little bit more to the business side of it. You know, you've worked across many different parts of the industry ⁓ and what changes for you when you're working independently ⁓ working for a specific brand or.

Michael Nordstrand: if I'm on something just for myself, of course I do what I like. ⁓ My long nascent brand is still ⁓ underway. It's ⁓ I'm always it back up when it's the moment. ⁓ But when I work for a client or a brand, it's obviously more of a dialogue, whereas with my own work, personal work, ⁓ it becomes a bit of a monologue. So there's a big intrigue for me in the interaction that I do get to have ⁓ with the client or clients ⁓ that we're working with because they are. many of them are so passionate. They bring so many things to the table. And what they're relying on me to do is help build this world that they envision. And I think there are a lot of different makers and creators and artists in the world that have the capability to create a world. And then there are way, way more people who... have a vision or an idea, a thought even sometimes that comes to them and they have passion and the drive to sort of kind of bring it out there but the skill is what they're lacking so they come to me when they need help realizing that but sometimes that translates into I end up helping to create the brief with them it becomes something that we kind of work on in tandem together and it becomes better than it was before if either one of us had done it individually. And so there's a lot of that that I really enjoy. ⁓ There are also clients that I have where I think, you know, I take less of these projects now, but historically sometimes you take a job because you need to work. And... somebody in my position doesn't have a salary ⁓ that they can rely on and they don't have their paid vacations, they don't have these things. So I'm always trying to keep the lights on. So daddy has to work. So I'm trying to make fetch happen all the time, but I'm also thinking like, well, today I'm gonna keep the lights on. ⁓ So there are definitely clients that are saying, know,

Michy: Mm hmm.

Michael Nordstrand: I need it to be cheap and I need it to last forever and I need it to be this and you know all the sort of metrics that people have been evaluating more and more by lately. But the projects that bring me the true joy and luckily for me most of the projects that I work on are that really intense creative dialogue between me and somebody else who's working in a different modality but wants to introduce scent into the world. So I'm always trying to meet them where they're at and bring something with me. You know, I'm always like got a basket full of raw materials. I get to say, hey, did think about this?

Michy: work with independent brands and you also work with some larger brands. Is there sort of a difference in working with one versus the other?

Michael Nordstrand: the smaller the brand is, ⁓ it's funny, when you think about where you live or what you do, you give up something and you get something else in return, right? There's always a balancing act. think some of the smaller independent brands, don't have a lot of money, so there's not a lot of resources to fully develop something the way that they might want to. ⁓ Whereas when you kind of go up the chain and you're with a company that has a lot of resources, they have more that they can do. ⁓ But it's interesting the way that that kind of... dials up and down when you start to talk about budgets. ⁓ Very often the budget for what you're actually putting into the fragrance concentrate, the pure fragrance, that's gonna then go into the bottle and be what I would argue may be the most important thing about the perfume is how it smells, what's going in there. ⁓ The cost starts to, they wanna keep pushing it down, down, down. ⁓ And for me, When you actually sit down do the math we work in kilos. That's a thousand grams So a thousand parts our formulas are written on a thousand parts When you start looking at how much fragrance actually goes in the bottle and what that you know what the cost per kilo splits out to per bottle it's often You know, it doesn't go above one tenth of what's spent on all of the rest the bottle the articulations the packaging Hiring a social media person all the things that go into perfume and it's launch and all that They are exponentially greater than what we spend on the concentrate even when it's expensive And I think it's intriguing. lot of consumers don't know this because they don't see formulas the way perfumers do when they're trained. ⁓ you might be surprised which brands spend tons of money on their perfume actually and which don't. Like I can tell you one of the most expensive

Michy: Mm-hmm.

Michael Nordstrand: ⁓ lines of perfume are the Les Exclusifs from Chanel. They are, there is one of them that easily costs almost $2,800 per kilo, which is huge. And that's not to say that cost means it's better, but it means that number one, they have the resources to spend literally whatever they want on any perfume they want, however they want.

