Fashion Reverie Exclusive: BLOCKI Fragrances, the True American Luxury Fragrance

 

One of the treasure gifts of the holiday season can be that very special fragrance. A fragrance that conjures up fond memories or takes you to a magical place. Olfactory senses can serve as portals to memory and destination. And what better way to stimulate holiday senses but through a fragrance the brings all good thoughts to the fore.

Since 1895 BLOCKI fragrances have been a mainstay of the luxury American fragrance market. As one of the first American luxury fragrance brands, is founder John Blocki was an early champion of American luxury fragrance. And though the brand went into decline in the 1950s, John Blocki’s great-great grandson, Tyler Kraemer, has relaunched BLOCKI fragrances with a new injection of craft, vigor, and unique storytelling.

Though these heirloom fragrances have a direct connection to the turn of the century, Tyler Kraemer and his team have expertly infused each fragrance with a modern distillation of charm, elegance, and panache. For this holiday season, there could be no greater gift than a BLOCKI fragrance. And Fashion Reverie is honored to re-introduce this decidedly American luxury fragrance to its viewers.

FR: BLOCKI is named after your great-great grandfather, John Blocki. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Tyler Kraemer: There is so much to tell. My great-great grandfather came from Pomerania and came to America as a small child. He started working in the chemistry business when he was 14. He became fascinated with fragrances early on and was sourcing fragrances from all over the world when sourcing was difficult. Virtually, no one in America was sourcing these global and international fragrances. So, my great-great grandfather began wholesaling those fragrances.

In 1895, he started making his own fragrances. Those fragrances became such a hit that eventually he had hundreds of fragrances under the Blocki name. He made fragrances for different companies with manufacturing facilities in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Canada. It became a significant business. My great-great grandfather at that time was competing with the perception and reality that great French brands were the best fragrance brands. In that respect, my great-great grandfather was an early champion of American fragrances.

My great grandfather, Frederick Blocki was very involved in the business, but passed away prematurely doing a flu pandemic. After that John Blocki’ s daughter took over the business. John Blocki passed away in 1934, coincidentally, the same year Francois Coty passed away. The business continued during the Great Depression and WW II, eventually it was closed in the 1950s.

FR: At the time, were the BLOCKI fragrances considered luxury fragrances?

Tyler Kraemer: Absolutely. There were no department stores or perfumeries in the US at that time. All fragrances were sold through drugstores and apothecaries. BLOCKI fragrances were sold through those drugstores or apothecaries and were luxury fragrances created for a burgeoning American aristocracy. The packaging was made for a luxury market and you can tell that from some of the packaging we have been able to curate from our archives. John Blocki was using very rich ingredients like Bulgarian rose and ingredients from the Grasse region of France. From these ingredients, packaging and price points we know that he was selling to a luxury customer. Additionally, his brother owned 13 apothecaries, so BLOCKI fragrances were also sold there as well.

FR: Grasse is in the south of France and lots of fragrances are still harvested there.

Tyler Kraemer: Correct. Historically, fragrances were grown and harvested there because the climate is perfect for that. However, the ingredient that are used today come from all over the world. We use ingredients from all over world, and we try to use fragrances from the US. We use cedar fragrances from Virginia and Texas.

FR: At the turn of the century, what made the BLOCKI fragrances so special?

Tyler Kraemer: The way my great-great grandfather was formulating and packaging his fragrances was very connected to American luxury at that time. He was able to capture that time period and what was going on, and that was unusual for American perfumers at the turn of the century. He was creative and a very energetic person. He did significant traveling, sourcing fragrances. He spent many months in the Italian Riviera, and he would come back to the States with fragrances that captured the essence of the Italian Riviera that somehow became very American. That ability to combine the Old World, Europe, with the New World, America, was unique to the BLOCKI fragrance line.

FR: You restarted your great, great grandfather’s perfume brand in 2000. How did this come about?

Tyler Kraemer: The story of how I came back to my family’s legacy is kind of funny. We are telling stories with our fragrances and the story behind this is that as a child I always had a very active nose. I identified things by smell, probably more than my other senses.

I knew something about our family history as a child, but I didn’t really feel connected to it. Both me and my wife have law backgrounds. After law school, I started digging back into my family archives and I gained a connection to the legacy of the BLOCKI family.

Around the year 2000 we started exporting and importing essential oils and floral waters from Europe. I always knew in the back of mind that I wanted to revive the perfumery. We relaunched BLOCKI fragrances in 2015. It was a gradual process.

FR: Was it always your aim to relaunch the BLOCKI fragrance line or was it something that developed over time as you were importing and exporting essential oils and floral water?

Tyler Kraemer: I was so enamored with the individual ingredients that we were now able to get from Slavic countries, and there were some practical aspects to importing and exporting in the early 2000s. About a year into that business, I realized that my true passion lay in combining all these special ingredients that could produce a new fragrance impression and tell a story all on its own.  It took time before we are to reach back into my family’s legacy and relaunch BLOCKI.

FR: BLOCKI is an American fragrance brand. That said; who do you partner with to make these incredible fragrances?

Tyler Kraemer: We have a relationship with lots of team members. We have a fragrance manufacturer that we work with that is known for their incredible natural ingredients. They give us access to their materials. They are in the New York and New Jersey area.

