About Possets
The Preliminaries:
To contact Possets: info@possets.com
Please feel free to contact Possets with any questions or thoughts you might have. We love to hear from our customers.
What are Possets®?
A "posset" is an archaic English term which originally meant a sweet smelling "sop" or palliative which was concocted only to make you feel better, but not to cure anything. Later it came to mean something you treated yourself to, a small personal indulgence. It rhymes with "cosset" because the two words could be used interchangeably. But, alas, the word "posset" fell out of fashion, until now.
Possets are perfumes made to be pure pleasure, without worrying about the rules or what you "should" have in them. I frequently have found commercial perfumes to be too sharp and medicinal, and often just hinting at the more beautiful parts rather than presenting unabashed loveliness without limit. I wanted things which were not ashamed to be: pretty, unusual, and even witty.
What I specialize in is superbly blended perfumes with an edge of gorgeous originality. Some of the ingredients I use are unexpected, some are classics of the art, some combinations are a surprise, and some are new twists on old favorites. As you may have suspected, I adore creativity and I bet you will, too.
What are your International shipping rates, and what is the mailing charge within the United States?
ALL orders under $50 total cost $2.50 to ship anywhere, to Atlanta or Albania it doesn't matter. On ALL orders over $50, the shipping charge is $0. I will send you your >%50 order anywhere for free. If you place an order for $50.01 I will mail it to you for nothing if you live in Newport KY or Ice Station Zebra in the Antarctic.
What kind of skills do you have that allow you to be a perfumer?
There are quite a few seemingly unrelated skills I have which are exceptionally useful in being a perfumer. I have loved horticulture for all my life and have grown a great many of the plants I use in my perfuming work: various roses and jasmines, osmanthus (Sweet Olive which I grow on my windowsill), mints, herbs, patchouli (smells just the same as a plant as it does as an oil), tuberose, petunias (only the dark purple ones have a scent nowadays), vegetables of all kinds. So I know very well what plants should smell like and how the essences I get compare.
I am also a good cook, that is important. You have to have an inkling of how different combinations will smell, and you can transfer what you know about smell from cooking.
I am also lucky in that I have been exposed to some of the great perfumes from the time I was a child. My mother loved good perfume and bought a lot of it in France. I know what a really good chypre should smell like, what Arpege and Femme smelled like when they were new and made with the best ingredients, what Joy is like, the difference between the various grades of some famous scents (there are import grades, domestic, perfume, cologne, etc.). I have also lived through some really peculiar days in perfuming (the '80's with their loud "musks" and the current "foody" scents which I love). So my "scent palette" is pretty varied.
The rest is: practice, trial and error, and hard work.
How long have you been making perfume?
I started trying to make perfume when I was six years old. We had a farm in Southern Maryland and I would gather rose petals from a beautifully scented old rose bush we had and crush them with clover blossoms, magnolias, crepe myrtle or whatever was scented and blooming at the time. My infant efforts didn't yield perfume, but it did make me anxious to learn more. Alas, there was no place to go and no one else knew anything about this esoteric practice.
In 1992 I met a woman who owned the local Caswell and Massey in Cincinnati where I was living. She was the only person who had a big array of perfume ingredients and gorgeous scented products. We became good friends and would meet frequently and make blends. She taught me about suppliers of perfume oils of all types. I made a line of aromatheraputic oils and perfumes. By the way, the name of that little company was "Possets".
Time passed and my friend moved away and I was pursuing other things in my life. Years later my interest in making perfume revived, and since the internet became popular, the world of scent opened up for me in ways which it had not before.
Sometimes I laugh when I make perfume because what I produced was so good that no other response will do. Sometimes I laugh because there are so many connections between our delightfully primitive scent appreciation centers and our experiences.
I have made a great many wonderful friends through perfumery and it's a pursuit which seems to spread happiness like no other endeavor.
I hear a rumor that you were going to bring out new scents every month, is this true?
Yes, I have well over 100 scent recipes in my file and I am going to be creating more. Every month I will be bringing out new ones so bookmark this website to be updated. I will also send you an e-mail announcement if you ask me to.
Can you add me to the mailing list so I am sure to get notice of your new scent offerings?
Yes, just send me an e-mail and tell me that you want to be on the mailing list for Possets. I won't sell your name to anyone for spam because I don't know how and I don't want to know either. Here is a link. Or just send me an e-mail.
