The Presence of Scent and Natural Perfumery
Natural perfumery tends to be something almost ephemeral, since as the essential oils of a scent product tend to evapourate away, particularly without a good fixative. A lot of those fixatives in the past were things like ambergris, civet, musk, etc.--all things that are incredibly expensive and also animal-derrivatives from endangered species, so often unavailable. One can find plant-based substitutes for musk, such as ambrette seed, but it does not have the fixative qualities of the original musk.
Watching "Eleventh Hour" last night, where the crux of the drama was a perfumery chemist who has so infused an exclusive perfume of over 650 combinants with both pheromones and neuro-transmitter chemicals that it caused men to practically rip women apart, and thinking back to recent movies about perfume and the old story about the perfume that was so delicious that it made a mob of people DEVOUR the wearer...well, it's fun to play with ideas. Perfume has many valuable attractors, but while we still run tests on how men and women react to the opposite sex's sweat...
http://www.livescience.com/health/060118_armpit_odor.html
http://www.livescience.com/health/090109-sexual-sweat.html
...I think the general chemistry of hydrocarbons, toxic cleaners, chemical fertilizers, etc. have mostly numbed the noses of the general population.
However, 'back in the old days', those perfumes were subtler and more delicate than those we see mass produced by manufacturers now. Part of that was the 'natural perfumery' part, and part of that was the fact they didn't require a bulldozer's load of scent product to twitch their olfactory glands.
I bring all this up because natural products like essential oils and etc. are often accused of having no staying power. To this, I think about my antique perfumes. I have a bottle of pure My Sin from back when My Sin was made by Lavin in Paris. It still smells precisely as it did when I was given it...back in 1976. I had a larger bottle of My Sin cologne where the alcohol had mostly evapourated, but when I poured a little bit of fractionated coconut oil and shook it around with the remaining scent goodies in the bottom of the bottle, I ended up with a reconstituted My Sin that is GORGEOUS to wear. It's a subtle complex of tuberose, jasmine, lavender, and a lot of secrets with some aldehydes for 'strength'.
Last night I rummaged around in this one ricestraw basket I have. It has held the very same "Mr. Lord's" rosebud potpourri I bought from a London company back in the early Eighties. It was almost entirely rosebuds, with a few additional bits of violets and etc., but if you roll your fingers around in it, the rich scent of roses and the perfect twinge of 'something else' pours out into the air and it's divine. This is ANCIENT by modern standards, and it still lingers and haunts me.
I also pulled out a piece of orris (lily) root I've had for just as long as the Mr. Lord's. It still breathes a gentle violet odour. Orris is often used as a fixative, too. I read where the lovely Anya of Natural Perfumery fame refound a piece of orris root in her desk that she was purposely aging before using it...I wonder if my unintentional 'aging' of this root will become a secret source of joy with a perfume in the near future?
At any rate, while I likely would have preferred to live and breathe a delicate scent today, I fell back on a rich vanilla-myrrh blend I made six months ago. It's still gorgeous, dark, sweet, and heady.
Tomorrow, though, I'm putting on the old My Sin and wandering through a Victorian dream.
Grey :)
Watching "Eleventh Hour" last night, where the crux of the drama was a perfumery chemist who has so infused an exclusive perfume of over 650 combinants with both pheromones and neuro-transmitter chemicals that it caused men to practically rip women apart, and thinking back to recent movies about perfume and the old story about the perfume that was so delicious that it made a mob of people DEVOUR the wearer...well, it's fun to play with ideas. Perfume has many valuable attractors, but while we still run tests on how men and women react to the opposite sex's sweat...
http://www.livescience.com/health/060118_armpit_odor.html
http://www.livescience.com/health/090109-sexual-sweat.html
...I think the general chemistry of hydrocarbons, toxic cleaners, chemical fertilizers, etc. have mostly numbed the noses of the general population.
However, 'back in the old days', those perfumes were subtler and more delicate than those we see mass produced by manufacturers now. Part of that was the 'natural perfumery' part, and part of that was the fact they didn't require a bulldozer's load of scent product to twitch their olfactory glands.
I bring all this up because natural products like essential oils and etc. are often accused of having no staying power. To this, I think about my antique perfumes. I have a bottle of pure My Sin from back when My Sin was made by Lavin in Paris. It still smells precisely as it did when I was given it...back in 1976. I had a larger bottle of My Sin cologne where the alcohol had mostly evapourated, but when I poured a little bit of fractionated coconut oil and shook it around with the remaining scent goodies in the bottom of the bottle, I ended up with a reconstituted My Sin that is GORGEOUS to wear. It's a subtle complex of tuberose, jasmine, lavender, and a lot of secrets with some aldehydes for 'strength'.
Last night I rummaged around in this one ricestraw basket I have. It has held the very same "Mr. Lord's" rosebud potpourri I bought from a London company back in the early Eighties. It was almost entirely rosebuds, with a few additional bits of violets and etc., but if you roll your fingers around in it, the rich scent of roses and the perfect twinge of 'something else' pours out into the air and it's divine. This is ANCIENT by modern standards, and it still lingers and haunts me.
I also pulled out a piece of orris (lily) root I've had for just as long as the Mr. Lord's. It still breathes a gentle violet odour. Orris is often used as a fixative, too. I read where the lovely Anya of Natural Perfumery fame refound a piece of orris root in her desk that she was purposely aging before using it...I wonder if my unintentional 'aging' of this root will become a secret source of joy with a perfume in the near future?
At any rate, while I likely would have preferred to live and breathe a delicate scent today, I fell back on a rich vanilla-myrrh blend I made six months ago. It's still gorgeous, dark, sweet, and heady.
Tomorrow, though, I'm putting on the old My Sin and wandering through a Victorian dream.
Grey :)