L’Air du Temps

A perfume’s “top” notes evaporate fast. Within 15 minutes or so there’s little left of them. This makes them no less important to the finished creation. They are the first aromas one smells and, in fact, are often experienced by those who wear them and no one else. But this overture to the perfume is often what sells it, such that in today’s marketing-oriented environment, top notes have become so smooth and suave that they are sometimes more interesting than the heart notes.

But when we go back to the classics—to pick an arbitrary date, say perfumes from before 1970—there are typical ingredients that were (and still are) used to top off a perfume. Bergamot, lavender, and rose wood were almost ubiquitous. Rosewood and bergamot, both used in L’Air du Temps, are sources of linalool and linalool acetate. These were probably reinforced by those two compounds.

Our distinguished authors reiterate that real “richness and quality” come from jasmin and rose absolutes. They emphasize the importance of “trace” amounts of materials that “have a remarkable effect on the performance and aesthetic quality of the fragrance.” They point out that Aldehyde C11 undecylenic adds impact while styrallyl acetate acts as a bridge between the top notes and the rest of the perfume. Tiny quantities of orris, heliotropin, and vanillin give polish and character to the carnation complex.

They go on about how vanillin acts like salt and pepper in that it brings out other components of the perfume. It must be used carefully as a tiny amount can work wonders by “smoothing out the roughness of a composition, and adding a touch of sweetness, without greatly altering the essential character of the perfume.” While he lauds its value in perfumery, he warns of its treachery as a trace too much ruins a composition.

Thank you, Misters Calkin and Jellinek.

The Practice of Modern Perfumery, Paul Jellinek

Whenever a new obsession strikes, I get online and buy every relevant book I can find.

In perfumery, this isn’t easy. There aren’t many books to begin with and those that do exist are often outdated or too technical. There are a million aromatherapy books.

These books are expensive. I paid $400 for Stephen Arctander’s book, Perfume and Flavor Ingredients of Natural Origin, now in a new edition for about a 20th of the price.

Since many of us don’t have these books or access to them, I want to discuss them.

My earliest books are from the 19th century, more curiosities than anything.

My first important book, The Practice of Modern Perfumery, acquired for $150, by Paul Jellinek, was published in 1949. For those eager to make vintage-style perfumes or who want to recreate the classics, this is a boon.

First, there is a discussion of smelling technique, compounding technique, and very interesting methods for matching, but the book doesn’t get exciting until we reach, “Tables of Perfume Complexes,” formulas for mostly floral perfumes.

At first glance, I’m struck by the percentage of naturals, sometimes up to 60%.

Narcissus, one of the simpler formulas, has only 14 ingredients of which only two are naturals, petitgrain “Grasse” and ylang ylang. It contains many of the classic synthetics, still used, but, nowadays, in conjunction with modern compounds such as hedione. Hydroxycitronellal, with its muguet notes, makes up 20% of the formula, while heliotropin (cherry pie) contributes 10%. Funky indole makes an appearance at 1%. There is also phenylacetaldehyde (hyacinth) and the usual suspects: tepineol (woody/green), geraniol (geraniums/rose), linalool (handwipes), benzyl isobutyrate (fruity/floral) and isoeugenol (cloves).

But the aroma of narcissus cannot be made with these compounds and naturals alone. It needs para-cresols, strange and dissonant substances that can lend a minor key. More about these to come.

The Grojsman Accord

One of the last-century’s greatest perfumes, Trésor, was created by Sophia Grojsman, whose name is forever associated with an accord, the Grojsman accord, based on only four ingredients: two parts iso e super or sylvamber, two parts hedione (see entry), one part methyl ionone, and two parts galaxolide or romandolide.

Iso e super has a woody scent but also a particular radiant volatility. Hedione contributes its magical ability to enhance perfumes and make them more persistent and less literal. Galaxolide has the necessary musky sweetness. Methyl ionone smells of violets and iris (orris).

