by Mandy Aftel
SANDALWOOD, OLIBANUM, cinnamon
And remember:
Rose, jasmine, and bergamot blend with everything. VANILLA, bitter orange, lime, tangerine, and pink grapefruit go with almost everything.
Perhaps because I am a counselor as well as a perfumer, I tend to see analogies between the dynamics of personality and the dynamics of working with aromatic materials. I think of the essences as having personalities—some difficult, others congenial, some attractive but without depth, others turgid and tenacious. Some ingredients have to be wrestled into submission before they will surrender themselves to the common good. Others need to be coaxed drop by drop until a flawless symbiosis is achieved.
Pharmacist’s boy compounding a perfume, 1512
There are some essences that I think of as particularly hard to get along with but worth the effort for the unmistakable shapeliness and texture they contribute to a fragrance. Often from exotic substances—ambrette seed, civet, wormwood, champa, patchouli, ginger, ambergris, cognac, musk—they reward the perfumer’s imagination as no other oils can. Not only do they add their own pronounced scent to a fragrance, they also interact unpredictably with the other ingredients. They are a risk, with the power to utterly transform or destroy a blend.
These essences can function as accessory notes, to use the term coined by Jean Carles. An accessory note is a head, heart, or base note that, by virtue of its character and intensity, cannot fit into a chord but can add something definitive to a fragrance, giving it originality, the way a scarf or belt can transform an outfit into a striking and unique fashion statement. Like anchovies used in cooking, accessory notes lend a depth and pungency to the composition, but they need not dominate it—indeed, the unsuspecting may not even know that they are there.
NATURAL ESSENCES, CLASSIFIED BY VOLATILITY
Accessory notes all possess and are defined by their high odor strength. They are powerful, passionate, and idiosyncratic. Some of them smell obnoxiously strong and take some getting used to, and there is no predicting how they will combine with the other elements of a blend. They can bring out a nuance of another essence or reveal an entirely unsuspected aspect of it. To work with them is to be intensely in the presence of the mysterious and the magical. They are complexity itself—layered, deep, and unfathomable.
Accessory notes can be a point of departure for a blend or a late addition to it, but however they are used, they require careful consideration of the other ingredients’ character, intensity, and duration. They are my favorite notes to work with, and I will often build a perfume around one or two of them, highlighting their subtle tonalities and colorations. More than any other essences, they require experimentation and study to discover their possibilities. Spending time combining them with blander essences will trigger unconscious associations and yield countless ideas for the perfumer, shedding light on the architecture of sensuality.
How, then, to begin?
As you would a festive meal, with alcohol—or jojoba oil or whatever medium you are blending in. Place 15 ml (one-half ounce) of the blending medium in a small beaker. Have another small beaker or a shot glass handy, with a couple of inches of rubbing alcohol in it, so that you can rinse out your droppers as you use them, avoiding contaminating one essence with another. (After you have added the desired number of drops of a given essence to the blend, drain the unused portion back into its original bottle, then pump your dropper in the rubbing alcohol.)
Natural perfume samples can be dosed at a concentration of 10 percent. This means that in 15 ml of alcohol you would drop 1.5 ml of perfume essences. The ratio of base to middle to top is approximately 40:30:30. There are approximately 40 drops in I ml, or 60 drops in 1.5 ml, so to 15 ml of alcohol you would add approximately 24 drops of base, 18 drops of middle, and 18 drops of top. For jojoba, the proportions are similar, except that I like to double the proportion of top notes to compensate for the heavier, more tampeddown quality the oil imparts to the essences.
Before you add essences to the alcohol or jojoba, you need to create chords in a preliminary way. Place one drop each of up to three essences (but no more than that) on a perfume blotter and mix them together by placing one drop on top of another on the strip, then sample the scent. To get a clearer sense of the interaction of the essences in a given ratio, place corresponding proportions (1:1:3, for example) of the various essences on separate blotters and hold them together under your nose. This will give you a very rough idea of what the chord will smell like. (You can make preliminary decisions about all the chords, or you can start with an idea for the base chord, blend it, and return to the blotter strips to work out each succeeding chord as you go.)