Michy: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Michael Nordstrand: But number two, means they're picking raw materials not because of their cost, but in spite of them. They're picking them because they're the materials that are right for the formula. And so say what you will, I think I'm the only person on this earth that likes Chanel number 18. But it's, for me, amazing. ⁓ But it has such a huge dose of Ambret seed in it that there's just no way most people would afford to make it. And I think there's something about Chanel that's always been like that, right? Like the DNA of the brand is about, you know, well, yeah, we can afford to spend as much as we want. But there's something interesting about the people working in the perfumery side of that brand, say whatever you will about the founder and everything else. I'm not endorsing her by any means, but I do think what's interesting is the people that work at the company and the people that are in charge of the formulation and the thought process and all of that.

Michy: Mm-hmm.

Josh: of the Jasmine.

Michy: Hmm, lots to say about that one.

Michael Nordstrand: They're really, they understand their customer. know what lane they're in. They're not confused, but they do take material risks in their formulas. They do things that are quite daring and to see them sort of unfold. I mean, I remember smelling. 18 for the first time in the store and I turned to the woman who worked there and I said Does anyone like this and she said no, I definitely don't and she went on and on and on and I said I love it and she was like, oh, you know like wrong So it's funny because that's perfume is such a visceral thing, right? Like you eat a piece of art you react you you smell perfume you immediately react you have some kind of a doesn't

Michy: Mm. you

Michael Nordstrand: It could be disgust, could be delight, it could be all these different things in between. And I think that's fascinating for any perfumer is to just sort of try to disappear into the background and listen to what people say. I love reading negative reviews of perfumes I've made. It's so entertaining. If want to Google something about who would do that, that's so good. I recommend a good glass of wine while you do it.

Michy: if

Josh: do follow an Instagram page that's like out of pocket Fragrantico reviews and it is one of my favorite things to swipe through and just see the... Yes. I think one of my favorite... Yes, it smells crazy in here, that's the one. ⁓ My favorite one, because sometimes I have to track down what the perfume is and be like, have I smelled this? But it was like, it's like a very clean baby smoking a black and mild. And it was for Divine and Font by Atatly Berlarange. And I was like, I could see that. All right. ⁓

Michy: They're so ridiculous.

Michael Nordstrand: The one that's all about unhinged run, like it smells crazy in here.

Michy: Mm.

Josh: I appreciate this weird review that you've done.

Michael Nordstrand: Yeah, that's the other thing is that so we're in this era of. I think, ⁓ so I noticed it maybe six months ago, a lot more. And now I've noticed that other people are noticing it. And I think it might've just been, you know, being inundated with copy all the time doing what I do, but you can start to see the AI phrasing. It's not this, it's this. And then it's everything is three in a series because apparently somebody told the computer that.

Michy: Mm-hmm.

Michael Nordstrand: My mates love to talk about things in threes. So like, I love to see something that is clearly a human interpretation. Even if it's negative, I love to see somebody say something like, it's a clean baby. know, like this is just something that a computer could not come up with on its own. And I love those things because they remind me that what we do is...

Michy: Thank

Michael Nordstrand: It touches people in a place that a lot of things can't. And I think that's magic, even when people are saying complete crazy shit. I just absolutely love it.

Michy: Yeah, those are also always the reviews I like watching to what I'm can, and I rarely consume fragrance content anymore, aside from people that I know and trust. ⁓ But if you are absolutely ridiculous, and I know that you're coming up with this on your own, and you're not just giving us the same. It's fresh, spicy, clean power sort of, you know, sort of shit over and over again. And now, like the AI in content creation, I mean, not only in like the physical video of it all, but it's all over people's scripts too. And it's like, if you care about this at all, why do you need AI to write this for you? But I digress.

Josh: It's funny, you mentioned that, you know, people are starting to pick up the way AI writes things. And it's really difficult for me as someone who doesn't like AI, but is in like a tech consulting space. Because the way that I was taught to do business writing is what trained at large language models. And there have been times where I've to be like, ⁓ I can't put an ⁓ dash here because AI has copied the way that I learned to write.

Michy: Mm.

