Will the Top Notes Behave?

It’s one thing to make a satisfying combination of top notes, but it is far trickier to coordinate them with the underlying facets in a perfume.

After working on a top-note combination of grapefruit and red peppercorn essential oil, I added aldehyde C-11 enic. for sparkle and edginess. Koavone and spices brought complexity. The top notes smelled good together. I was encouraged.

The next day, my carefully composed top-note combination just smells like grapefruit. I added more of the other stuff until the grapefruit receded.

Once I had this top-note accord, I added a small amount to the heart/base combination and was surprised that the top note aromas became subtler and integrated with the whole. The grapefruit gives a freshness to the opening, but is barely recognizable as grapefruit, the kind of effect I was looking for. The top notes have brought the heart and base more to the forefront. The top note accord gives the perfume vibrancy, freshness, and a new greenness.

Suddenly, a tiny citrus sparkle seemed like a good idea.

Lemon comes to mind, but lemon is unstable and I don’t like lemon chemicals like citral and limonene. I decided to use litsea cubeba, which smells strongly of lemon and is a tad cleaner somehow. The stuff is strong, so I worked with a 1% solution instead of the usual 10%. Two drops of this 1% solution to 10 drops of the remaining top-note mixture was about right. I added this to the base/heart complex, and it indeed provided a miniscule twinkle.

It seems I might be on to something.

Since the perfume and I need a break from one another (my nose is tired and the perfume needs to “marry”), the perfume now sits overnight. It will change and need more adjustment.  I’ll let it sit a week or so and readjust again. After a month, I’ll readjust one more time and let the perfume do what it’s going to do. Time usually makes perfume better, but one can never be sure that some pesky little note is going to stick it’s head out and ruin the whole thing.