iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

I’ve been painting and drawing every day this year so far. It’s a lifelong hobby. I’m not aiming to be a pro. What I discovered at some point is that it calms me down (woman discovers art therapy).

A colourful and chaotic melange of various paintings and drawings depicting botanical, abstract and fantasy subjects.

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

Would this be a good time to examine why modern Western fashion ideals are a bit problematic…

Woman with long purplish-pink hair is sipping tea out of a Moomin mug.

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

Looks like monsters representing the collapsing illusion of American political power are infesting my brain like the cordyceps of this chimera.

A multimedia sketch in a sketchbook of a grotesque chimera with two front legs wearing red jester boots, two back legs blue, a butthole that looks like a mouth making an o, a demon tail, a microwilly peeking out and pointing at a cute teddybear on the ground, and a long neck with Trump’s head, mask-like. The monster is infested with cordyceps and one of the fruiting bodies is Putin.

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

This year I had a plan: to give myself permission to do bad art, every day, as a form of nervous system regulation and learning. A sketch a day. The underlying lofty aim was to learn techniques that could help me pick up botanical illustration. Well, this is what I’ve sketched recently.

An amateur sketch in a two page spread sketchbook of a blue bunny hat surrounded by a fence and handguns.

An amateur sketch of a horror creature: multi-headed long-necked mouth monster with blood spattered everywhere, about to take a bite of a word PEACE, suspended in mid-air and apparently constructed out of torn intestines.

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

A few of us indie perfume brands and Sainte Cellier, an independent retailer of multiple hard to find perfumes have organised a pop-up shop in London this November. Do visit! Meet the founders, try the perfumes.

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 27/10/2025

Packing the first round of book orders today and it’s quite emotional. www.demoaccords.com

A big haphazard stack of yellow and pink-coloured small hardback books on a marble table with thank you slips, tote bags and flat boxes to one side.

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 26/10/2025

10 years ago I started investigating and writing about fragrance regulations because they seemed so inconsistent. They still seem that way to me today but I have learned some stuff along the way. Read my free blog here: substack.com/@pialong/

Title text “WHO BANS FRAGRANCE INGREDIENTS?” over an image of sliced lemons resting on a grey stone slab.

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

I wrote a book! And 10 perfumes to go with it. The formulas are published in full. Preorders are now open for a month and the official launch is in November.

black and white illustration of a plain, rounded perfume bottle with a French cursive phrase underneath: ceci n’est pas un parfum (this image is referencing the famous painting called Treachery of Images). A stencil painted pink logomark DEMO ACCORDS is layered over it. www.demoaccords.com is written at the bottom of the image.

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

POV - you’re a Finnish perfumer starting your day:

Grey and black Moomin mug featuring Stinky clutching glass bottles and sprinting away with a grin.

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 30/04/2025

Listen to our roundtable about dupe culture in perfumery + about perfumer education, retail and cost of goods issues & about ethics in the trade: open.spotify.com/episode/59LW...

A screenshot from Spotify of The Eco Well podcast: Copy Cats, Counterfeit and Culture; the Ethics of Perfume. Roundtable with Christophe Laudamiel and Pia Long.

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 27/04/2025

Ok, finished Kara’s book, now starting this one as a palate cleanser (somehow lately I feel stupidly guilty for reading fiction - audiobooks aside). Anyway. I know @scalzi.com will cure that

A photo of a hardback book with a black cover that has red and white text on it and a stylised cartoonish illustration of a Bond Villain-type man holding a white cat. Starter Villain (it’s a family business) by John Scalzi.

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 27/04/2025

This really gave me Lush flashbacks (they had a team called “Ambassadors of Fun” 😬 for example…). One day a good investigative journalist will write a hell of a book on that company. But in the meantime, read this one: Burn Book by Kara Swisher

A photo of page 251 of “Burn Book: a Tech Love Story” in which the pertinent section goes “Tony was entranced with the idea of what I thought of as forced joy.”

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

Went out to the bluebells with this Good Boi.

A fluffy brown dog looking up from a sit in front of bluebells.

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

Enjoy this off-brand food content: 400g of oat flakes 200g nuts & seeds (I used pecan, pumpkin seed and flaked almond) + 70g maple syrup 10g stevia 2 tbsp vanilla extract (or vanilla sugar with real vanilla) 20g Naturli vegan butter 2 tbsp olive oil (add 10g more syrup or stevia if you want)

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 20/04/2025

The American Eagle, currently

A pen and ink sketch in a sketchbook of a frowning anthropomorphised cartoon eagle - patchy, truly balding, shakily drawn.

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

NEW BOOKS 🤩 Happy to find out that our tiny local independent bookshop not only stocks @aptshadow.bsky.social but the owner said “there are a lot of fans here so we always have stock”.

A photo of two books standing side-by-side: Careless People (a story of where I used to work) & Alien Clay.

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

(Easter) bunny necklace! I was born on an Easter Monday so my childhood featured bunnies somewhat (I had two as pets, although one of them sadly got stepped on by a cow).

A close-up of a white woman’s neck wearing a white rabbit Les Nereides charm surrounded by enamel flowers and two small pearls.

A middle-aged white woman with rose gold wavy hair.

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 18/04/2025

What I look like vs what I’m listening to:

Middle-aged white woman with pale skin and a mischievous expression wearing blue headphones.

Bloodywood: Halla Bol (album cover screenshot from Spotify).

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

Read my love letter to fragrance enthusiasm at Basenotes:

“What if we looked at how literature, music and pop culture can have spaces that are parallel and connected to the creators and commercial enterprises but not directly driven by them?”