How can you make and sell these scents so reasonably? I'm used to paying a great deal more for a great deal less.
I can do a lot of things myself which other people would charge me a lot of money to do. So, I can keep the price low. For instance, I do my own website, I design and print my own labels, and more. So, I can keep the price down, the quality up and have a good time. Also, I live in a pretty inexpensive city in the Midwest. The prices I pay for rent, utilities, gas, supplies and such are cheap compared to the coasts, so that gets passed on to the consumer. I am always looking for ways to get the same value for less and pass that on; for instance, my shipping charges are based on First Class mail vs. higher Priority Mail because my lag time is low due to planning and planned production schedules. That's not too romantic, but it works and lets you get great scent for less. Hooray for Production Control and the Post Office.
Do you use animal products in Possets and can you say you are cruelty free regarding animals?
I do NOT use animal products in Possets and I do NOT support any supplier who engages in animal cruelty. If I found out that one of my suppliers did engage in animal testing, I would have to stop using them. It's perfume, it's not worth any pain to any creature. It's supposed to spread pleasure.
Who did the artwork on this site?
Some of the Possets bottle label artwork is mine, some are oil paintings and others are digital images. Others were done by Toulouse Lautrec, Edouard Manet, and there will be more. The website is full of the paintings of great Renaissance painters like: Botticelli, Signorelli, and Tiepolo.
Tell me what you can about what goes into your scents.
I sell two separate lines of perfume: Possets and Possets Naturals.
Most "modern" perfumes consist of: essential oils, perfume oils, carrier oils, accords, and aromas. In short, real things and artificial things. With the Possets regular line, I will use just about anything safe to achieve the effect I want. I put them in a plant oil base because the scent stays longer and it has a natural preservative in it which will keep your perfume fresher while allowing the various components to blend and age magnificently.
With Possets Naturals I use certified organic vegetable oil as a carrier. All of the ingredients are natural, and by that I mean processed as little as possible. I do not use: "nature identical" chemicals, any accords with anything synthetic in them, no synthetics whatsoever. I won't use over-processed naturals, either. If there is a question as to whether a component is natural or not, I error on the side of being too strict in my interpretation of "natural". I use as many organic scented ingredients as I can without sacrificing quality of scent (you cannot get all essential oils certified organic). So I am selling you the most organic and most pure fragrances anyone can possibly produce.
I am so sensitive, can I use your scents without breaking out or having any sort of bad reaction?
Nobody can promise you that you will never have a bad reaction to anything. If you suspect you are allergic or sensitive to scents, I would advise you not to use perfume at all.
What kind of packaging do you use with Possets?
I am a stickler for practicality. I really get annoyed with fancy packaging which ends up not working. I use a plain pharmaceutical/aromatherapy 7 milliliter bottle for my scents. They are called "5ml" bottles, but they hold 7 and that's what I put in them. I chose the amber colored ones because they do a great job in filtering the light and keeping it from deteriorating the perfume. Sometimes it is difficult to apply perfume from an opened bottle without spilling too much. My bottles are equipped with "Euro dropper" tops which only let one drop at a time escape. They make it very easy to apply just the amount you want. Also, if you wanted to put a drop or two on a light bulb or in a scent "burner", or reed diffuser.
The bottles may have either a black or white cap. I am trying to use only white caps for Possets. In the future I may have to resort to black ones, but I want the white caps to be part of the "look".
I make the labels and really love the artwork chosen or made for them. The outer wrappings vary. I want them to be pretty as well as stand up in the mail and not weigh too much and look great by the time they get to you.
Do you have a return policy?
Sorry, due to the nature of my product, I cannot accept returns. Each one of the 7ml bottles I sell is sealed after I fill them. When the seal is broken, I can't resell it to anyone else. I cannot accept back samples either.
What is that circle "R" behind the word Possets? Why does it appear so often?
Possets is a registered trademark of the Fabienne Christenson LLC Corporation. Any use of the name for commercial purposes without prior permission constitutes trademark infringement (I call it poaching) it means you are not as creative as I am, and I will go after you for that as an act of Socio-Commercial Darwinism and sport.
Anything else you want to know?
E-mail me using the link above and I will get back with you as soon as possible. If you ask me a profound enough question, I may make it one of the questions asked here in the FAQ! And credit you, of course.