by Mandy Aftel
The process allowed for no response to the evolving shape of the perfume, no firsthand, drop-by-drop experience of how the oils were interacting with one another or with the alcohol. Of course, the behavior of synthetics is more precise and predictable, which makes it possible to work with them in a more “scientific” way. And in order to make perfumes in substantial quantities, some reliance on formula is necessary. But a process that is so abstract from the outset strikes me as unromantic and antithetical to the primal, hands-on sensuality that is inherent in the materials themselves.
From my research, I discovered that even after the advent of a mass-market perfume industry, the methods of commercial perfumers were not always so clinical. Jean Carles, who created such trend-setting and wildly successful perfumes of the thirties as the unisex fragrance Canoe and the Schiaparelli perfume Shocking, recalled of his own apprenticeship:
In my early days88 on this rugged pathway, I found myself in the presence of tutors who seemed to have disregarded the necessity for basic rules and whose interest in our futures was of the mildest. Watching how they proceeded with their own work did not make it seem particularly absorbing: they appeared to believe in a happy-go-lucky way of life, desultorily dipped smelling blotters into the available samples of odorous materials, and thus their formulations progressed, small addition by small addition, and not according to some preestablished plan. Thus in the past, most of the great perfume creations, or rather, of the commercially successful perfumes, were produced almost by chance, sometimes to the unfeigned surprise of their originators!
Yet while “such happy occurrences are always possible,” Carles nevertheless cautions, “a firm belief in them should not be the guiding rule.”
Even in their more austere traditions, classical perfumers did acknowledge that a perfume oil is not a single scent but a complexity of scents that interact with one another in unpredictable ways, the equivalent of notes to a musician or color to a painter. In fact, the great perfumers, like Edmond Roudnitska and Jean Carles, considered an understanding of philosophy and music, with its complex intellectual acrobatics, central to the making of perfume. Few went as far as Septimus Piesse, who in his seminal The Art of Perfumery (1867) described an octave of odors: A = tonka bean, B = mint, C = jasmine, and so on up the scale. But perfumers did develop the habit of translating the art of perfume-blending into the language of base, middle, and top notes and chords, on the basis of their relative volatility.
Perfume manufactory, Nice
“The Gamut of Odors,” according to Septimus Piesse
And just as perfumers invoked music as a metaphor for perfume, artists, musicians, and writers did not hesitate to invoke perfume as a metaphor for the fundamental synesthesia of aesthetic response, which we experience when one sensation conjures up another—for example, when hearing a certain sound evokes a particular color. As Guy de Maupassant89 wrote, “On hearing that sonata, I could no longer tell whether I was breathing music or listening to scent. For the sounds, colors and smells do not answer one another in nature only, but in ourselves they are blended at times into a profound unity, drawing different responses from different organs.”
The linking of scent with sound and color has long historical roots. In Fragrant and Radiant Symphony, the twentieth-century British metaphysical writer Roland Hunt traces it through a long, glorious, and often mystical tradition90 to the funeral practices of the Egyptian kings, who “took with them to their tombs particular perfumes, colorful raiment, and musical instruments against the day when they would awaken to attune these vibrant things in resplendent symphony.” But no one has captured the experience of synesthesia more eloquently than Baudelaire:
Some perfumes are as fragrant91 as an infant’s flesh,
Sweet as an oboe’s cry, and greener than the spring.