Michael Nordstrand: love ⁓ dashes. Yeah, I love ⁓ dashes though. I wanted to read English at Oxford. I love a nice ⁓ dash. I love a lovely semicolon. Like there are just certain things that are so amazing, but I got read for filth. I don't even remember who it was. I used an ⁓ dash correctly and it was my own and it came from me. And somebody said, I don't know why you're using AI to write your emails back. And I thought, you know what? You know, like, no pearls to clutch, but if I did, and I had to like defend it, so I think there's something to be said for... There will be a moment in time, I'm predicting, where something not made with AI will be a new kind of luxury. I think something that's not been touched by a computer will be something that people really like. And I say that being recorded now on a computer, and it'll be disseminated through computers. And we are very much in a tech age, but you're right. Like people...

Michy: Mm.

Michael Nordstrand: people are adjusting themselves to noticing what's going on and then they're even adjusting how they write. So it is affecting, again, everything is an ecosystem in a way. So the ripple effect of you're talking about your ⁓ dash, my ⁓ dash. So you know, like we're just thinking about, ⁓ I'm gonna be thought of as a robot if I do it this way. So.

Josh: Yeah. I mean, we had one of the questions later on in the episode, but let's do it now because we're talking about it. How do you feel about the influx of AI in the perfume world?

Michael Nordstrand: Now, let's do it. Well, let me tell you. I'm going to start with a dramatic reading. If that's okay. think we can get away. Well, it's not dramatic. Well, it's a bit dramatic. It depends what you think of this film, but like.

Michy: you Yes.

Josh: Yes.

Michael Nordstrand: The source material of this is a book which I love and I read it every year and you call it what you will, pulp fiction, pulp science fiction. I don't care. think there are so many things in this gentleman's books that are relevant to today. And I'm just gonna go with a quote from the film version of this book, Jurassic Park. Ian Malcolm says, you don't see the danger, John, inherent in what you're doing here. Genetic power is the most awesome force the planet's ever seen, but you wield it like a kid that's found his dad's gun. I'll tell you the problem with scientific power that you're using here. It didn't require any discipline to attain it. You know, you read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourself so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you're selling it. So I think the problem that I have with anything that's new ⁓ is when it kind of runs away with the public. ⁓ TikTok is a great parallel. ⁓ Before anybody really understood what TikTok was, because it was created in this sort of space where it was being driven by many different factors, many variables, ⁓ it was everywhere. And I think the fact that the adoption rate ⁓ of AI is so crazy and the fact that the attrition rate of people's attention spans is also kind of paralleling that. if you graph it out, there's a lot of disturbing things to me about that aspect because My metier, my entire profession is meant to be built on the idea that in order to reach a level of knowledge to be a professional perfumer, you have to do a lot of work. It takes a lot of discipline. It takes a lot of training. It takes so many different things. Where AI gives it to you for free. So I think anybody not earning knowledge, ⁓ it also takes away the sort of, I don't know, the treasure hunt idea of finding the thing you're looking for. It just spits out answers and gives you something. And I think the formulation side of perfumery, you have companies like Osmo that, you know, they come out strong and say, we're going to solve all your problems and we can do this overnight. Well, I did the Osmo beta where you give the computer a prompt and it sends you three fragrances on the box by the way it says do not put these on your skin just ⁓ but

Michy: Interesting.

Michael Nordstrand: The brief could not have been simpler, frankly, that I gave it. And a perfumer giving a brief to anyone is going to be detailed in a way that it makes sense and it's achievable. I'm not going to give anybody anything that they can't do. ⁓ So I did like the lowest hanging fruit I could think of. And what I got back wasn't even relevant to what I asked for. So the three iterations that it gave me had nothing to do with the concept at all. So I...

Michy: Hmm.

Michael Nordstrand: I know that these companies are doing these things and they're developing what they're developing, but I also think that there's to some degree... ⁓ you're not able to replace the perfumer. So I'm not worried about my job from that standpoint, but I am worried about just globally the entire ecosystem being so flooded and, you know, from so many different angles with AI generated X, and Z basically.

Josh: Yeah, I think in a general aspect, one of my concerns around AI has been, and you kind of spoke to it, this illusion of access to expertise because a large language model doesn't want to tell you no. They want to be helpful and they will hallucinate an answer even if it's wrong. And because the information is so immediate and because people get the dopamine hit at the discovery so quickly, they want to believe it's true.

