THE OTHER ROOM: EP. 147 - PERFUMER BRUNO FAZZOLARI!
The Other Room is the official Perfume Room companion post-show. Every Tuesday, hear from guests on their episode of Perfume Room podcast, and on Fridays, enjoy bonus content from those same guests exclusively on Substack!
Fzotic Perfumer and Founder Bruno Fazzolari joined me in the Perfume Room earlier this week, and today, he’s in The Other Room.
A painter by training, Bruno’s olfactive creations feel multi-sensorial. They’re textured, complex, at times challenging even. Despite the different medium (and canvas), artistry remains at the helm of his perfumery.
This does not surprise me.
In chatting with Bruno, his deliberate and thoughtful nature, mixed with his passion for the abstract, is immediately apparent. Add his disdain of the commodification of perfume as a functional consumer good, and you have (what I interpret to be) the raison d’etre of Fzotic. It’s a perfume brand whose intention is to appeal to those who wish to experience perfume as art (with of course the element of practicality that this art is indeed quite wearable, beautiful even, and incidentally long-lasting).
I am still making my way through skin-testing the entire line, but I’ll give a personal shout-out to Vetiverissimo, which happens to be one of the best vetiver mono-scents I’ve ever encountered. (Perhaps more on that in a different post ;))
Today hear from Bruno about the art (olfactive and other) that he consumes, the scent that did for perfumery to what he likens to what The Beatles did for music, the secret note in all his formulas, his cat, and more! Enjoy <3
PLUS, WATCH THE FULL VIDEO EPISODE AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST!
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Can you share a few other gems from your personal collection?
I found my early 1980s formulation of Guerlain Shalimar in a sealed box. This is a touchstone in so many people's lives—as a perfumer, you have to know and understand it. Otherwise, to make yet another music comparison, it's like never having heard the Beatles. It's not really "me," but I love it and wear it at bedtime.
Crown Sandgringham: The entire brand is out of production. This scent was supposedly created for the Prince of Wales in 1873. My bottle is probably from the 80s, and I doubt it's the OG formulation. It's a powerful, woody-sweet floral accord that still reads as a classic "masculine" fragrance but in a really unusual way.
What is the best non-perfume smell in the world?
I have several: that odd industrial smell that wafts out of an elevator shaft, the scent that a tangerine leaves on your fingertips after you've peeled it, jet fuel, a field of lupins in the mountains near Tucson.
What does your home smell like?
I'm a big collector of traditional Japanese incense. It can be very refined, sometimes subtle and strange. I like that you break a small piece and just burn a little of it.
What's your most used material in your organ?
After things like Hedione and Iso E, which I use in nearly everything because they adapt themselves to whatever I'm building, probably patchouli. But most people won't ever be aware of it. In doses as little as 0.05% of a formula, it supports amber accords, specific fruity accords, or reinforces a rose accord. I have yet to do a genuinely patchouli-forward fragrance, but I'd love to.
Tell us about the perfumer's cat ;)
Aya adopted us when we were house-sitting on 50 acres of land near Ukiah, California, during fire season. There was a major fire in the area, and there weren't any neighbors to speak of. We're not sure if she was displaced by the fire or abandoned. She just showed up one morning and made it clear we were her new people. It's funny that we have no idea what her past life was like. She has her own Instagram account. [EDITOR’S NOTE: enjoy ⬇️]
We talked at great length about how fragrance should be consumed/enjoyed in a way similar to music. What's top of your playlist right now?
I have pretty eclectic taste, and it depends on the day and what I'm doing: SZA, Alice Coltrane, Kali Malone, Khruangbin, Beyoncé, Marina Baranova, The Durruti Column, Françoise Hardy, André 3000, Gilberto Gil, Mozart, Remi Wolf… I'm all over the place, really.
What's something not perfume-related you could talk about for hours?
The writing in movies and TV series. I'm fascinated by how a story is told and the characters are drawn. When you think about it, it all has to be done so economically: you get a sense of a character in just a few lines of dialogue and maybe a gesture. And then when writers suddenly find ways to bend your expectations. For instance, I loved how Severence created two characters out of one person…or was it two persons out of one character? I can't wait to see the new season.
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