Notes Shanghai Pt.2

More impressions

I’m back in England and looked up the last time I was in Shanghai, also for a perfume show organised in 2015 by an online retailer and decant service called Xiùjuéxì (嗅觉系). It took place in the Duolun Museum of Modern Art. It was an exhibition of thousands of fragrances organised by brand and displayed in small pyrex funnels lined with filter paper you could lift and bring to your nose. Huge crowds got a crash course in perfume history, and I got to smell many things I had missed out on in the ‘70s and ‘80s. The —unrelated—organisers of this year’s Notes Shanghai remembered it well, and the exhibitors had retained the excellent funnel display method from the 2015 show.

Notes Shanghai was, of course a very different thing, i.e. a trade show with booths, etc. I have been to several editions of its counterpart in Milan, Esxence, vast, glitzy and exhausting. Trade shows are brutal by nature, anxious or gleeful depending on why you’re there. On the one hand, it must be hard to man an empty stand next to one that is mobbed by a crowd. I’ve had that experience at scientific conferences where you loiter in front of a poster explaining your work, and colleagues pass by, look at the title, avoid your glance and move on to the next one where people stand three deep listening to the author. If you’re a visitor, on the other hand, and particularly on less crowded days, it is good to be able to survey so many creations and get a feeling for what is popular just by looking at the size of the audience at every stand.

The crowd on day 3

It is amazing that Notes Shanghai manages to do two such shows a year and draw such huge crowds. As I’ve said in my previous post the vibe in Shanghai was quite different from Milan, less anxious and snobby, and much more what the French call bon enfant¹. In Shanghai everything seemed fresh, hopeful and new, with no ulterior motives except being liked by customers. In Milan most fledgling niche outfits dream of what is called an “exit strategy”, namely an eventual purchase by a big firm. Much of the difference between one brand and another rests on concept and design, two things that typically have very little to do with the content of the bottles.

I took part in a panel discussion on topics of current interest:

What is niche perfumery’s place? My take on this was that as long as mainstream brands carried on serving up swill containing approximately $1 in fragrance oil per bottle at a 200-fold markup, niche and artisan fragrance would do OK by simply not ripping people off.

What should niche brands do to distinguish themselves? Much emphasis is currently put on the story behind the brand, i.e. the concept (patter) that informs the looks and the names. My feeling about that was that Coty and Guerlain had done rather well on simply smelling good and being nicely packaged, and that no story was necessary.

What will AI do to perfume? I am reliably informed that there is no AI currently being used in the industry. People seemed concerned that AI would homogenise mainstream creations, which made me wonder whether anyone would notice given that perfumery is already close to maximum-entropy.

A standout of the show was the grand Osmothèque stand. I remember the days when the Osmothèque was a refrigerator in the basement of the Isipca perfume school in Versaille. Very gradually it became more prominent, and had small stands (usually deserted) ar trade shows where you could smell their masterpieces. Smelling the French Greats in pristine, original shape was a solemn experience. Full credit to Thomas Fontaine and Anne-Cécile Pouant for having managed to preserve its independence while giving it pride of place. France is huge in East Asia. In perfumery, wine and railway engineering, it deserves to be.

One thing I will do differently next time: an American colleague came equipped with the newest Apple earbuds and conversed with Chinese speakers by holding his phone in front of him translating his utterances into Chinese for them to read while translating their speech directly into his ears. The future seemed closer, and more exciting, in Shanghai than anywhere else I’ve been. I feel lucky to have seen it.

1. Literally good child, meaning easy-going, guileless, engaging, unaffected.