Michy: Mm hmm.

Josh: Especially in the world of like perfumery, if you have someone who wants to make a perfume, they're asking for formulation advice, they're getting incorrect information, but they think that they have the expertise. It's the opposite of the Donnie Krueger, where they don't know that they don't know. They think they know. They're being told wrong.

Michy: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Michael Nordstrand: Right, and I don't even know, there's not a scientist yet that's described exactly what that effect should be called. And I'm waiting. That's the thing is like, it's really tough to see these things unfolding and have an understanding from different vantage points.

Josh: It almost gets into the realm of like religious psychosis. ⁓ because it's the belief that you've been told the answer by an authority without evidence of that authority. And I have a lot of thoughts on machines and religion, but that's not this podcast. so yeah, it is, it's fascinating. And I do think in, in the framing of

Michy: Mm.

Michael Nordstrand: Right.

Josh: community of perfumers and people who want to be interested, being fed that incorrect information is dangerous.

Michy: Yeah, I think AI has oversold itself in one its ability and one its worth. And I think we're starting to see that. We're starting to see these companies potentially collapsing because they have grossly overvalued themselves. And I could not be hoping more for its downfall.

Michael Nordstrand: ⁓ I think it is what I think about kind of almost anything, which is if there's a way to make a new technology or an innovation ⁓ in, you it be in our industry, but in ⁓ any industry if there's a way to make it work and it's something sustainable and it's not taking away more than it's giving. ⁓

Michy: Mm-hmm.

Michael Nordstrand: And taking away doesn't have to mean that the computer's reaching over to you and stealing something. But it filling a gap that you would typically find a way to fill on your own, whether that's a knowledge gap or something else, even not to talk about love and dating and all the things, but these AI partners that people have. There's just so many different things. When you... find this AI analog to something that you really should sort of deal with on your own or find a human element to. I think that's where the risk to sort of future development, current development, et cetera, is at play. And there's, you I mentioned Osmo, and I'm happy to keep that on the record. ⁓ People at Osmo say, ⁓ well, there were this many thousand fragrances launched last year. I want there to be exponentially that many. Why? I don't understand. They're absolutely lost. Like you're on the payroll. So of course you want anything that's going to keep you on the payroll when you've always been a creature. Let's say I won't name what job title it is, but I just think it's really funny that

Michy: Yeah.

Michael Nordstrand: you see people who accept positions like this, who historically you would have thought would have been the opposite end and would have protested it. And you think, hmm, it's really intriguing that you've done kind of, it's almost like AI was asked, should I take this job? And it said, ⁓ yes, like absolutely. so all of the answers to the prying, probing questions that people are fielding from Osmo are all about.

Michy: Hmm.

Michael Nordstrand: Well, of course we should be doing this. course, you know, it's that, you know, Ian Malcolm again says you were so busy asking yourselves if you could do it that you never stop to think if you should. And I think that's where primates want to do the next step. They want more, not less. Like we're just primed to think that way. And I think that's why AI has taken off. mean, like, why would I Google when the next flight to LAX is when I can ask ChatGPT to tell me or Claude or whichever of these things you prefer? You know, like, it's become a daily mention in conversation, and that's where I'm just, don't, it's fast. It's going very fast. So, thanks.

Michy: Mm-hmm.

Josh: we talked a little bit about this in previous episodes as well, the AI question that like, a lot of it is driven by scale. ⁓ And you view and appreciate perfumery as ⁓ a form that is attached to an industry, you don't necessarily care about the scale. If you view it as a profit motivator, you start to erase ⁓ that for the sake of the scale. And that's when you don't care if there's an AI. And if your paycheck is big enough, you also will say the right things to make sure you stay on that payroll.