FR: When you restarted the business, you recaptured the original formulas, why that direction?

Tyler Kraemer: We don’t recapture the original formulas because today you cannot not use some of the products that they used many years ago as ingredients, such as animal products. Interestingly, we do have original formulas that are over 100 years old and if we use reverse-engineering. We can estimate what the ingredients were, and we can mimic those fragrances. We decided very early on that we were inspired by the BLOCKI story and could to an extent reproduce the fragrances.

Four Locks is a violet fragrance and violet fragrances were very popular at the turn of the century. BLOCKI had seven violet fragrances at the time. That said; we worked with a fragrance distiller who knew how to create vintage violet fragrances and from there we modernized the fragrance.  That was our way of being inspired by the past, but not taking old formulas and duplicating them. Instead, we have modernized the fragrance.  Our violet fragrance has hints of that nostalgic smell and romantic beauty but also has elements of mint and freshness that modernizes the fragrance.

FR: When describing your fragrances, you often talk about walks. Could you explain what a walk is and how that fits into developing BLOCKI fragrances?

Tyler Kraemer: Walks are inspired by memoirs that were written by John Blocki’s mother who was an immigrant from Pomerania in 1872. She was a very educated woman and she talked about nature and Europe, the Old World, and America, the New World, in this memoir. We pulled from this memoir which inspired our first 3 fragrances. We were inspired by how she described northern Pomerania and the beauty of springtime.

FR: So, when a customer buys one of these three fragrances they are also experiencing a springtime walk through northern Pomerania.

Tyler Kraemer: Correct. The fragrance can take you from the windswept shores to the hills of the surrounding forest, meandering paths that set your mind at rest. The forest is quiet with cool fresh air that is surrounded by dappled sunlight. We want our customer to almost have a tangible experience of this through our fragrance and have their own experience.

FR: And you use sustainable elements. Could you expand on that?

Tyler Kraemer: Using sustainable elements is very important to BLOCKI. It is important for us to know where our ingredients are coming from. There is no testing on animals. We don’t use parabens or colors or dyes. For us using sustainable elements is a logical decision. The ingredients we use sometimes produce some wild colors and we like that. We want to be confident that all the ingredients are harvested and produced in a way ethologically sound.

Believe it or not, that is our legacy. The Blockis were way ahead of their time and were using the best ingredients from around the world and being conservationists at the same time. So, we are continuing that legacy.

FR: So, you are saying that the fragrances are not colorless, but color comes from the used ingredients.

Tyler Kraemer: Absolutely. We are not adding color. If you see one of our fragrances and the color is unusual, that is color of the mint or the Swiss cognac.

FR: Could you talk about some of your top-selling fragrances?

Tyler Kraemer: We have some emerging top sellers. We recently launched Saharet and Kosciuszko. They were fun to make. Saharet features pink pepper, cardamom, and mandarin, which compiles the sweetness in the fragrance. But the fragrance also creates an herbal sensation which comes from the Egyptian geranium, amber, and cashmere. It is hard to identify what the smell is; it almost defies a category or convention. We like to call Saharet mischief in a bottle.

The fragrance works well with who Saharet was. Saharet was a free-spirit performer during WW I who followed her own path and direction. So, we wanted a fragrance that embodied those qualities.

Kosciuszko is my personal favorite BLOCKI fragrance. I haven’t found anything on the market quite like it. I view all fragrances as genderless, but if I had to label Kosciuszko it is unabashedly masculine. You can really smell the Swiss cognac, tobacco, and gunpowder. The fragrance has an earthy introduction and then you smell the cedar, cypress oil and musk. The fragrance does tell a story and we created this fragrance that goes beyond the current trends and interestingly, it is gaining a lot of traction in the market.

FR: What are the price points of your fragrances?

Tyler Kraemer: For a 50 ml it is currently $165.

FR: What sets BLOCKI fragrances apart from other fragrance brands?

Tyler Kraemer: There are real stories behind our fragrances. And our fragrances embody and an American ethos of luxury that has been lost. In the modern perfume industry, there are so many launches every year. Include the celebrity perfume launches and launches that have 12 fragrances per perfume and you have a very crowded, over-saturated market. We are doing things the way John Blocki did it, which is a lot slower than the current market. Each of fragrances represents something specific and that is what separates us. We also use very high-grade materials. And we are deliberate about how we tell our story around each fragrance. We are not concerned about launching the way other brands launch; we launch a new fragrance when it makes sense to us to launch.

 

FR: What’s next for BLOCKI fragrances?

Tyler Kraemer: Because of our legacy, we have so many stories to tell. We have six fragrances currently on the market and every season we sell out of at least one of them. So, we are now in the process or recreating some of our fragrances with new ingredients and telling some of these fantastic legacy tales through our BLOCKI fragrances.

—William S. Gooch

 

 

Image credits

• blocki-1.jpg — Editorial image.
• john-blocki-wikipedia.jpg — Credit/source: wikkipedia.com.
• blocki-4.jpg — Editorial image.
• blocki-2.jpg — Editorial image.
• blocki-3.jpg — Editorial image.
• blocki-1-2.jpg — Editorial image.