Just under a year ago, interested Mibelle AG employees were invited to nurture and practice their creative abilities in an unusual project that was not part of their regular job. Specifically, it concerned perfuming the historic rooms at Wildegg Castle in an innovative way, alongside professional perfumers. Three creative teams formed, who stepped up to the challenge and for six months developed concepts and ideas for the Festival of Fragrance. Their dedication and considerable enthusiasm resulted in extremely exciting fragrance experiences. Until the Festival's official opening, however, no-one knew how everything would work on site and, above all, how visitors would receive the work.
Fragrant creativity
The result could certainly be smelled and was impressive. The castle attic was transformed into a fragrant garden room, the otherwise absolutely bare room being decorated with suspended dried-flower bouquets, baskets full of dried flowers, and massive, bulbous bottles of different essential oils. New life was brought to the aristocratic stables with animal silhouettes projected onto the walls. Their not unpleasant smells could be smelled from a display of pharmacy bottles and nicely arranged test tubes. And at the very end, on traversing the darkened cellar exit, we encountered smells and scents that would previously have been familiar to the lord of the castle, Bernhard Effinger, on his hunting expeditions.
The internationally renowned perfumers and fragrance experts also succeeded in creating completely new experiences in the rooms. From the castle cellar to under the eaves, the Festival provided an interesting journey through the world of fragrances.
Our team leader also proved to be an expert group leader and, together with an historian, was able to provide visitors to the castle with lots of interesting information about the rooms and their fragrance concepts during the one-hour castle tour. All the guided tours, of the perfume studios to the incense performances, were soon booked up.
Objective totally achieved
During the exhibition week our participants received many compliments from visitors to the castle. Above all we received enthusiastic feedback about our creative teams’ participation and work.
The Festival’s instigators, Verein SCENT, were not the only ones to leave with an extremely favourable impression. Our CEO, Luigi Pedrocchi, is also thrilled by the participants’ dedication and passion: “We totally achieved our objectives with the Festival of Fragrance project. The teams displayed skills which we will need much more in future in order to be successful in the market. Creativity and innovation are critical to our long-term success. So our objective remains to blaze new trails and dare to experiment.“