Michy: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, I think I'm always looking at it from, I mean, even zooming out further, I think in the in the moment, people are trying to replace, you know, primarily creative positions with AI. But if you zoom out even further, it's it's making us making making society so reliant on it and in this sort of AI psychosis. that it contributes to the dumbing down of our society. In schools, it's rampant, kids not doing, not actually focusing on their work, on social media that's also dumbing us down, but it's kind of just pulling us further and further into this black hole where people now cannot get educated and now we cannot advance and we cannot, we're not creating another generation of thinkers. creating a generation of people who are controlled by AI, by social media, and not critically thinking for themselves in any aspect. But

Josh: ⁓ I'll it. ⁓ I am in this like management course for my day job ⁓ and trainer, the outside trainer that we have hired is telling us that we should have our ⁓ employees role playing sessions of how they do their job and that we as managers should upload it to Claude and have Claude give us the feedback of what the employees should do better. And I'm sitting through this ⁓ meeting I'm like, why? ⁓

Michy: Okay. Mm-hmm. You know.

Josh: What purpose do I serve as a manager then if I can't listen to them and hear what they need to be doing? And it's so weird because like I'm in this room with a bunch of very smart people. I work at a tech firm and you can see on the faces, some people are like, why would I do that? And then other people are like, well, what prompts do you use to do that?

Michael Nordstrand: what's intriguing to me when you that sort of same like we're having a meeting of ⁓ you would assume sort of like-minded people or at least people who are in similar positions or you it's like a round table, you would say. ⁓ When that's happened in Perfume, know, like whether it's Gervais Donne's Carto or whatever it is, whatever program everybody's using that has AI capabilities and reads all the different formulas from the market, all the analogs to what's out there, reads consumer feedback, it incorporates all of these data points, right? So it's like, again, a lot of information, a lot of data, but what kind of gets spit out is the same thing over and over again. There's a lot of ⁓ amazing features of those different programs that allow you to do something, but those things, I'm trying to think of like the best example of it. ⁓ You know, in perfumery, there aren't truly any shortcuts. You have to learn it for yourself if you really want to understand, if you really want to have mastery. And I hesitate to ever say mastery because I feel like you meant to be a forever student if you're a perfumer and the industry is always changing. And so you're always learning something new. But there's something that I've noticed in younger perfumers where they say, just tell fill in program name here. I want this much of a greener facet and it'll spit out. But if you ask some of the younger perfumers, what are three materials that would do that for you? ⁓ The institutions, the big companies, et cetera. they already have pre-programmed responses in the minds of a lot of their perfumers because they've trained them and they're the only ones. ⁓ But like, if I point at one of the, you know, apprentices or junior perfumers on my team and I say, what, what can we do to make it X, Y, and Z and tell me why, you know, those are things that if you don't learn them, you don't have them. So you can rely on a machine until you can't and you know, then what, what do you do? If somebody asks you about your work, how do you speak about it? You know, it just becomes this weird miasma of who am I? I feel like that's the atrophying of critical thinking and rationale, all these aspects of what it means to really be human and then on the other side to be an artist. They're really important and I think we're we're a bit in the weeds now about that

Josh: Bringing that into the realm of the perfume of Altair, ⁓ do you feel like the role of the perfumer is changing right now?

Michael Nordstrand: It is. I mean, even my role is changing because again, ecosystem. ⁓ Mine is changing because I'm having to speak about these things more ⁓ they are things which they can kind of be divisive. They can really separate people from one another. And I think we need more connection now than separation. ⁓ Unfortunately, kind of going a bit a wrong direction in some ways, but I think the ⁓ the changes with the perfumer's job. know, AI was billed originally as, we're going to put this into this program and it's going to basically like, if you're trying to figure out why the fragrance is not as radiant as you want it to be, and you want a higher score on the radiance, or it's not testing favorably, there are these questions that you would ask yourself, which are largely coming from evaluators and marketers, not from the perfumers. are satisfied because they created it and they like it. But when you're trying to sort of figure out a problem with your formula, that's where I think AI got its foot in the door in Perfume. And now, part of your training is to learn these programs, part of your training is that. So it's just following you along like a shadow. if you're younger and you're learning this. It's not everywhere, but it's definitely the omnipresence of it. It definitely feels a bit like, 2001, a space Odyssey, how, it's like, feel like Chad GPT is like, hello, Michael. And it's just kind of like a, no, go away.

