Black Iris

Iris flowers have very little scent. The secret is in the roots, which must be aged for five years to bring out their aroma. Once ground into a fine powder, the roots are distilled to yield a small amount of aromatic “butter.” Perfumers call this “orris butter.”

Orris butter contains up to 22% irones. Irones—there are many isomers—provide the distinct and complex orris aroma of violets and roots. This juxtaposition is a combination so compelling that it’s hard to take one’s nose out of the bottle.

There exists one problem: orris butter costs $600 an ounce. Clearly, to make the perfume the aroma had to be extended and modified. This required naturals and aroma compounds.

I started out with an expensive bottle of alpha irone, but it didn’t have much smell, certainly not as much as the butter itself. Don’t confuse irones with ionones. Ionones are inexpensive and, while they smell of violets, they lack the rooty quality of real orris butter. Irones are what give orris its distinct and intriguing aroma. Alpha irone, the most common form, is insufficient; an exact combination of isomers, most unavailable, is needed to recreate the smell.

Having given up on the alpha irone, I began with the butter itself. My plan was to build up both the rooty and floral aspects without obscuring the orris. I added a tiny amount of angelica seed (1%, it’s very strong) and a trace of carrot seed to bring the root facets into vivid focus. This left the floral aspects obscured. I restored them with a little heliotropin, which formed a stunningly beautiful accord. But the perfume still lacked power. It was a bit too somber.

I added some aroma chemicals—boisiris, dihydro ionone beta, orivone, irival, were a few—to underline and intensify the orris. Next came some of my own musk as well as indole and iso eugenol. Indole, with its peculiar and somewhat disagreeable aroma, is designed by nature to draw insects. It gives musks a deeper and funkier component, which I balance with iso eugenol, a compound that smells like cloves.

Wanting a wood component, I added kephalis, one of my favorite wood molecules, and a lot of fixamber, a woody/violet compound, to lead into the orris. I added oud for mystery.

The perfume smelled fresh, alive, and of orris, but it needed a top note. Many perfumers add linalool (think of the smell of hand wipes), but I also added linalyl acetate, which I find more appealing. I included a trace of rosewood, a natural source of linalool. This combination gave the perfume lift, but the perfume still needed a top note. I added a good amount of ambergris, which helped greatly. Last, some aldehyde C-11-enic, contributed a nervous edge.

I needed something vibrant, not citrus, to pull people in. I tried a good Roman chamomile, but reconsidered when it made the perfume somewhat piney.

Finally, I added a combination of black and pink peppercorns. After getting everything in balance, a lively top note came into place. It didn’t cover up the orris. It was evanescent. It evaporated almost immediately.

I invited friends over to smell my new creation. Everyone agreed that the perfume was too floral, too “girly.” To counteract this, I added angelica root, cedramber and carrot seed. The perfume smells fresh and lively when sprayed on a smelling strip, but deep and animal on the skin.

Synesthesia is a phenomenon of senses occurring as other senses, such as smelling colors or seeing smells. When I asked my synesthetic colleague Kate to give my new concoction a sniff, she no longer saw purple. My perfume, while brown in the bottle, had become black.