Amanda Walker
Profile: Having been born in Montana, and raised in San Jose, CA and Park City, UT, I remember spending many summers with my grandmother in southern Oregon. There I was exposed to nature hikes, as well as flower and plant identification and collecting. Grandma also had a fascinating dressing room full of vintage cosmetics and perfumes I was allowed to explore for hours on end. She actually encouraged me to play ‘store’ and practice selling the products back to her. In many cases they were small sample sizes in miniature boxes and I learned that incredibly, wonderful things could come in small packages.
We were a family that traveled and on my first trip to Hawaii I was impressed with the many new, and unique flowers, plants and fragrances. I also found entire stores devoted to jelly bracelets, stickers and Hello Kitty products (good things that come in small packages). Between the crisp aroma of the two dozen citrus trees at our home in San Jose and the scents emanating from sage, yarrow and evergreen trees in Park City, I soon gained a sensorial awareness of the wide variety of natural scents that come from plants growing in different regions of the country.
As a young teen I began to notice the consumer products I was using were affecting me in a negative way. I didn’t like the scent and I didn’t like the way they made my skin feel so I would combine flavors from the kitchen: vanilla extract, orange juice, squished avocado and coconut butter as lotion or conditioner; liked it and shared it with my friends who liked it too. By that time I was an avid collector of perfume, who had already been to Grasse, France to study how perfume was designed and manufactured. I also sought out the finest American distillers and natural perfumers, and spent time studying with them. Later, during my tenure at Limited Brands in New York, I spent my days buying and collecting various brands of skincare and fragrance products, and putting together vignettes which integrated product with clothing to create proposed, new lifestyle brands. I later transitioned to one of New York’s top advertising agencies and saw how many of America’s top brands could be catapulted onto the scene by creating a unique ‘consumer experience’. At the agency I also had the opportunity to meet and work with the founder of Tom’s Shoes who inspired me to believe that a top brand could also be philanthropic and purposeful.
By 2008 having lived in NYC for five years as a vegan and worked studying the perfume and personal care products market, I realized there were no American perfume lines certified ‘true organic’. I resolved to put all my past experience into formulating my own USDA certified, organic scent which I named ‘Green’.
"Untitled", Lee Bontecou, welded steel canvas black fabric soot and wire, 58x 58 1/2 x 17 3/8 in, 1959
Favorite American Artist: My favorite American artist is Lee Bontecou who uses rare, uncommon and repurposed materials that many people would overlook for the sake of Art. She is an artist whose designs break barriers and go outside stereotypical female artists’ offerings to create surreal concepts that can be universally understood on their own merits.
Amanda distilling pine combs with Eric Bresselsmith
On American Perfumery: I too want to ‘break barriers’ in the evolution of American perfumery by invigorating our own agricultural resources to produce the finest raw materials in the world while utilizing recycled and repurposed materials as a sustainable initiative in cosmetic packaging. To that end, my packaging is 100% derived from post-consumer waste, embedded with flower seeds so the user can plant it, and thereby create a cradle to cradle product cycle.
–Amanda Walker, Founder and Perfumer of A Perfume Organic
Editor's Note: Amanda founded the NYC Perfumers Group which everyone is welcome to Like on Facebook. Amanda represents the growing artisan movement in New York City; all materials are domestic and all A Perfume Organic fragrances are hand poured in small batches in Manhattan-MC
For our draw, Amanda is offering any of her USDA organic perfumes: Green, Urban Organic, Perfumed Wine-Rose, White Majik or Mejica. To be eligible please leave a detailed comment about what you found interesting about Amanda's profile and the name of the fragrance you would like to win. Draw ends Sunday May 27, 2012