Michy: Mm. Hehehehehe

Michael Nordstrand: But yeah, think the role is changing because you don't need to memorize everything that historically that was the only way to do it. And you can have this as almost like a crutch. But again, if you fill in that space in your foundation with this large language model, then you don't have it if it's not there. And I just can't imagine being in that position. I wouldn't want to be in that position.

Michy: Do you think the pace of the industry affects the quality of being made right now?

Michael Nordstrand: ⁓ Yeah, I mean if you think about the iron triangle good fast cheap the industry at ⁓ is... ⁓ largely profit motivated, like you said, Josh, like very, very sage way of putting that. ⁓ If you're standing, you know, it's like Plato's cave. Like if you're touching the tail of the elephant or the trunk or the leg, it's totally different. ⁓ So for me, I don't know which part of the elephant that I'm touching, but it's definitely an elephant that's in the room and we need to talk about. But the amount of releases. is it's unreal and it's unrealistic. ⁓ You can't expect consumers, even the biggest perfume enthusiasts with the biggest collection of bottles or whatever metric you want to measure people's enthusiasm for fragrance by, fragrance has lost the plot. We don't need more, we need better. And that's really it.

Josh: Mm-hmm.

Michael Nordstrand: So the thesis of Osmo was we need more exponentially more and more and more now, now, now. Disagree, hard disagree. We need better. We need thought. We need art. We need soul. I don't want to see another brand with a pretty cool bottle. and a bunch of ⁓ dashes and things in a series of three in their copy and then crap in the bottle. No, no, no. I get more angry when it's a beautiful bottle with a doo-doo inside, which is what a lot of the Dries van Noten ones are, sorry. A lot of the little fragrance is not right. The bottles are fucking art pieces though. They're so unreal, they're so gorgeous. A computer didn't come up with those.

Michy: Yeah.

Josh: You

Michy: Yeah And it's going to be worse now that they're owned by a st. Lauder, but you that's neither here nor there. ⁓

Michael Nordstrand: But we need better, not more. And I think every time there's a pendulum swing in one way, it tends to swing the other way. And I do think that like the excesses and the...

Michy: Yeah.

Michael Nordstrand: idea that we need constant dopamine hits from something new and finding something new. I think people are just starting to realize that at that pace and at that many, the pattern recognition in what those formulas actually are and what they smell like, it's getting closer and closer together. So it's like kind of when you see, you know, a bunch of slide images and they start to look like they're moving instead of just still cells. You start to kind of compress everything and you can see, these are all kind of the same. They're built on the same idea. I think the industry, I don't know, it has a rich heritage of self-cannibalization.

Josh: Yeah, I mean, we've talked repeatedly about how a large portion of fragrances you can find at large stores are orange blossom bombs and the DNAs are blurring and blending together and we're seeing, I think, that pendulum swing where events like Fumed, where independent perfumery and like the art and the story are getting a lot of attention because people want that authenticity.

Michy: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Josh: And they're, finding it lacking in the niche design space.

Michy: like said, we've said it multiple times and I think consumers are, especially people who are very tuned in, are starting to see that. ⁓ we're more and more people come to the indie side of things because they're like, well, I keep trying to find something new and I keep going to Sephora or Macy's and ⁓ Nordstrom wherever it be. And I'm just smelling the same thing in different iterations or being sold something. that's new and innovative and I get it and it just smells like a dupe of something that I already own. ⁓ So I think consumers are starting to see past it. It's not, you know, as many as I would like, but I see the movement happening. The bubble is going to burst at some point.

Michael Nordstrand: Yeah, you get this big balloon of things and then you also get this sort of shrinkage, know, after that, like things will reach equilibrium. They always will. ⁓ And so I'm kind of waiting to see how that's going to develop. I think something that I, know, perfumers get to hear a lot of things behind the scenes, whether it means like we've worked with companies so we know what's going on there or We hear what a lot of our clients are saying about a product that's not being launched yet. So we kind of know what the next two years, three years might look like in general. A lot of the things that I'm hearing are, we don't want something that. you could go somewhere and smell now. We want something that doesn't have that touch point. It can have a touch point like in the heritage of like let's say an amber or a fougere or something could have that DNA but it has to be something that's a complete surprise or a shock. People are almost like I don't know it's like they're

Michy: Mm.

