Photo: Les Senteurs
I’m sure most of you have heard the sad news that Mona Di Orio unexpectedly passed away on Friday. Several blogs, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds have featured tributes to the French perfumer, who was one of the last people to have been trained by the great master of 20th century fragrance construction, Edmond Roudnitska.

Although I met her only once for a relatively brief interview, I was struck by her passion for her work, her articulate engagement with my questions and her forthright views on matters such as IFRA and the current state of the perfume industry. It was also at this time that I was introduced to her beautiful Vanille, which quickly became one of my favourite scents of this year.

My thoughts are with her family and friends at this difficult time. To mark her demise, I would like to re-post this link to the Basenotes article which resulted from the aforementioned encounter. I suspect it may well have been one of the last interviews she gave to a UK-based perfume publication. During our chat, she said that she wanted her fragrances to “make people dream”. The outpouring of affection and admiration from the online perfume community over the last two days suggests that she succeeded. I hope she knew the extent to which people loved her work.
Persolaise.

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