Black Iris Developments

Several years ago, I took a Photoshop workshop. The instructor told us not to work endlessly on an image, searching for perfection, but rather, to make a series of trials and finish by comparing them and, perhaps, combining them.

Following suite, I’ve taken the same tinctures and compounds I used to make Black Iris, and started from scratch without looking at my notes. Something new has evolved.

I left out the coumarin, because I thought the perfume was too soft when I wanted something leaner and greener.

Ambergris is an Essential Element in Black Iris

I reworked the wood base complex. I wanted a forceful sandalwood note, so I used a combination of santalol (which is expensive and hard to find), siamwood, pistachio oil, exaltone, oud, javanol, kephalis, and ambergris. This is the best sandalwood reproduction I’ve managed yet—it smells like sandalwood, but it is more powerful.

Next, I attacked the root mixture. I started with the central accord between orris (iris root) and heliotropin, but then cut the heliotropin a bit to reinforce the root-like quality and pull away from heliotropin’s floral fruitiness. (It’s often compared to the smell of cherry pie.) I added carrot seed and angelica seed to further enhance the orris. The angelica seed also contributed a green note.

I added sandalwood to smooth things off and worked on the violet accord using methyl ionone and dihydro ionone beta. Dihydro ionone beta is one of my favorites because it links violet with wood.

I added vetiver and vetiveryl acetate, again to reinforce the roots and contribute green. For further green, came a drop of nonadienal. That did the trick.

This was all going great guns until I realized the composition has no tenacity. I worked in opoponax, which helped ground everything and make the fragrance last longer. More oak moss would have been great, but it’s so highly restricted now that I can hardly use enough to make a difference. Other moss-like compounds exist, but I haven’t tried them.

I shall continue working on longevity.

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 added linalyl acetate, which adds another angle. 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; aldehyde C-11-enic contributed a nervous edge, but I still needed something vibrant, not citrus, to pull people in. I tried a good chamomile, but reconsidered when it made the perfume too piney. After adding a carefully-balanced combination of black and pink peppercorns, a lively top note came into place. It didn’t cover up the orris. It was evanescent and evaporated almost immediately.

I invited friends over to smell my new creation. Expecting raves, everyone instead agreed that the perfume was too floral, too “girly.” It was too young and innocent. To counteract this, I added a tiny bit of nonadienal. Nonadienal is ridiculously powerful and very green. This immediately gave the perfume what I might call “spine.” It was still fresh and lively, but had a new dignity. My synesthetic colleague Kate gave it a sniff as I looked on anxiously. Clearly, not satisfied, she proclaimed, “It needs earth—like dirt.” I knew there were obscure chemicals that smelled like dirt, but I didn’t know what they were. I brought out any kind of loamy or forest floor naturals I could think of. When she smelled my selections—oakmoss and labdanum were a few--she was clear: opopanax. In it went and, indeed, it gave the perfume a new fullness. Not only was the perfume “rooty,” but “rooted,” more grounded, with more gravitas. When warily I asked Kate to give the concoction a sniff, she no longer saw purple.

My perfume, while brown in the bottle, had become black.