Michael Nordstrand: they're falling into comas out of boredom. And so they are looking for something to kind of shock them awake. And I think that's where...

Michy: Mm-hmm.

Michael Nordstrand: independent perfumery, it's getting bigger. And I personally have observed in the last 18 months, big companies taking bigger notice. And I think France overall, in terms of its relationship to the industry, has begun to observe that the vice grip on the entirety and the, you know, the artistry and the idea and the craft behind what we do, the grip is kind of loosening, it's slipping a little bit. And I think, you know, the 60 minutes special, which reads like an hour long ad for the French fragrance industry, it's meant to be the antidote and yet it is, ⁓ it's so out of touch that I think we probably need a whole episode just to unpack it. ⁓

Michy: Yeah.

Michael Nordstrand: We can save the 60 minutes takedown for next time, but it's just really crazy that they had a whole hour to talk about all of the things that make perfumery amazing and wonderful. They have all of these resources and what they chose to do is the same kind of two or three things that everybody does in the industry. And it just made me want to barf.

Josh: Yeah, being interviewed and taking the time to essentially do a commercial for what you've done for the last half, half millennia is... ⁓

Michy: You we are coming at over an hour now at this episode, so we definitely feel like this is going to have to be a two-parter. And I want to leave off ⁓ a spicier note for what is to come in the rest of our conversation for people. So, ⁓ this is a ⁓ that we have chatted about ⁓ I know is very near and dear to your heart. So I just want to ask you... The simplest version of this question is, you think that the role of the perfumer is becoming more visible or more hidden?

Michael Nordstrand: Yeah, complicated because in some ways it's doing both at the same time. And I will say if you are a perfumer that is known in any kind of capacity, if you have any PR behind you, if you have a big company behind you, if you've authored, let's say, 181 creations and I'm talking about a specific perfumer with that number in mind, ⁓ there's...

Michy: Mm-hmm.

Michael Nordstrand: a lot of drive to put you out there because it's celebrity. That's actually the difference between, you know, like... clout, let's say, or talent or things like that. But your degree of recognizability is something that the fragrance industry has realized, ⁓ that a name can bring people to us and we can get more business. And so they've started to spend PR dollars on literally shoving the perfumer out of the shadows into the limelight. And so there's a strong version where that's happening. And there are perfumers who are very, very actually amazing at doing the PR and things like that. On the other side of it, there are many different areas where on the report card, I would put needs improvement. ⁓ There are many people in the ecosystem that either do not think of this at all or for whom it is not something that's important even if they know it might be to other people, ⁓ which is who created the perfume.

Michy: You

Michael Nordstrand: ⁓ But again, different vantage points, different metrics. The value of a perfume by some people is measured by the emotion that it brings, the memory that it evokes. For some people it's, I want it to last all day, or I don't want to spend anyone in the elevator when I go to my office building. So there's a lot of different metrics that people are measuring things by. ⁓ But for the perfumers, we're trying to think about all of the things that you are thinking about. And then we're also, a little bit of the pie chart is supposed to be about how

Michy: Mm-hmm.

Michael Nordstrand: get our next job, say who made the perfume. If you talk about it, know who made it. That's, to me, seems like a natural thing. ⁓ You know, I made the analogy to you, Mishi, that like, why, why is this confusing as a concept? Because I've had this conversation with a lot of different people and it's been widely accepted, but by some not understood seemingly at all.

Michy: Mm-hmm.

Michael Nordstrand: ⁓ Imagine, if you will, saying, wow, I discovered this novel. I think it's maybe my favorite book of all time. ⁓ It's called The Lord of the Rings by Alan and Unwin, the original publishers of The of the Rings. Where is J.R.R. Tolkien in this conversation? know, like this would never happen. Nobody's saying, ⁓ my God, Dune.

Michy: Mm-hmm.

Michael Nordstrand: And it was originally published by Insert Publisher here, because I don't know. This just doesn't happen with a lot of other media and a lot of other art forms. So I think it's kind of mental that we deal with this, but it's also an understanding that this is a commodified art form. It's something that becomes a product and it's judged against different things. But somebody did create what goes in the bottle. It doesn't matter if it's your suave

Michy: Mm-hmm.