The accord by itself is no great shakes; it’s what it does to other things that impresses.

I made a mixture of two parts rose absolute and one part jasmine enfleurage. Needless to say, this mixture smelled glorious, but is it a perfume? Perfumes have projection and persistence. Modern perfumes have a particular abstract quality that distinguishes them from simple mixtures of good-smelling ingredients.

I took two parts of my rose mixture and added one part of the Grojsman accord.

I expected them to be different, but it turned out they were very different. The rose mixture, of course, is a very pleasant scent, but the mixture containing the Grojsman accord has an airiness that the other lacks. It’s as though it is infused with light. It’s not as obviously floral but, is far more like something one would contemplate wearing. While, because of the accord’s ubiquity, I have to be careful not to make something that smells like all the others, I’m dying to try it with some of my blends, blends that may be gorgeous, but that don’t project. I’ll first try it with my favorite accords—rose, violet, orris (iris), tuberose. I want to try it with ambergris and civet and a seemingly infinite collection of naturals and synthetics.

A Weekend with Mandy Aftel V

At the end of day two, Mandy gave us our final assignment. We were to take two—only two—ingredients to explore together and use them as the basis for a new perfume.

I went home (I’m staying at my brother’s, right up the hill) and as I stared at the sunset behind the Golden Gate Bridge, I came up with sandalwood and jasmine, two of the most voluptuous fragrances in perfumery. Each of these has a gentleness, a receptiveness, and yet a distinctive presence. They sometimes bring tears to my eyes. And anyway, I’ve been working on a sandalwood perfume since I first started this craziness and can never amplify the note, just obscure it. So, with Mandy’s approval of my two ingredients, I set out.

My base contained three ingredients; sandalwood (a beautiful aged Mysore), santalol (a powerful heart-note isolate; expensive), and a kind of agarwood that Mandy has in her collection that smells much like sandalwood. The base smelled good. I was off to a good start. The jasmine went into the heart notes with a trace of rose otto. The rest of the heart note is made up of araucaria, a substance I had never heard of, but one with a gentle enough odor profile to make up most of the middle notes without taking over. Its purpose was to fill in the gaps and give me the needed 10 drops for the heart. The top notes are black pepper, a trace of mimosa, and a great deal of Siam wood. I have Siam wood in my lab, but I’ve been using it as a base note (because it’s a wood), when I should have been using it as a top note. It was the perfect thing for carrying the sandalwood to the top. I wasn’t worried about the jasmine. Mandy approved.

A Berkeley Weekend with Mandy Aftel IV

Once she demonstrated this approach, she set us loose. She’s incredibly generous with her ingredients as I realized while measuring out drops of red champaka absolute into my mixture.

The assignment was to construct a fragrance. We were allowed up to three different top notes, three different middle notes, and three different base notes. The exciting part is that the total number of drops in each category must not exceed 10. The total number of all the drops should equal 30, no more, no less.

Trying to kill two birds with one stone, I decided to come up with something that would underline orris (iris). For my base, I came up with a mixture of opoponax (2 drops), patchoulyl acetate (an isolate without some of the unwanted aspects of regular patchouli) (6 drops), and oud tincture (2 drops), for my total of 10 drops. For the middle, I used champaka, rose, and jasmine; and for the top, Siam wood, orris (which Mandy considers a top note), and yuzu.

When we finished our concoctions, we passed them to the front so that Mandy could discuss them with the group. She asked questions of all of us, asking us to explain our reasoning, esthetic or otherwise, for including a substance. Usually she would pare down our ingredients, stripping our tinctures to their essentials. She told me to take out the orris, which was deadening the mixture. Now, with fewer drops in the top notes, I had to find a substitute to make up for the removed drops. Often, when an aromatic substance is removed in this way, it is replaced with something of low odor intensity to fill in the spaces rather than contribute another facet to the finished fragrance. I added a small amount of frankincense and increased the amounts of the other ingredients in the top note.

