It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for. Any perfumista worth his or her Chanel No. 5 certainly knows the name Roja Dove. I knew it from the books I have written by him, as he is known as the world’s foremost authority on perfumery. I had the good fortune of being able to attend the Sniffapalooza Spring Fling in May of this year, where Roja flew in from London to make a personal appearance and launch his new fragrance line at Bergdorf Goodman. I had the even greater fortune of getting to interview him one on one. Now mind you Roja is not what you’d call a celebrity or rock star perfumer. I think he’d shudder at the suggestion of that. No other living perfumer has the prestigious title of “Professeur des Parfums,” which Roja earned six years into his fragrance career at the House of Guerlain, where…
A Fragrant Tour of NYC With at Sniffapalooza Spring Fling 2013
At 8 am on a Saturday morning in early May, a buzz builds in the beauty basement at Bergdorf Goodman in New York City. Voices are at a fever pitch and the excitement is palpable. It’s as if a rock star or an A-list celeb would appear at any moment. Inside Bergdorf’s small cafe 140 people (including me) are waiting in anticipation for the start of something called Sniffapalooza Spring Fling. “It’s the most incredible, intense experience,” says Tamara, who flew in from Arizona. “You’ve gotten on trains, planes and automobiles,” says Karen Dubin, Sniffapalooza’s founder. “This is our 18th event,” she says in regards to this year’s Spring Fling. Twice a year, in the spring and the fall, fragrance fanatics invade the Big Apple, eager to sniff the newest scents from the biggest names in perfumery. Sniffapalooza is a phenomenon, attracting people from far flung locales such as Australia, Paris,…