Michael Nordstrand: two in one, whatever it is. I mean, I would never, but you know, but like, it doesn't matter if it's that and actually perfumers that have to work in those more, what we call hostile matrices, ⁓ bleach, detergent, et cetera, they are the unsung heroes of the industry. There's this perfumer at Giveton, she's been there forever and...

Michy: Yeah Mm-hmm.

Michael Nordstrand: ⁓ my god, she's so much more brilliant than I'll ever be. She's amazing. ⁓ these perfumers, it's again, there's a practicality standpoint where you say, well, we can't like, you know, write on Clorox the perfumer signature, but why not? That can kind of be fun. I'd buy that bleach. So like, there's a lot of people in the industry who are still actually in the shadows and a lot of technical perfumers and let we say personal care perfumers when it's anything that's not fine fragrance. there are a lot of things, you know, I worked on a dog shampoo last year.

Michy: Yeah. Hmm.

Michael Nordstrand: and it was awesome because the science is so nerdy and fun and we did so much cool stuff with it. There are a lot of different things to be explored here and here. And I think ⁓ if you love a perfume, why wouldn't you want to know who made it? Why wouldn't you want to connect with them? Even if it's across centuries, why wouldn't you want to understand who that is and then tell everyone? Because then, let's say you don't like all the scents of a brand. Well, it's four different perfumers, so you like these two, they're the same perfumer. Does it not follow logically that you'd want to see who and what and where? what's the perfumer doing? Where are they at? You know, I smelled two of the perfumes from Headspace and they were both my personal favorites were both done by Nicolas ⁓ Beuillieu and he's brilliant and I immediately looked further into him when I figured that out. So I think you should be following perfumers around, not brands. This brand loyalty thing getting thrown out the window. Be loyal to us. We're the ones doing what you love.

Michy: Yep. I couldn't agree more. I mentioned this to you and before we move on and close out, I mentioned this to you and there is a perfumer that ⁓ he does a bit of indie, but predominantly he is in the more mainstream market. It's Alexis Krugin. And I have loved absolutely everything he's put out. And there's been so many instances where he's not been named on a brand's website and I have to go searching to find his name. But ⁓ nearly every time I smell something that is in the more mainstream and I discover who made it, nine times out of 10, it's been Alexis. And that's why exactly to your point, it doesn't matter the brand, it matters who made the fragrance, whose nose is behind it. Yes, the brand might bring you the copy. But that perfumer signature, that perfumer style is what's creating your artwork. It's what's creating the fragrance that you fall in love with. So ⁓ yes, I just wanted to name somebody that I love and I'm following at the moment.

Michael Nordstrand: It's not to take even anything away from a brand founder or a creative director or any of the people who are players in the process, but a lot of them arguably get a lot more floor time and space to say and do and exhibit and be whatever they're going to be where. the scent, think the authorship piece gets a bit lost along the way or it's never been paramount to somebody. And I think, again, just like what are you spending, what are you willing to spend on the concentrate to go into the bottle? What are you willing to say for the perfumer who is the author of the creation ultimately? And I think that's intriguing when I get a mixed response to that

Michy: Mm.

Josh: have lots of follow-ups and we'll save those for part two.

Michy: Yeah, we'll get into it and we'll probably get a lot spicier next time.

Michael Nordstrand: ⁓ my God, well, I'll have a second glass of wine next time then.

Michy: Michael, thank you so much for joining us today. ⁓ And we will talk to you very soon.

Michael Nordstrand: very soon and I literally cannot wait and I'm ⁓ thinking actively of ways to basically have this public forum about authorship and other things important to perfumery this year. So this is just the beginning, this is the tip of the iceberg and it goes real deep. I'm gonna be finding that necklace that she threw into the ocean, like I'm doing all of it. ⁓ We're gonna figure it out, but it was a pleasure. Thank you for having me and letting me ramble ⁓ and get a little spicy.

Michy: Thank you all so much for listening. talk to you soon. ⁓