While I want to remain true to iris and replicate its lovely rooty, earthy, and floral aroma, I haven’t just promised iris, I’ve promised black iris. Since few people know what iris roots smell like and far fewer, if any, know the aroma of black iris, I’m allowed a bit of fantasy.

Instead of getting the black and the iris to function together, I’ve decided to get them to present at different times during the dry-down. In other words, the perfume will start out like iris and get darker and blacker in tone as the iris fades and my faux natural musk moves to the forefront. The iris will go from purple to black. It worked as predicted, without the musk fixating the rest of the fragrance. The musk does persist, undetectable during the first whiffs of the iris, gradually revealing itself as time goes on. While the approach worked, I still wanted the iris aspects to last longer.

I may have made a helpful discovery. Older perfume formulas often call for concretes. A concrete is an extract, usually a solid, and an interim product when making an absolute. Typically, concretes contain large amounts of waxes and other high-boiling-point materials, so the obvious thing was to track down some iris concrete. Few people use concretes and they’re rarely sold. After my tiny sample of iris concrete arrived in the mail, I added some to the formula and it worked like a charm. The perfume smells great, projects reasonably well, and, most of all, lasts for hours on the skin. There is only one problem: iris concrete is expensive. Have I made the perfume exorbitant? Whether people will pay for this loveliness, I don’t know.

My next step is some number crunching.