Welcome to My Salon: Q & A with Alexandra Balahoutis of Strange Invisible Perfumes
After my recent review of Strange Invisible Perfumes, I wanted to know more about the perfumer behind these delightful creations. To do so, I had a nice email exchange of Q & A with Alexandra Balahoutis, the 32-year old founder and creator of Strange Invisible Perfumes.
Alexandra is passionate about natural perfume and has been creating fragrances professionally for the last seven years. She uses only organic, wild-crafted and/or biodynamic ingredients in her products. Strange Invisible Perfumes are available at the Strange Invisible Perfumes boutique in Venice, California, and online at SIPerfumes.com.
Join me as we chat with the talented and thoughtful perfumer, Alexandra Balahoutis.
Perfume Bee: Hi, Alexandra. At what age did you know you would become a professional perfumer?
Alexandra Balahoutis: At 21, I began to study. I started professionally at 25.
Bee: What led you to this decision?
Alexandra: I cared so much about advancing my knowledge and skill. I could see a very clear future as a perfumer from the very first day I started my education. There was an unstoppable drive to master the art and business of perfumery. I hadn’t experienced that level of clarity or drive with any of my other interests.
Bee: Can you describe your background and training in perfumery?
Alexandra: I am self-taught for the most part. However, botanical perfumer John Steele is my mentor. He studied mainly in India. He is also an anthropologist and archaeologist. His guidance and teachings have been invaluable to me. He is a true aromatic visionary.
Bee: What are your guiding principles in making perfume?
Alexandra: Sincere inspiration, precious botanical ingredients, and diligence in formulating are what lead me to what I call ‘authentic perfumery.’ No synthetics. Only premium ingredients.
Bee: What is the process like for you when creating a new fragrance?
Alexandra: I listen to my intuition and embrace whim and romance, but I work hard and I question my work intensely. I am not easily satisfied with myself. There is a standard and people have expectations, myself included.
It isn’t simply about worshiping essential oils and throwing them together. Botanical perfumery is hard work. Discovering new ways to achieve much loved notes without using synthetics is a lot of work.
Bee: If you had to describe your perfume-creating process, would you consider yourself to be a) a mad scientist! b) a dreamy dreamer or c) none of the above.
Alexandra: A mad dreamer. My vision is delicate but my process is intense. I pull very elusive energies and impressions from the ether into the physical world and then into a very new market place.
Bee: You use 100% natural and botanical ingredients in your perfumes. Was this an easy or difficult choice for you?
Alexandra: The choice was easy. My convictions had become so strong without even my own consent. I knew that I couldn’t leave violet, gardenia, leather, lily of the valley, et cetera out of my compositions but I couldn’t use their synthetic representatives.
I worked day and night to crack these codes by combining essences and aromas, not by manipulating them. Reaching the standard with such criteria has been a challenging route but a very rewarding one.
Bee: Do you find any limitations when using botanicals?
Alexandra: There are some but I don’t accept them and it has always worked out for me. I hit a wall and then at some point, I make an incredible discovery. Achieving notes this way is so much more exciting.
A perfumer should interpret aromas and their impressions, not merely deliver their industrial profiles yet again to the public. A perfumer must have a point of view.
Bee: You favor the hydrodistillation of essential oils. Please tell us about that.
Alexandra: I love this method because it captures many of the delicate, energetic top notes that often escape the distillation process. Hydro-distillations also have a very distinctive, crystalline quality that I love. But I also use essences that result from different methods of extraction with the exception of Co2 extractions.