Synthesthesia is based on a profound harmony among the senses themselves, which has its parallel point of convergence in the imagination. I like to be reminded of this fundamental identity of the senses as I work with scent, which is one of the reasons why I not only don’t mind but enjoy using those essential oils that are beautifully hued and color perfume in a jewel-like fashion. There is nothing more simple and mysterious than the sight of a drop of indigo-blue chamomile wending its way through a beaker of clear perfume alcohol, like a skywriter in a parallel universe. If you would like to experiment with color in perfume, here are some essences and hues to consider:
Reddish orange: rose absolute, patchouli
Orange: boronia, orange flower absolute, tagetes
Yellow: orange, ylang ylang concrete, lemon
Green: vetiver, violet leaf, green tea, clary sage concrete
Turquoise: lavender absolute
Dark blue: German chamomile
Brownish green: oakmoss, osmanthus
Amber: tuberose, jasmine, benzoin, champa
Brown: vanilla, tolu balsam, Peru balsam, labdanum, hay, blond tobacco
Notwithstanding commercial perfumers’ sophisticated understanding of the unruly, intricate, overlapping nature of sensation, the standardized methods that evolved among them in the twentieth century relied heavily on intellectual abstraction—on the ability of imagination to divorce itself from direct sensory input or to feed upon it long after the fact. Even Roudnitska says:
When the composer writes92 down a formula, his composition is not based on sensation but on the memory of sensations, in other words on abstractions of abstractions … We work with these abstract forms by making an effort to evoke and combine them in thought … All the various “prerequisites” have been mobilized and whisper the first elements which could correspond to our imagined form. We start by writing names in columns, in a sequence which is dictated, above all … by the fact that its tonality seems necessary for the envisaged construction. All our ideas land on the paper in a variety of forms which initially add to our general confusion but finally result in our idea of a perfume.
My own method of composition is much more intuitive and evolutionary. As in cooking, I like to be able to “taste” and adjust as I go. In fact, when I design a custom perfume for a client, we begin by selecting potential ingredients in a process much like going to the market and choosing whatever produce seems freshest and most appealing. Beginning with the top notes and working my way down to the earthy base notes, I have the client sample the scents directly, either straight from the bottle or, for the more intense scents, on a blotter.
Alchemical processes, from the Mutus liber, 1677
I smell each essence before I present it to the client, to reimmerse myself in the world of scent and to remind myself of the nuances of nature’s palate. I jot down the names of the essences that inspire intense attraction; ambivalence has no place here. I look for a pattern of likes and dislikes, using it to guide me as to which additional essences to present and which to avoid. For example, to someone who really likes Moroccan rose, I will also present Bulgarian and Egyptian rose. If she didn’t like labdanum, I’d stay away from oakmoss. I have more than two hundred essences in my collection, but I usually limit the number we sample so that olfactory fatigue doesn’t set in, and we pause from time to time to inhale from my wool scarf.
When we have finished with the top notes, I present the favorites again, this time ranking them from one to five according to the degree of passion they evoke. We repeat this process with the five favorite middle notes and then the five favorite base notes, until we have a ranked list of choices based on the customer’s actual olfactory experience and aesthetic. Usually I am able to create a perfume that uses at least two of her favorite essences in each chord; the rest depends upon how difficult or strong are the personalities of these favorites.
The next step is trickier: to narrow the range of potential ingredients to arrive at an original creation, harmonious but exciting. On a given day, a perfumer might be inspired by a new crop of orange blossoms or a vintage patchouli. But why, in addition, the ambergris of the whale, the anal secretions of the
civet cat, the oils of some flowers and the leaves of others?
Commercial perfumers tend to categorize perfumes in families, and you will stumble over the same terms repeatedly if you read any of the contemporary literature of perfume. The chief groupings are floral, Oriental, chypre, green, and citrus.
Florals, characterized by the dominance of rose and jasmine backed by ylang ylang and tuberose, are exemplified by Chloé, Giorgio, Joy, Fracas, White Shoulders, and Eternity. Within the florals are three major subgroups: green (a woody-powdery base with a green top of grasses and leaves, often including lavender, basil, chamomile, or galbanum), fresh (citrus top notes), and ambery (a sweet, powdery, amber base and a fruity and/or spicy top).
Orientals include the heaviest and some of the oldest perfumes available today. They are composed of the most intense spices, coupled with resins and exotic flowers. Ambery Orientals, such as Obsession, Angel, Shalimar, and Jicky, have a citrus top with an amber or vanilla base. Spicy Orientals have a dry, woody base with a spicy top made from clove, ginger, cardamom, coriander, and/or pepper, as in Opium, Youth Dew, and Bal a Versailles.
Chypres are based on the contrast between bergamot and oakmoss and often include patchouli, with generous top notes of citrus. Also included in this family are Annick Goutal’s Eau D’Hadrian, Private Collection, Paloma Picasso, Aromatics Elixir, Cristalle, and Mitsouko.