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

Post you from a different era

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

Mä liityn täältä Englannista käsin kerhoon. Tämä sarja oli mun lapsuuden kirjastovisiittien kohokohta.

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

A timely book recommendation for helpful background via courageous investigative journalism by @jessikka.bsky.social on Putin’s troll factories (and how his global disruption has shaped the geopolitical landscape we find ourselves in today…) www.igpub.com/putins-trolls/

A blue red and white book cover of Putin’s Trolls by Jessikka Aro (on the frontlines of Russia’s information war against the world).

Putin’s Trolls is a chilling account of Russian information warfare, shedding light on the individuals and organizations behind the Kremlin’s coordinated, military-style social media psy-ops against the Western world.

In this courageous and unflinching book, award-winning journalist Jessikka Aro interweaves her own dramatic story as a target of Russian social media propaganda with accounts from many internationally known critics of the Kremlin, who share their own stories of being targeted by Russia’s multifaceted cyber warfare campaigns. Among those featured are Bill Browder, author of Red Notice, Eliot Higgins, founder of the investigative community Bellingcat, and news anchor Liz Wahl, who famously resigned on air from the Russian propaganda network, RT.

As Jessikka began to investigate the impact of the Kremlin’s troll operations outside of Russia, she learned that private citizens in many other countries were being victimized by Kremlin-designed information campaigns. These actions were frequently conducted through an organized “troll factory” led by Russia’s security and intelligence apparatus, using unregulated social media platforms including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

This is how I feel when a fragrance accord suddenly slots into place: goosebumps #perfumeSky

A photo of a page from “BOOKS, Art, Craft & Community” with yellow themed images and text that reads “When the colours appear in the pot, it is quite magical and gives me the feeling of being some kind of alchemist or a witch. I find it incredible that plants can have so many secrets.

A photo of the cover of a large hardback book: BOOKS, Art, Craft & Community

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

Meanwhile, in Milan, where @nickrgilbert.bsky.social has been showing our perfumes to oodles of people today…

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

Making a super tasty Kong for my dog to entertain him while he waits until walk time = 🥹 Having said Kong thrown at me pointedly after being emptied in minutes = 😐

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

Putin, bubby, I’m your orange knight!

Photo of Hans Gruber sitting in a brown leather chair from the film Die Hard.

Image of Harry Ellis sitting in a brown leather chair grinning stupidly, from the film Die Hard.

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

The lab currently looks and sounds like this:

Photo of a fragrance laboratory showing lab benches, shelves full of glass bottles and a compounding desk with a chair.

Album cover of Kettel, Myam James, Part 1

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

Part 2: about compressed vs solubilised scents.

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

There’s a lot of talk in the fragrance fandom (my way of describing “fragcomm”, coz it is more of a fandom than a community) about “perfume concentrations” and… a lot of it misses at least 50% of the point.

A screenshot of an Instagram caption by Perfumer Pia reads: Inspired by some recent posts on here about “filler ingredients” in cosmetics made me think of that perpetual myth in the perfume world that perfumes should be judged based on how concentrated they are. I wanted to show you a different way of looking at it. When I teach someone to always evaluate perfume oil concentrate in its intended base, it’s because the base product is like a canvas - without which you cannot see the true picture. You must create with intent, and an Eau de Cologne will not smell good if you add it to the solvent mix at the same concentration as Eau de Parfum. You would get a distorted, over-saturated image. Now - whether someone has actually given the perfumer a proper budget for the oil in the first place, well that’s another issue entirely. You can definitely still create beautiful perfumes from inexpensive materials, and skilled perfumers can make something glorious out of something simple, but there is a breaking point of course and then you’re left with no money for the sophisticated ingredients that can make all the difference.

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

Looks like I’ll be reading this from cover to cover within 48h. Anyone fighting disinfo & interested in the true extent of Russian state interference in world politics & elections needs to read this book. When I fight misinformation in my trade, it’s just a little symptom of a global crisis.

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

Tämäpäs löytyikin mun kirjahyllystä 😅

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

Inspired by @outokuningas.bsky.social - I had to dig out my second hand taskari acquisitions:

A stack of Donald Duck comic book “pocket books” in Finnish

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

Picking up my v. topical library reservations seemed like the perfect outing for the Komisaario Palmu-themed Suomen Dekkariseura tote bag that I got at last October’s Helsinki book fair. I think this shall henceforth be my new library bag.

A photo of two library books stacked on top of each other on a black fabric surface. The top book is blue with a white title “An Ugly Truth” authored by Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang. The title below is white with a black and white photo of the author visible on the spine. Red title reads: Burn Book.

A photo of a black fabric tote bag partially visible, with a book resting on the lower part of it. The tote bag has a white print with a black line drawing of Komisaario Palmu, encircled by text that reads SUOMEN DEKKARISEURA.

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

I got some rooooses, I’m pretty haaaappy 😊 (somehow this required an internal Miss Congeniality-voice).

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

I’ve recently used Ysamber K in an eau de cologne type that I loaded with citrus, green and fresh materials - and it meshed so beautifully without overpowering the composition. (The enclosed image is from Scent & Chemistry, the Molecular World of Odours, Ohloff, Pickenhagen, Kraft).

A photo of fragrance chemistry describing the route to obtain Ysamber K

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

Today what I look like vs what I feel like:

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

Anyone else have entire conversations with their dog or just me?

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Pia Long @perfumer-pia.bsky.social · 01/02/2025

He’s SO cheeky and so cute.

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