Baruti perfumes are some of the most unique scents I’ve smelled, and so I asked the founder and perfumer, Spyros Drosopoulos some questions about his perfumes, what inspires him, and his history with perfume, and he was kind enough to answer my questions.
1. What do you want people to know about your perfumes before they smell them?
I don’t think that for me, it’s important people know anything about the perfume, to be honest…actually, I like it if people don’t know much so that they really smell in an unbiased kind of way. I can provide context and why I made it, but at the end of the day, you know, the perfume needs to resonate with the customer and the rest is adding more to the magic. The story is interesting or captivating, but sometimes the story can maybe change a little bit of perception. Maybe the context helps it fall into place, if you know the context, but at the end of the day, the perfume should be a standalone and should be understood and appreciated by itself without any context, name, or notes.
2. Many of your perfumes are quite literal, for example, Chai, Hot Cotton, and Oh My Deer! How do you approach creating a perfume? Does the idea come first or the scent?
It’s more interesting than only the big Impressions of the materials that are present. So I think in all my perfumes when you see the notes you’re actually able to detect them. This is a deliberate design stylistic choice that I made, because I think for me, I like it much more than blending everything so much in that you jus create a soup and then there are only some Impressions of bits and pieces leftover in the cloud of perfume.
3. Where do you find inspiration – what is it that speaks to you to create a perfume?
In terms of how I create, the inspiration, sometimes it can be anything. It can be the material, sometimes it dictates some ideas, but very often I smell the perfume in my head and then I just try to get it into a bottle. Uh, and other times it’s something
that I found interesting or intriguing, it could be something that I that I’ve seen or heard like music or movie or some piece of art or a place that I visited that somehow resonated with me and then I’m trying to translate the emotion or what I felt into a perfume formula.
4. What kinds of perfume did you grow up with?
When I was young, I don’t think we had so much perfume in the house I think, other than, you know, some maybe some aftershaves of my dad and my mom. Cologne only a few times, if it was like a special occasion, And from what I can trace back, this must have been some chypre because I’m a child of the 80s, well, the late 70s, as a matter. But there were a lot of smells I grew up in Greece, especially when we went to the countryside. The smells there were quite strong and intense. Some were pleasant some were less pleasant, but I found all this very intriguing. I did spend my find myself often sniffing around even though I didn’t realize that as a child this was anything unusual or uncommon, but yeah I did always find myself to be very intrigued by by smells and my surroundings and very often stopped to sniff them to to take them up.
5. From whom do you receive feedback when you’re in the process of creating your perfume? How do you know that your creation will be wearable and will work for people?
I spend quite a lot of time with the perfumes, wearing them myself, so that already gives me an indication you know, of how the perfume performs on skin, but I don’t work with the panel. Sometimes, you know, I will offer the perfumes to be worn by friends and family, so then they act as my subjects. But, it’s more us, the team and me that are testing the perfumes and checking to see how they they work on the skin.
6. What an idea for a perfume that you’ve tried to bring to fruition but have not been able to yet?
There are many ideas that I’ve abandoned at some time, some I’m working on, and some I’ve completely abandoned. I’m looking for ways to make something that, I find worthy of adding to the line, so this means that it needs to add some sort of novelty and at the same time, stay wearable because, for me, these are two the main pillars in the way that I create for Baruti. The thing that I’m working on is a white floral. With my previous brand, I used to have a Jasmine soliflore that I liked but it was a little bit bland, I guess in a way, I guess in a way. I mean it had a high dosage of Jasmine, but other than that, there was nothing super interesting about it, although a lot of people liked it at the time. But anyway, I’m working on making something like a Jasmine soliflore or more white floral narcotic perfume that will be Baruti-worthy but I’m not there yet. It’s in the works for the future.
If you have a chance to smell Baruti perfumes in store, or via a sample set, do try them. They are fragrances that smell like things we have in our lives. I won’t use the term “photorealistic” because that applies to objects we see, but these are olfacto-realistic. For example, the perfume Chai smells like perfectly blended warm spices, black tea, and even milk to create a scent that smells like Chai. It’s one of Baruti’s most-loved and I can see why. Anyone who drinks chai knows how good it feels to hold a steaming cup of chai in their hands and inhale… it’s such a comforting scent.
Hot Cotton is my favourite because it smells like steamed linen. It’s clean and cozy at the same time, and it’s done without pretension.
You can find the brand here: https://barutiperfumes.com/