Green scents are sharper than the florals, more outdoorsy and sporty, calling to mind meadows, green grasses, and leaves. The dominant notes include pine, juniper, and fir, blended with herbs like basil, sage, and rosemary.
Citrus blends date to the earliest eaux de cologne. They are made from tangerine, orange, lemon, grapefruit, and bergamot, with a sprinkling of light herbs.
It is impossible to avoid thinking in categories when you compose perfume; indeed, it is quite helpful to do so. When composing, I find it more useful, however, to think in categories of the essences themselves, based on their common aromatic properties, and I use a wider range of classification to do so:
CLASSIFICATION OF FRAGRANCE GROUPS
(Top notes appear in roman, middle notes are italicized, and base notes are in small caps.)
Citrus bergamot, grapefruit, lime
Orange bitter orange, blood orange, eau de brouts, mandarin, neroli, orange flower absolute, petitgrain, sweet orange, tangerine
Lemon lemon, lemongrass, lemon verbena, litsea cubeba, melissa
Spicy allspice, cardamom, cinnamon, clove, clove absolute, coriander, ginger, ginger absolute, juniper, nutmeg, nutmeg absolute, black and green pepper, black pepper absolute
Herbal ARMOISE, bay, clary sage, CLARY SAGE CONCRETE, lavender, lavender absolute, LAVENDER CONCRETE, marjoram, oregano, rosemary, thyme, wormwood
Anise anise, basil, fennel, tarragon, TARRAGON ABSOLUTE
Mint pennyroyal, peppermint, spearmint, wintergreen
Floral boronia, carnation, CASSIE, champa, helichrysum, jasmine absolute, jasmine concrete, jonquil, kewda, linden blossom, magnolia, mimosa, orris, osmantbus, tuberose, violet leaf, ylang ylang, ylang ylang concrete
Rose Bulgarian, Egyptian, Indian, Moroccan, Russian, and Turkish rose; geranium; palmarosa; rose concrete; rose geranium
Woody bois de rose, cedarwood, cypress, fir, guaiacwood, pine, SANDALWOOD
Foresty BLACK SPRUCE ABSOLUTE, FIR ABSOLUTE, WHITE SPRUCE ABSOLUTE
Earthy ANGELICA, carrot seed, FLOUVE, LABDANUM, lovage, OAKMOSS, PATCHOULI, VETIVER
Edible BLACK TEA, cilantro, COCOA, coffee, COGNAC, GREEN TEA, Roman chamomile, VANILLA
Balsamic BENZOIN, COPAIBA, PERU BALSAM, styrax, TOLU BALSAM, TONKA
Resinous FRANKINCENSE, GALBANUM, MYRRH, OPOPONAX
Animal AMBRETTE, CIVET, COSTUS, DEERTONGUE, HAY, TOBACCO
Some essences, like tagetes, davana, cabreuva, blue chamomile, and beeswax, are so complex or unusual that they are difficult to categorize. They usually possess such strong odor intensity that they evoke only their own odor.
Notice that the citrus and mint families are all top notes. The floral and rose families are mostly middle notes. The foresty, resinous, and animal families are all base notes. The orange, spicy, and lemon families are a mixture of top and middle notes. Herbal, edible, anise, earthy, and woody span all three notes. This is useful to know when, say, you need a lemon note in the middle of a blend or are looking for a woody note as a top.
But how do you know when you need a lemon note in the middle or a woody note on top? How, in other words, do you learn to compose perfume?
Once I have decided to build an essence around one or two scents (the client’s favorites or my own selections), my next consideration is how the scents will interact with those I have already chosen. Like the cook who can picture in his head the bright orange of the butternut squash highlighted by the gray-green of the sage leaves and the ivory of the pasta, and can savor in anticipation how the succulence of the squash will be brought out by the pungency of the herb and the bland nuttiness of the starch, the experienced perfumer develops the capacity to conceive how different odors will work together, his imagination based on a thorough knowledge of the idiosyncratic nature of the individual ingredients.
A simple way to construct a perfume is by building each chord upon a favorite ingredient. You can form chords around these dominant notes, devoting half the volume of each to the dominant note and dividing the other half evenly between two supporting ingredients. The relegation of roles defines the ratio of the blend.
