Skip to content 
Welcome to Back of the Napkin, musings from Serviette for the cultured world.
Perfume is slow business. As the concentrate for Serviette’s four signature fragrances matures, the oils are afforded the luxury of time to harmonize into exquisite scents that can be bottled. Each includes materials sourced the world over—fir balsam from Canada, juniper berry from the Balkans, galbanum from Turkey, geranium from Egypt.
The provenance of these materials is a point of fascination. The work of one Dr. Roman Kaiser—who scoured remote landscapes capturing scents derived from nature—was introduced to me by a friend of mine while studying in France. She was an intern at Givaudan, the fragrance and flavoring company behind many of the world’s most renowned perfumes. More specifically, her arms were used to test mods—different formulations—of fragrances that were yet to be released. When we spent time together, she would be saturated with glorious, alluring perfume.
Kaiser, a retired Swiss fragrance chemist, emerged as a profound source of inspiration and a driving force behind Serviette’s existence. Once, I reached out to interview him; however, I was turned down on account of not writing for a scientific journal.
No exaggeration is necessary in describing his métier. He would travel to the Lower Amazonia, the La Makandé region of Gabon, the Masaola Peninsula in the northeast of Madagascar, and more places searching for “natural scents in both the canopy and on the ground.”
Headspace technology, which Kaiser pioneered, involved placing a spherical bulb over a plant or flower to capture its volatile compounds, leaving nature undisturbed. In this way, he could trap fragrance molecules to bring back to the lab to study and reconstruct.
Even more amusing was his mode of transport: a dirigible. As he explains in his book Meaningful Scents Around the World, “the technical infrastructure to access the canopy consisted of a dirigible of 50m x 20m holding 8,500m of 'hot air', and additionally equipped with a diesel engine for fine maneuvering.”
Imagine floating above the Amazonian canopy to capture the orange nectar scent of a Norantea guianensis, a famous Margraviaceae typical of lower Amazonia, beloved by hummingbirds.
Kaiser has catalogued hundreds of aromatic compounds that appear in nature, even those that are or will become extinct. His life’s work has been translating these into chemical formulae that perfumers can ostensibly replicate from the comfort of their studios. Taking a trip through smell has never been more accessible.
This will not be the last we hear of Dr. Kaiser as he relates to the adventurous world of Serviette. He is an endless source of inspiration.