When you have an interesting idea for the base chord worked out, begin dropping the base notes into the alcohol or jojoba, smelling as you go. Remember that the base chord should be solid, but not so heavy that it drags down the middle and top notes. Record the exact amounts you add, and note your own perceptions of the affinities and antagonisms of each essence. This is how you develop an olfactory consciousness. “The composer will start thinking94 in odors, will let them penetrate his mind; their universe will become his second nature,” Roudnitska observes.
Gradually add the middle notes, smelling the blend after the addition of each essence to acquaint yourself with the nuances of change it brings, and adjusting as you go. Remember that the purpose of the middle notes is to smooth and beautify the base notes, and to bridge the distance between base and top. Don’t just sniff it in the beaker; rub a drop or two on your hand or arm. Perfume is meant to be smelled on the body, not in the air, and there is no other way to get a sense of its fingerprint, its individual characteristics, as they will develop on the wearer’s skin.
Once the middle and base notes are in, smell the mixture and think about where you want the blend to go next. Do you want it sweeter? Lighter? Choose the top notes to finish off the shape of the perfume, to make it brighter, tarter, or simply more sharply defined.
Remember that creating a perfume is like constructing a building. Each story is perched upon the one below, and if the foundation is not solid enough or the whole is not balanced properly, it will simply tumble to the ground in a heap. The architecture must be not just pleasing but interesting and complex as well. As Roudnitska observes, “The shape of a perfume95 derives from an aesthetic combination chosen and desired by the perfumer … The musician combines sounds to create not just harmonies, but acoustic and musical shapes of far greater complexity and scope. Likewise the painter combines colors, blending their tones so that they make up a diversity of shapes, representational or otherwise.”
Like wine, newly made perfume must be left to rest for a while, in order to allow the essences to marry with one another fully under the influence of the alcohol or jojoba, their separate identities mellowing and merging in a ripe bouquet. This is an essential aspect of the process. Leave it undisturbed in a somewhat cool place for at least a week or—if you have the time—up to a month, sealed tightly in a glass bottle as close in volume as possible to the sample itself While the blend rests undisturbed, magical changes are taking place.
Or not. Sometimes the mixture smells remarkably better with time, sometimes worse. Sometimes one scent rises up in the bottle and dominates everything else, as I discovered to my dismay when I was making a custom perfume for the singer and composer Donovan. One of the major base notes was oakmoss, the complicated, dark, rich lichen that grows on oak trees and lends an earthiness to a perfume blend. After the perfume had rested, however, I discovered that it had developed an unmistakable muddy quality that enchained the intensely floral heart of the perfume, making it difficult to find any other notes at all in the murky midst: too much oakmoss. As I discovered the hard way, certain essences grow exponentially in the bottle, overpowering the delicate qualities of the others.
At this point, the perfumer needs to know how to smell like a pro: thinking, testing, rejecting, and reconsidering. Are any notes abrasive? Too obvious?
Too sharp? Too dull? Does the fingerprint evolve harmoniously? Does a single note dominate the dryout, or is it well blended? Above all, does it have form? Roudnitska notes, “This form must be considered96 as an entity. Is it incoherent or homogeneous, boring or original, does it emanate an impression of harmony, does it have relief and character, or is it flat? Is it dynamic (without being over-whelming, heady, or heavy)? Does it have volume, is it sufficiently clinging?”
An alchemical process
A skilled perfumer must be able not only to diagnose but to prescribe. A lack of shape may indicate a weakness in the top notes. A muddy fragrance is often the result of a problem with the base notes, as with Donovan’s oakmoss. Sometimes it is a question of adjusting the ratio of top, middle, and base. Sometimes the entire blend is too ambitious and unfocused and you need to toss it and begin again, working with a few of the most interesting ideas in a more restrained blend. If a blend seems to have too many sharp edges, try adding some rose. If the top is flat and boring, try a drop or two of black pepper.