If you want to play it safe, you can compose each chord within the confines of a given fragrance family. For example, if your dominant base note is vanilla, you can complement it with tolu balsam and benzoin. This will make a very vanilla-y base chord that will appeal to most people. The overall effect of such chords is subtle, but not necessarily without depth. As the late-nineteenth-century perfume and cosmetic historian Arnold Cooley observed, “Odors that produce93 similar or allied effects, coalesce or enforce each other; and in some cases, these effects so blend as to lose their individual distinctness, and to affect the sense of smell with the same apparent unity of perception as a simple odor; just as notes of an harmonic chord affect an ordinary ear, not singly but as one sound.”
Or you can make riskier choices, putting together essences that might fight like cats and dogs but also might couple passionately, like two intense people. With risky choices, the blend you’re building will become either dramatically better or dramatically worse—there will be no middle ground. Again, the perfumer’s attention should not be on creating something merely beautiful so much as on bringing out unexpected qualities with the addition of new ingredients to those she has already chosen. For example, patchouli does wonderful things to rose, deepening and layering it so that it gives the impression of petals opening and unfurling infinitely. Wormwood has a similarly spectacular effect upon tuberose, and blond tobacco on lime.
Here is a list of essences and other scents with which they marry well:
ANGELICA ROOT: clary sage, OAKMOSS, PATCHOULI, VETIVER
Basil: bergamot, clary sage, grapefruit
BENZOIN: OAKMOSS, PERU BALSAM, styrax
Bois de rose: coriander, geranium, OLIBANUM, SANDALWOOD, tangerine, VETIVER
Boronia: bergamot, bitter orange, clary sage, COSTUS, SANDALWOOD
Cabreuva: rose, SANDALWOOD
Cardamom: bergamot, LABDANUM, OLIBANUM, ylang ylang
Chamomile, Roman: bergamot, clary sage, jasmine, LABDANUM, neroli, OAKMOSS
Champa: grapefruit, LAVENDER CONCRETE, lime, OAKMOSS, SANDALWOOD
Clary sage: cardamom, cedarwood, geranium, LABDANUM, lavender, SANDALWOOD
COGNAC: AMBRETTE, bergamot, clary sage, coriander, GALBANUM, lavender, ylang ylang
Coriander: bergamot, black pepper, cardamom, clary sage, jasmine, nutmeg
COSTUS: OAKMOSS, OPOPONAX, PATCHOULI
Fir: citruses, juniper berry, LABDANUM, OAKMOSS, PATCHOULI, rosemary
Geranium: bergamot, clove, jasmine
, lime, neroli, orange, PATCHOULI, rose, SANDALWOOD
Ginger: bois de rose, cedarwood, coriander, neroli, rose
Grapefruit, pink: basil, cedarwood, lavender, ylang ylang
Guaiacwood: OAKMOSS, orris, rose
Juniper berry: BENZOIN, LABDANUM, lovage, OAKMOSS
LABDANUM: bergamot, clary sage, lavender absolute, OAKMOSS, OPOPONAX
Lavender absolute: clary sage, LABDANUM, OAKMOSS, PATCHOULI, pine, VETIVER
Litsea cubeba: lavender, petitgrain, rosemary
Nutmeg: coriander, GALBANUM, OLIBANUM, black pepper
OAKMOSS: BENZOIN, lavender absolute, VANILLA, violet leaf
PATCHOULI: cedarwood, clary sage, clove, LABDANUM, lavender, rose, VETIVER
Spearmint: basil, grapefruit, jasmine, VETIVER
Tarragon: ANGELICA ROOT, clary sage, fir, GALBANUM, juniper, lavender, lime, OAKMOSS, bois de rose
TOBACCO, BLOND: bergamot, clary sage, COSTUS, LABDANUM, orange flower absolute, SANDALWOOD, VETIVER
Tuberose: neroli, black pepper, VANILLA, wormwood
VETIVER: clary sage, lavender, OAKMOSS, SANDALWOOD
Threesomes (dominant note first):
LABDANUM, PATCHOULI, bergamot
OAKMOSS, VANILLA, tuberose
Ylang ylang, black pepper, COGNAC
BLACK SPRUCE ABSOLUTE, COSTUS, PERU BALSAM