Next post, my final project.

A Berkeley Weekend with Mandy Aftel III

On day two, things got even more exciting.

Mandy introduced a system I had never seen before and that completely blew my mind.

She works by adding drops of fully-concentrated absolutes or essential oils to five milliliters of ethanol. She starts out with only two ingredients—each added to the ethanol--and explores how they work with one another, elucidating areas of conflict and areas of harmony. She may do preliminary tests to explore the shifting relationship of each of the two ingredients and come up with mixtures marked 1:9, 2:8, 3:7, etc., to get a basic sense of how to proceed. Then she comes up with a plan.

She searches out one or two ingredients that will convert the original combination of two into an accord, having a top, middle, and base note, like a triad in music. Two ingredients are only used if the two first ingredients are in one category. In other words, if your first two ingredients are both top notes, then you’re going to need a drop each of a middle and a heart note. Now, what amazed me, is that each category—top, base, and middle—can contain only a total of ten drops of whatever the addition. In other words, the whole perfume can contain no more and no fewer than 30 drops of pure substance. For amounts smaller than a drop, she wings it a little bit until she gets the odor nuances she needs. Clearly, if you wanted to be more precise, you could perform these processes by weight. But the critical thing is that the number of drops is prescribed—you get ten of each category, no more and no fewer, and that’s it.

In the next post, I’ll show you what I came up with.

Ambergris II

When my tinctures started smelling like isopropyl alcohol, panic moved in. My first thought was that tincturing in the light had been a mistake and that I had bleached the ambergris and made it worthless.

Desperate, I searched around and landed on Wikipedia. Then I saw this: “However, it acquires a sweet, earthy scent as it ages, commonly likened to the fragrance of rubbing alcohol...”

Wow. I went back to my bottle of isopropyl alcohol and, while yes, there was a resemblance, the ambergris was deep and complex without, as Wikipedia says, “the vaporous chemical astringency.”

So, where has this left me? First, I realized that ambergris has a top note, something I’d never heard about before. When it’s in a perfume, it hits you with the weirdly-appealing rubbing alcohol nose and then mellows down to a faint earthy smell that reminds me a little of dirty hair. The earthy smells last many hours on the skin. While at no point is the aroma terribly grand, like most pheromones, it’s impossible to resist going back for another whiff.

Ambergris gives a particular radiance to floral fragrances. In marine perfumes it lends finesse, complexity, and ineffable nuances of the sea.

While I’ve never seen a discussion of whether to tincture ambergris in the light or dark, tincturing in the light works faster. I have smelled years-old tinctures that have much less aroma than those I’ve tinctured for six months.

Ambergris needn’t be terribly expensive, usually from $30 to $50 per gram. But, consider this: Ambergris is typically used in concentrations of 3%. One percent of this tincture is the usual amount added to a perfume. Hence, 1 gram of ambergris makes 33 ml. of 3% tincture, enough to tincture 3300 ml. of perfume. Without irony, a bargain.

A Weekend with Mandy Aftel III

Mandy started us right off the bat by discussing how to look at ingredients. First, she described top, middle and base notes in terms of how long they last on a blotter strip—an hour for tops, maybe four hours for middles, and longer for bases. She has her organ organized in this way, with top notes, middles notes, and head notes each their own color-coded labels. If nothing else, this is great training for remembering which compounds are which—the colors quickly adhere to the psyche. Next, she discusses odor intensity, obvious sounding, but not to be confused with volatility. A base note can be mild or intense as can a top note.

Particularly interesting was her emphasis on the shape and texture of ingredients. She uses such words as “sharp,” “round,” “flat,” and “layered.” It reminded me of Kate’s synesthesia—when she sees aromas as colors. I found that by examining the ingredients in this way, it brought me closer to them and prepared me for a more emotional response.

