The Plum Girl Interview- Adventures of a curious nose, or Avventure di un naso curioso: some time ago a dear friend of The Plum Girl, Andrej Babicky asked me to chit-chat with him about perfume ‘n’ stuff. Instead of a podcast, we agreed upon an interview in a written form for the Beauty Scenario webzine.
We discussed perfume/fragrance, perfume reviews, the importance of perfume reviews, and quite a few other scent-related things!
“Il mondo del profumo ha molte voci e parla molte lingue, non soltanto quella dell’olfatto. Una di queste è The Plum Girl – Elena Cvjetkovic founder dell’omonimo blog, pluripremiata scrittrice, reviewer e editor di Cafleurbon uno dei più importanti blog dedicati alle fragranze e al beauty.” ( Beauty Scenario)
The world of perfume has many voices and speaks many languages, not just that of smell. One of these is The Plum Girl – Elena Cvjetkovic founder of the homonymous blog, award-winning writer, reviewer, and editor for Cafleurbon, one of the most important blogs dedicated to fragrances and beauty. (Beauty Scenario, The Plum Girl Interview)
That’s a good question. If we define a blogger as a person that writes personal diary-like daily entries for a website or social media, then I’d say that my Instagram posts mostly fall into this short-story / diary-entry category. The reviews I write for my website and for ÇaFleureBon go deeper, I do a lot of research and tend to elaborate after thorough testing and wearing. The closest definition would then be a writer and a perfume critic.
You have a very unique approach to write about perfumes. What inspires you?
Perfume and perfumers, people, emotions, and stories behind the perfume, Zeitgeist, history, art, humanity, feelings…life.
What does perfume mean to you?
I like to think about perfume as an applied art form. And the purpose of any art is to elevate, inspire, move, express imagination, entertain, and communicate. We DO communicate with our perfume. I am a perfume lover.
What is your first olfactory memory?
As a child, I used to spend one part of my summer holidays at the Adriatic Sea, and the other with my grandmother on a country farm. The scent of the sea, dry pine needles, sizzling hot salty pebbles on a beach, seashells and dry seagrass on one hand, and farm animals, a garden full of flowers and vegetables, the first yellow plums picked off a tree, juice-bursting ripe watermelons, hay, cornfields, and rolling in wheat in a barn on the other hand. Hot asphalt in the city, the scent of new school books, freshly sharpened pencils, and wet chalk on the first school day – I remember events by scents…still do.
Do you think there is a distinction between fragrance and perfume?
If I translate these two terms in my mother-tongue, there’s a difference. I would say that a quite purist definition would be that a perfume produces a fragrance, but not every fragrance is a perfume. But we all use both terms when referring to perfume.
Read more @Beauty Scenario here. I hope you enjoyed this The Plum Girl Interview!
Thank you, Andrej! It was my pleasure, and I hope to see you soon – in Italy (I miss Italy dearly…)
The Plum Girl
