With Bidzina Kanchaveli, I have a guest in today’s Duft-Tagebuch who has an extremely exciting story to tell. Kanchaveli’s product is also out of the ordinary: bath soap No. 1. Yes, you read that right! I will present the bath soap to you later following this interview here, but first the founder of the label and developer of the soap will speak and tell us about himself and his brand and share his thoughts with us.
Welcome to the Duft-Tagebuch: Bidzina Kanchaveli!
Mr. Kanchaveli, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your career to date?
I am a Georgian artist. I started with movies and screenplays. My short films are well-known and have won awards at several festivals. My fascination with smells began in my childhood. In my Georgian home village, where my grandfather prepared food and drinks with home-grown ingredients, I came into contact with fascinating smells as a child. This elemental force of nature has had a strong influence on my body and mind and has shaped my life.
This childhood experience left me with burning questions: How can smells be so powerful, how can they exert such a tremendous influence on a person’s being, in an almost magical way? And how far can this effect go? Is there any limit to the possibilities?
Eventually it led to me coming into contact with aromas professionally and wanting to study and develop their immense influence and magic. Right at the beginning of my career, I started producing unusual flavors (editor’s note: for liquids) in order to gradually get closer to the answers to the questions of my childhood and to answer them.
My flavors should go beyond the simple description “delicious”. I also wanted them to smell and taste in a way that had never been experienced in other products before. They should also serve to develop people mentally by immersing them in completely new worlds of pleasure and flavors. In my opinion, an aroma or a smell can not only satisfy, calm and fascinate people, but also stimulate them mentally and intellectually. It is comparable to the effect of classical music or important literature on the human mind.
And how did the Kanchaveli brand come about?
It was interesting to see that the newly developed flavors were successfully accepted worldwide – in China, South Korea, Japan, Europe, etc. I was very happy and surprised that these daring and sometimes extremely experimental projects were not only accepted, but also loved, by all different cultures. It is often the case that people are conservative and not always open to new or completely unfamiliar things.
The success of my flavors has motivated me to continue my research in this area and open new doors. That was one reason why I immersed my research in the world of perfume. After “TOM KLARK’S” I then founded my new company, in this case with my name KANCHAVELI.
Dramaturgy, aromas and fragrances play a central role in your life. How do you combine these three themes in Kanchaveli?
The function of a fragrance or perfume does not usually go beyond leaving a pleasant smell. Both for the perfume wearer and for those around them. But beyond this limitation, there is much more that a fragrance can achieve.
Smell in itself is far more than just a harmonious combination of different elements. A perfume can evoke a wide range of emotions, not just the fascination of a pleasant scent. Smell has the potential to make people happy, sad or melancholy, etc. All feelings within us are important to us, even the negative ones, and certain combinations of smells make every emotional experience possible, even unknown ones. This means that smell can also awaken new emotions in a person.
When the brain is confronted with new information, it is forced to decode it. Which automatically leads to further development. We can be transported back to the past and remember specific moments in our lives. Smell can tell a story or bring to life the stories we already carry within us. I think that, like a book or a movie, a combination of scents also carries a dramaturgy and that is exactly what I want to achieve with my perfume and with scent compositions in general.
Can you say something about the Kanchaveli logo? Did you create it yourself?
Yes, I designed it myself. It is inspired by a medieval engraving and was realized in such a way that it conveys my message. The elements of the logo are mystical, magical and cosmic
How did you come up with the idea of creating a bath soap and what do you think is so special about it?
I have been working on my perfume for a long time and very soon I will be finishing it. The soap was not an easy project either. Especially if you want to do something extraordinary, it takes a lot of time and I decided to develop the soap and the perfume in parallel.
I spent a long time looking for a way to package the soap in a very high-quality way. I wanted to give the soap more presence. In my opinion, it is an underrated product and I therefore wanted a classy packaging that rightly deserves this product. Soap is not just about smelling good, it also does good things for people. It cleanses our bodies and is therefore a very intimate and familiar object. Showering is a process that for many people is not just a physical ritual, but also a spiritual one. After the shower, many also feel psychologically cleansed in a certain way. It can feel like being “born again”. Soap is the decisive object in this so-called ritual.
How can we pay so little attention to an object that has such a big impact on us?
How would you describe the scent of the soap? What was particularly important to you when creating the fragrance?
The fragrance is supposed to remind us of our childhood, so that we are able to experience a journey into the past. Past memories are rekindled, which gives meaning to the phrase “born again”.
It can be noted here that, depending on the culture, we all have different and individual odor identifications with our own childhood. I wanted to bring these differences together with the scent of my soap so that as many people as possible could experience a sense of community and remember their own childhood.
It is a bath soap, can it also be used for showering?
It is a soap that can be used for hands and body. In other words, a full-body soap.
Are there certain things you should bear in mind when using the soap or afterwards in order to enjoy it for as long as possible?
I can only recommend getting to grips with the soap. If you buy a high-quality product, you should be able to enjoy it accordingly. Important: you should also enjoy unpacking. How you discover the product, how you come into contact with it, you should take your time. Just like with food. Fast food is consumed differently than a menu in a Michelin-starred restaurant. You enjoy every second there. You should treat yourself to it for the extra charge. Each individual soap is carefully and painstakingly packaged by hand using different materials. After opening, you should first try to classify the components by smelling them and enjoy them slowly, as with fine wine.
This soap has special odor properties that only develop and unfold over time. After a while, the smell changes and so does our perception. We consumers are also changing and perceiving new odor details that were not noticeable before. A certain relationship develops with the product and you enjoy the development phases that the soap offers. If you are open to it!
What can we expect from your brand in the future? I have read that there will be a book and olfactory installations as well as a perfume?
Exactly, I’m currently preparing several projects. The perfume will be released first and very soon. I’d hate to give away details beforehand about what will be new or special about the perfume. But it will once again be an extraordinary project that will go beyond the boundaries of the perfume product: in other words, we can expect not just a pretty bottle of liquid, but an object as a work of art.
The odour installation, which I also talk about in detail on my website, will also be a very complex and ambitious project and not necessarily easy to realize. The idea was that you could tell a story with smells, with a prologue and epilogue. Just as the notes of a symphony orchestra do.
Of course, in this case you only have limited means at your disposal, in contrast to film or theater. But in music, the notes manage to convey a lot. It will be the same here: the air itself and everything in the air will be used as a means of transmitting communication and information.
I’m currently working on the book too. Over time, I learn more and more about the world of smells. I experiment and try to push the boundaries to describe the effect of smell.
The book will describe the real discoveries and demonstrable facts about the effect of odor on humans and animals. In between, there are also various stories from different worlds, stories of the pharaohs that I make up. Free fantasies and hypothetical stories that are told with magic and smells. A kind of mixture of science and free mini-novels.
Is there anything important you would like to add?
I hope and am delighted that my products will enable you to join me on a journey through the olfactory cosmos
Dear Mr. Kanchaveli, thank you very much for taking the time to answer my questions.
Be First to Comment