The perfumer refines and adjusts the blend—adding a little more of this oil or that. Don’t think that a formula must be evenly balanced. As I have discussed, it can (and usually should) highlight or favor one or a few essences, especially those of strongly distinctive character. The only consideration of importance is whether the different essences join together in such a way as to create an interesting and dynamic scent, one that evolves through all the stages of the dryout in an idiosyncratic and charming way. This elusive quality is called powdering, and chemistry cannot answer for all its mysteries. We need something akin to the alchemical concept of the “subtle body,” believed to consist of particles of matter so fine they were impossible to perceive.
Like the creative processes in art and alchemy, perfume composition ultimately depends as much on talent and intuition as it does on knowledge and practice. There are no real rules. If a beautiful new smell is created, the path to it is irrelevant. And so I offer these guidelines to the beginning perfumer with the caveat that that is all they are. Once you have gained a thorough familiarity with the materials, the keys to creating perfume are openness, a sense of play, and an active olfactory imagination. The intuitive perfumer knows how to observe the relationships between aromas, how to draw conclusions from the observations, and how to put those conclusions to beautiful use. As Roudnitska puts it, “For intuition is no miracle97; it is a spark that will fly once a large enough charge of knowledge, experiments, thought and meditation has been built up.”
To make perfume is to experience, not to analyze. In Henri Bergson’s98 terms, that is the very crux of intuition. “Intuition, then, signifies first of all consciousness, but immediate consciousness, a vision which is scarcely distinguishable from the object seen,” he writes in The Creative Mind. Nor does the creative vision rest outside the object; it penetrates to the very core. “We call intuition here the sympathy by which one is transported into the interior of an object in order to coincide with what there is unique and consequently inexpressible in it … Analyzing then consists in expressing a thing in terms of what is not it. All analysis is thus a translation, a development into symbols.”
So the perfumer does not perform a purely cerebral feat. Nor, like the alchemist, does she merely execute a physical act. The essences themselves contain what the alchemist refers to as arcanum99: “a secret, incorporeal, and immortal thing, which no man can know save by experience. It is the interior virtue of any substance which can achieve a thousand more wonders than the thing itself. The unrevealed principle, undying essence.” This is a wonderful description of the richness and complexity of natural substances and their effect on us as we work with them.
If we are lucky, the essences—by whatever elusive process—marry, to form a quintessence, so called because it is something infinitely more than the sum of its elements and thus fulfills the alchemist’s quest. The language of aesthetics is different, but the sentiment, ultimately, is the same, including the ascription of divine character to those rare creations that are both original and beautiful. “In everything that is graceful100,” Bergson writes, “we see, we feel, we divine a kind of abandon, as it were, a condescension. Thus, for him who contemplates the universe with the eye of an artist, it is grace that is apprehended through the veil of beauty, and beneath grace it is goodness which shines through. Each thing manifests, in the movement recorded by its form, the infinite generosity of a principle which gives itself.”
7
Hacon de Seduction Perfume and the Boudoir
I will tell you of a perfume which my mistress has from the graces and the gods of love; when you smell it, you will ask of the deities to make of you only a nose.
—Catullus
101 SCENT has long been a weapon in the arsenal of seduction. Cleopatra—not a beautiful woman by some accounts—developed the art of self-adornment into a science. She had her own perfume workshop, and she was known to rub her mouth with solid perfume before she kissed a lover, so that the scent would force him to think of her after they parted. She had the sails of the barge upon which she received Mark Antony drenched in perfume, and later held a rendezvous in a room with a carpet of rose petals, several feet thick, that was fixed in place by nets secured to the walls.