Last, she discussed her ideas of “burying” and “locking.” Burying is the result of using an ingredient with too high an odor intensity next to one with a lower intensity. One example, cèpes (porcini) versus sandalwood, was a little like Godzilla meets Bambi. It takes but a tiny trace of cèpes absolute to obscure sandalwood. “Locking,” is when two ingredients enhance each other in an accord that’s more powerful than the sum of the parts. Mandy helped me with this effect when, later, I worked on a scent containing sandalwood.

Mandy also discussed filler notes—ingredients that fit into the interstices of the perfume and smooth off disparate ingredients. Not only did she discuss these theoretically, but she gave us a list.

The next day she gave us a system for arranging these ingredients into a viable structure.

Mandy Aftel’s Berkeley Perfume Class

Last weekend, I had the privilege of taking a 3-day class from perfumer, teacher, and writer, Mandy Aftel.

Mandy lives in a lovely house right behind Chez Panisse. In the sunny front room, where she teaches her small classes of eight, she has her “organ” of naturals and isolates. She works with full-strength absolutes and essential oils, whereas I use 10% dilutions. Theoretically, I don’t think this matters too much, but maybe I’m just cheap. While the class is expensive, Mandy, a former shrink, is profoundly generous, not only with her time and her beautiful substances, but as a spirit. She holds nothing back. It was worth the money.

My big fear was that Mandy was going to hand out complicated mixtures and expect us to identify what was in them. Everyone else would know everything; I would know nothing.

But it wasn’t like this at all. And while there was plenty of practical information, this was not the most important thing I got out of the class. It was Mandy’s emphasis on the evocative and emotional character of perfume that lead me to a fundamental insight.

In the 1970s, I spent years working in restaurants in France and learning the technique and esthetics of French cooking. But it wasn’t these things that ultimately mattered. What was central to my learning to cook well, was the realization that it’s all about the products. The ingredients, which should always be the best, must be treated with love and reverence to bring out their natural qualities. If beautiful ingredients are approached without ego and without the need to “succeed,” they guide you and show you how to prepare them. The trick is to listen.

It is this spirit that guides Mandy’s classes. It is all about the ingredients and our relationship to them.

Next post: Our first assignment.

Shalimar: The Ambreine Accord

Perfumers work with a seemingly infinite number of ingredients all of which need to be memorized (at least in theory). In addition to these individual elements—chemicals, absolutes, and essential oils—are accords, which are combinations of more than one ingredient. Some of these accords are deeply personal and idiosyncratic, while others are part of the lingua franca of perfume making. One of these latter is the ambreine accord.

The first time I put together an ambreine accord, I thought I had discovered the secret to Shalimar. Clearly, a similar accord is at play in that beautiful perfume. It is a simple accord and, while it comes in many versions, it is usually based on six compounds—vanillin (or ethyl vanillin), coumarin, civet, bergamot, patchouli and, often, vetiver. In a perfume as extravagant as Shalimar, the original version would have contained relatively high levels of natural rose and jasmine.

Recognizing that Shalimar contains a leather element, I added a goodly amount of castoreum which turned it a deep golden. I added spices—nutmeg (absolute), coriander, cinnamon and cloves—to balance the intensity of the castoreum. This all lead to a deeply animalic and spicy perfume which needed to be lightened with top notes.

Many of the classic top notes—neroli, bergamot (already used), orange, rosewood (or linalool)—are built into an accord and placed on top of the ambreine concoction. I kept things simple and added rosewood (instead of linalool) and neroli to lead into the heart notes of the perfume.

After tinkering a bit, I came up with something more like Chanel 5 than Shalimar. I added aldehyde C-12 MNA to match Chanel’s deeply aldehydic masterpiece. When I smelled my concoction next to the real deal, I noticed that Chanel 5 had more ylang and rose than I had incorporated. I added some of those, but also, a big shot of jasmin to give the perfume extra richness and elegance. I’m encouraged, but to know if I’ve come up with something of value, I’ll have to wait a few days for the aldehydes and florals to work their way into the perfume.