Readers of The Economist and jaundiced realists like myself will not be surprised to hear that diversity and competition are the engines of creation. Add to that the magic element of surplus, i.e. a surfeit of talented art school graduates chasing too few jobs, and you have the makings of a revolution. This is precisely what happened in postwar Italy: too many architects + too few interesting things to build = Italian Design. A similar thing may be happening in perfumery, thanks to the Web and despite the insane restrictions on the shipping of “dangerous” goods.

This may explain why I keep getting sample sets from people who have not gone through the rigorous and  mostly disheartening training process that steers passionate apprentice perfumers towards decades of drudgery and imitation. Sixteen92 is headed by Claire Baxter who describes herself  as an “Art school-educated former advertising Creative Director, fine art photographer and classically trained…