The mythologies of many cultures are filled with references to the seductive power of perfume, a manifestation of the ancient belief that aromatics are of supernatural origin. Kama, the Hindu god of love, was said to carry flowers in his quiver, instead of arrows. Hades, Greek god of the underworld, used the alluringly scented narcissus flower to ensnare Persephone. The sweet-smelling goddess of love, Aphrodite (for whom aphrodisiacs are named), delighted in beautiful aromas and dispensed them with a free hand to aid seductions in the heavens and on earth. She gave a special perfume recipe to Helen of Troy, drenched Paris with scent when she placed him on his wedding bed, and gave the ferryman Phaon a fragrance that made women, including the lesbian poet Sappho and a phalanx of formerly obedient wives, fall in love with him. (He came, alas, to an unfortunate end when he was discovered by a jealous husband.) Even Zeus, king of the gods, was susceptible to a sweet scent, and when Hera wished to seduce him, she anointed her body with scented oils.
Perfuming cupids, after a first-century Pompeiian fresco
Among mere mortals, hope springs eternal that a particular perfume ingredient or recipe will make even the biggest schlemiel utterly irresistible. In ancient Jerusalem, young women put myrrh and balsam in their shoes. When they spotted an attractive young man in the marketplace, they approached and kicked their feet at him, misting him with scent to spark his desire. But of all the perfumery ingredients, none has enjoyed as pervasive and enduring an erotic reputation as civet; even dogs have been said to find it sexually arousing. It would be difficult, however, to surpass the ecstasies of Petrus Castellus in De Hyoene Odorifera, his 1688 treatise on the subject:
Woman pouring perfume, Roman fresco
To make the uterus more greedy for semen, they say that civet smeared on the glans penis will increase the woman’s pleasure during coitus, whence it [the uterus] will more readily receive the semen … which will cause so much desire for coitus that she will almost continually wish to make love with her husband. And in particular, if a man wishes to go with a woman, if he shall place on the tip of his penis of this same civet and unexpectedly use it, he will arouse in her the greatest pleasure.
Perfume is seductive, so much so that from time to time, the powers that be have felt it incumbent upon them to get matters in hand. Such was the sentiment in England in 1770 when an Act of Parliament decreed that “all women, of whatever age, rank, profession, or degree, whether virgins, maids, or widows, that shall, from and after such Act, impose upon, seduce, and betray into matrimony, any of His Majesty’s subjects, by the scents, paints, cosmetic washes, artificial teeth, false hair, Spanish wool, iron stays, hoops, highheeled shoes, bolstered hips, shall incur the penalty of the law now in force against witch
craft and like misdemeanors, and that the marriage, upon conviction, shall stand null and void.”
Yet even the English could not suppress the powers of perfume for long. The very next year in London, a man named James Graham attracted national attention by setting up an establishment to help childless couples conceive. The main attraction was a “Celestial Bed102,” supported by forty colorful and elaborately carved pillars, which Graham touted as possessing “magical influences which are now celebrated from pole to pole and from the rising to the setting sun.” The chief agent of the magic was scent. The bed was crowned by a dome wafting “odoriferous and balmy spells and essences” that were said to revive and invigorate. The mattress was stuffed not with feathers but with “sweet new wheat or oatstraw mingled with balm, rose leaves, lavender flowers, and oriental spices.” The sheets were perfumed with resins and balsams.
More often, the attempt to harness the erotic power of scent has inspired quests for a surefire perfume ingredient or blend. The Hungarian Laszlo Lengyel was a forerunner of the countless purveyors of “love potions” and other products touted as enhancing sexual desire and performance. In 1923, inspired by the discovery of King Tut’s tomb, Lengyel and his brother produced a perfume they said was based on a formula of Cleopatra’s that had been found in the tomb. Soon after, however, both brothers fell ill, in apparent confirmation of a popular superstition that ill would befall anyone who disturbed the tomb. When they withdrew their new perfume from their market, they regained their good health.