I was looking forward to meeting with Sara Carner in Milano due to a simple fact: she was going to make a secret pre-premiere of her new perfume Palo Santo. I was very curious to smell it. So funny that it took me two months to write about it. Sorry, guys! We will keep going faster. As we had never met before, we started from the beginning of the Sara Carner Barcelona perfume project.
Sara Carner
Sara Carner: During my career, I worked in the perfume business, first in Chanel, and later in Shiseido, in New York. I always worked in the marketing department theres. And I was dreaming to start my own perfume brand. So when I came back from New York to Barcelona in 2009, I started this perfume project, Sara Carner Barcelona. What I wanted to do is a very, very well done collection of perfumes, based on the best perfume ingredients from all over the world. All the packaging materials came from the local suppliers, and I partnered with the best perfumers from Paris (all perfumes were signed by Givaudan perfumers) to develop a very exquisite line. And I wanted this collection to have a relationship to the city of Barcelona, as it's my home city, so all the perfumes have a story behind them. And also the silver insignia of the brand honors the old iron doors of 19th-century Barcelona, which is Gaudism-Modernism in style; and the cap of the bottles is made from wood, because all the collection is woody—you can find a wood ingredient in every Sara Carner Barcelona perfume. So we just had to materialize the most important ingredients to be present inside and outside.
Sergey Borisov: I have heard that your wooden stoppers were also made in Barcelona?
Sara Carner: Absolutely! They made our wooden caps from sustainably managed European forests. All the components and parts of my perfumes and design I develop using people from Barcelona. So I work with local suppliers of wood, Technotraf. Well, that's a little bit of the story of how I started.
Sergey Borisov: Thank you for the brief story of your brand. And now you are going to launch the new perfume, Palo Santo?
Sara Carner: Exactly, it will be my sixth perfume in the collection. The ingredients of the perfume are of the best quality, and came from the best sources. Like, we used Vanilla from Madagascar, Guaiac wood from Paraguay and Tonka beans from Venezuela.
Sergey Borisov: Why did you choose the Palo Santo theme? Seems like it's not a very popular wood in terms of perfumery. I have heard that the wood smells quite nice and was used by shamans in their spiritual practices.
Sara Carner: I just love the smell of Palo Santo, when you burn it. It's quite popular in Spain, you could buy it anywhere, in every herbalist`s shops. If you burn it in your home for one minute, all the house will smell like this woody sweet scent, it's a very nice and lasting scent, sort of incensey. So I'd like to develop a perfume with Palo Santo as a main ingredient, and I mixed it with Vetiver, with Davana and with some others, but the main ingredient is Palo Santo. But I also love the story behind it, because when Spaniards came to America, they discovered this tree and named it Palo Santo, “Holy Wood,” because of its healing and good olfactive properties. The smell works rather psychologically and due to its nice smell, but people will feel relaxed and less stressed. Also people make a tisane from Palo Santo wood shavings; it repels mosquitoes; a massage with Palo Santo oil helps to take out arthritis, arthrosis and muscle pains. Palo Santo oil is good in cases of flu, allergies, migraines, asthma. Many religions believed that this spiritual wood has the mythical mystical power to protect and usher in good fortune, clean houses from bad energy and renew the good luck. So it`s used in different rituals a lot, like in the weddings of indigenous people of South America. A faint misting cleanses the mood and raises spirits, invoking the true purifying virtues of Palo Santo. (True purifying demands to burn Palo Santo more intensively, with thick smoke in the room, so you cannot stay inside as your eyes hurt and it's impossible to breathe).
Palo Santo wood
Sergey Borisov: Have you had some spiritual experience in your life lately? Did you makee the perfume to be as effective as Palo Santo smoke itself? Will your perfume bring good fortune and remove bad energy?
Sara Carner: No. I just like the whole story about the wood, and the concept of Palo Santo. The smell that could make your home and your soul a little bit more good and pure. You know, Palo Santo tree belongs to the same family as Myrrh and Frankincense, so it's sort of incense itself. Normally it's a great ambient smell, not a personal perfume.
Sergey Borisov: There`s a Russian proverb that says "the devil is scared of incense."
Sara Carner: I would love to know if it will help someone by any means and in any situation. But as I told you, it could be rather a psychological help, due to the mild and sweet smell of it. But anyway, frankincense works somehow.
Sergey Borisov: Who`s the perfumer of the perfume?
Sara Carner: Shyamala Maisondieu of Givaudan. She's treating the woody notes so great. Let's smell it. [spraying] So Palo Santo is made by Guaiac wood oil, with a sweet accent of caramel, rum, vanilla and milky accord. Do you like it?
Sergey Borisov: [laughing] It returns me to my childhood. I used to have a sweet tooth, being a child, and I can remember how I loved condensed sweet milk, and we used to boil it in tin cans to make a thick brown milky caramel. South Americans call it Dulce de Leche, and my mom used to do that at home … Now I would describe the smell like Dulce de Leche sweets plus a spicy rum alcoholic effect… That's sort of Bailey's liqueur, isn't it? I would wear it, even though it's quite gourmand in the start.
Sara Carner: That's very touching that it moves you so deeply and brought you back to childhood. But it's not a special effect. Maybe it's due to the combination of Guaiac wood with Tonka beans and Vanilla? The accord can be interpreted like Dulce de Leche, but it was not intentional. It's just a sweet woody perfume, to make people relax and feel good.
Maybe my soul isn't as clean and pure as the souls of the people of Central and South America, but I did not feel any special purity or holiness in Palo Santo perfume. It has perfect comforting properties, I feel a rather good gourmand perfume with the features of a time machine. I feel myself at home, safe and relaxed as any 5-year-old kid would feel at home, with a loving family, with no responsibilities, having fun and laughing a lot. Yes, sometimes the secret of a good perfume is quite easy.
Carner Barcelona Palo Santo
Top notes: Indian Davana and Rum;
Middle notes: Warm Milk, Guaiac wood from Paraguay and Venezuelan Tonka beans;
Base notes: Haitian Vetiver, Moroccan Cedarwood, Vanilla and Amyris from Dominicana.
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