ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, June 10, 1996 TAG: 9606100063
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: ERNEST SANDER/AP
She's known in the perfume trade as a ``nose,'' an olfactory artist specially gifted with a sense of scent. She's also known as a character who smokes cigarettes while she works and tests her fragrances on the New York subway. And sometimes she doesn't even notice her dinner is burning on the stove.
It was dark out by the time Sophia Grojsman gathered the papers off her desk, splashed on a bit of home-brewed perfume and headed for the subway.
As she got on the train, she noticed a man standing leering at her. She sat down. He sat beside her. She moved seats. He moved seats. The train made several stops, and the passengers trickled off. She changed seats again. So did he.
When the train reached her Brooklyn station, she exited quickly. He did, too. Finally, she turned on him.
``Why are you following me?'' she asked.
``Lady, I'm not following you,'' he responded. ``I'm following your perfume.''
For Grojsman, one of the world's top creators of women's fine fragrances, it was a delicious moment.
All good perfumes stir hearts, turn heads. Grojsman had set out that night to test one of her lab concoctions, to gauge if it had the right stuff. Judging by the man's slavish pursuit, it did.
In perfume parlance, Grojsman is ``a nose,'' someone who combines an intricate knowledge of thousands of ingredients - and the myriad ways they mingle - with a wild imagination. Proficient noses like Grojsman are artists, able to render non-olfactory experiences - a bird chirping, a beautiful canvas, a divine piece of prose - into scents.
She tells the story of Calyx, a fruity fragrance she launched in 1986. At the time, she had just returned from a trip to Israel, where she had stayed in a bungalow overlooking aromatic orange and grapefruit trees. Those intoxicating citrus tones later came to define Calyx.
``If you don't have any passion, you're not a perfumer, you're a scientist,'' Grojsman says.
Grojsman is vice president and senior perfumer for International Flavors and Fragrances, a $1.3 billion manufacturer of smells and tastes. Among perfumers, she is a giant, known for her persona as much as her potions. In the male-dominated, often proper and stuffy realm of nosery, Grojsman, with her rich Slavic drawl, her snakeskin boots and her purple fingernails, stands out.
How many other noses smoke cigarettes while they work?
``She is a wonderful character, different from most perfumers we work with,'' says Mary Manning, the vice president of market development for Coty, a large cosmetics company.
Yet, most of the women who dab her earthy perfumes on their wrists, behind their ears and in their cleavage probably don't know she exists.
Nowhere on the bottles of Paris and Champagne (Yves Saint Laurent), Eternity for women (Calvin Klein), Tresor (Lancome) and Sun Moon Stars (Karl Lagerfeld) does one find her moniker. But her nostrils and fantasies are behind all of them.
Both Eternity and Tresor are Top 10-selling perfumes, with annual sales of $30 million to $40 million, and Grojsman has almost two-dozen other fragrances on the market. (Contractual obligations prevent her from divulging the names.)
``She has been responsible for creating some of the most important fragrances of our generation,'' says Ann Gottlieb, a perfume consultant who worked with Grojsman on Eternity and Perry Ellis' 360 Degrees.
At times, Grojsman's chore is to find a perfume to match a designer's line of clothing or fashion vision of theirs. But other times, there are no road signs, and she is free to make the fragrance as fruity, as floral or as spicy as she likes - and she can do 'em all.
During a recent interview in her Manhattan office, Grojsman's three assistants - her ``babies,'' she calls them - shuffle in and out toting white strips of scented paper for Grojsman to sniff. Each has been spritzed with a subtly different blend of aromas. Grojsman samples hundreds before settling on a perfume.
``Uhmmm. This is a beauty,'' she says about one strip, a dreaminess coming over her face. ``But tomorrow I may not like it.''
Make no mistake, Grojsman warns: Perfume is not some trivial add-on for women, some superficial gloss. It is a vital accessory, part of a woman's being, part of her presentation to the world.
Making perfume is like conducting a symphony or composing a musical score, she says. You mix various notes to bring about a richness, and then as maestro you steer the traffic, taking care that no note is too dominant or too abrupt.
That is a juggling act when you're working with hundreds of essences, some as workaday as vanilla or grapefruit, others as rare as Indian lotus or South African freesia or as funky as suede, baked bread and seaweed.
That such a range of smells can be captured for perfumes is thanks in part to a technology called ``headspace,'' which enables perfumers to extract an essence from a flower or an object, reduce it to its molecular level and then reproduce it in the lab.
Grojsman grew up in Belarus, and remembers frolicking in wildflower fields, inhaling as she went and picking the flowers apart in search of their delightful aromas.
But she claims not to have been born with any extraordinary olfactory intuition. She became a lab technician at age 19, quickly demonstrating a nose for the business. That was about 30 years ago (Grojsman declines to reveal her age).
Still, even HER nose is fallible. Sometimes, as food is burning on the stove, she goes about her work, oblivious to her work.
``I'm not putting myself on trial 24 hours a day.''
If Grojsman has a signature, it is sensual perfumes. Women, she says, ``are there to be loved and cherished,'' and sensual perfumes aid that end.
One of Grojsman's inspirations is Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, she of unceasing ambition and wily charm. If Grojsman's perfumes can imbue women with just a bit of Cleopatra's charisma and headiness, then she is happy.
But be forewarned: If you want to wear Sophia Grojsman's perfumes, you better be prepared for pursuit by strangers, pickup lines from taxi drivers and, yes, leering men on the subways.
LENGTH: Long : 118 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. For Sophia Groisman, making perfume is likeby CNBconducting or composing a musical score. color.