Marine Aromas: The Smell of the Sea

I’ve always wanted to smell like the beach, not a crowded beach with its overtones of suntan lotion and salt water on skin, but a solitary beach with a scent like steamed mussels and freshly cracked oysters. On top of this irresistible sea-fresh quality I would find complicated aromas of assorted creatures in various states of decay combined with seaweed, and the smell of salt itself. (Salt is odorless. Its smell comes from assorted minerals and organic matter.)

This interplay of smells, constantly shifting, has me searching for information on how to smell like the ocean.

Much of what I have learned has come from my own experiments. I started out by going through my collection of naturals and aroma chemicals to find those that smell of the sea or some component thereof. Before I began combining these aromatic materials, I put each (in a 10% tincture) on a smelling strip and noted the length of time for the aroma to fade. My goal was to create a basic frame that would persist long enough for the final mixture to be considered a perfume while using more delicate materials up front such that they fade at differing rates, leaving the perfume’s final aroma to change and intertwine just like the odors on the beach.

Marine Compounds and Naturals

Seaweed absolute is the most obvious material for such a beachy accord. Seaweed absolute is expensive, but goes a long way and is rather divine in that most examples (mine comes from Eden Botanicals) are truly representative of the real thing. The smell reminds me exactly of konbu, the dried seaweed that Japanese cooks use to prepare dashi, the base broth for innumerable soups and stews. The odor is complex and deeply sea-like. It is one of those things you smell on a stroll along the seashore. It smells like ambergris, not the tincture, but the actual material.

In addition to the seaweed absolute, I incorporated a large amount of oarweed. Had I known what it would cost now, I might have hesitated. There’s very little available; one place sells expensive tiny samples only. Oarweed smells like seaweed, but also offers other dimensions. It is persistent and useful for marine accords in general.

Ambroxan (also called Cetalox) is one of the most useful aroma chemicals for sea-like accords. It’s such an appealing substance that a perfume has been made featuring it alone. The molecule is one of the components of ambergris and is reminiscent of ambergris, but not really like the actual thing. It is very popular these days—I smell it everywhere—no doubt because of its austere yet oceanic feel. I use it along with ambergris itself because it reinforces the smell of the natural product.

Grisalva, which I associate with ambroxan, is subtler. Grisalva, too, has a sea-like note, but is also ever so slightly dissonant in that it contains a funky animal aspect. Next to ambroxan it is quite subtle, but provides another note. It reminds me a bit of hot sand.

Nonyl alcohol is a discovery that I’ve never read about. It has a distinct oceanic quality, is powerful and lasts a long time. It also lacks finesse. It has a coarseness which must be attenuated with more delicate compounds. It makes a good base note.

I’ve never thought of the ocean as aldehydic before, but cyclamen aldehyde has not only its own special aldehyde character, but a definite aquatic quality. It gives lift to my various experimental mixtures. It’s very clean and reinforces the impression of saltiness.

Calone is classic in marine accords. It is distinctly ozonic with a clean background. It works perfectly toward achieving the cracked oyster effect. It’s hard to imagine a marine accord without it.

At many points during my experimentation, I ran into situations where the mixture “needed something.” I don’t know how it occurred to me, but I added a trace of oud to my blend. When oud is used in small amounts—high dilutions—I can’t smell it, but rather sense it. It lightens and excites. It awakens the senses, especially smell.

There is, of course, ambergris. I’ve allowed myself to use up to 10% of a 3% tincture in my experimental marine blends. This is 10 times the amount normally used in classic perfumes.  Much is made about ambergris’s persistence—it is indeed persistent, but very subtle—and very little is said about the top notes it provides. When added in even trace amounts, ambergris gives a mixture a special punch right up front. The aroma is strangely like isopropyl alcohol—the classic rubbing alcohol nose—but with a magical finesse and complexity. It’s one of those ingredients, like musk and other animal products, that make it hard to pull your nose away.

One of the most fascinating marine ingredients is Helional. I was using it, with little effect, before realizing that my batch was old and had deteriorated. (Helional should be kept in small bottles with little air in them.) When I got a new bottle, the aroma I remember—the closest anything comes to smelling like water—was again there. It’s a wonderful substance and just what I needed for my blend.

Because so many ingredients come into play, I’m not able to mention them all now. I’ll discuss them in an upcoming post.

After a few months of daily experimentation, I had come up with a beautiful and elegant marine perfume that didn’t last long enough and barely projected. I was either missing a fundamental accord or I needed longer-lasting ingredients.

Frustrated, I looked for aromatic compounds that would last longer. The plan was to make another accord—almost its own perfume—that would stay on the skin as the more delicate and fleeting scents evaporated.  

I went on line in search of anything aquatic or ozonic and came up with a few things. The two most interesting were Azuril and Ultrazure. They both last a long time and have a powerful smell like the sea. Azuril has a slight animal quality while Ultrazure is cleaner. I might say that Ultrazure is like high tide and Azuril like low tide. Like nonyl alcohol, these ingredients lack finesse and must be attenuated with softer and more delicate compounds, perhaps naturals.

I blended my longest lasting ingredients—ambroxan, Ultrazure, and nonyl alcohol—to make a mixture that smelled enough like the sea that it would combine well with my initial blend. When I put the two together, the perfume opens with the ambergris and then comes out with the smell of a lonely beach. Natural compounds such as beeswax absolute, seaweed absolute, a trace of oud, and a drop of helicrysum smooth out the mixture and make it organic and natural smelling. Finally, the ambroxan-nonyl alcohol-Ultrazure accord takes over and the perfume dries down on the skin after about 2½ hours. Not as long as I would like, but the perfume is so inviting that I suspect most customers would put up with it. 

Pheromones: Sex, Scent, and Attraction

Most of us accept that animals communicate by odor. Dogs sniff out stale urine and others’ private parts, especially the anus. The dog learns much about potential mates by their odor. Odor expresses the age of the animal, its readiness for sex, its sexuality (it is said that homosexuals have a different smell than heterosexuals), and no doubt many other things such as jealousy or hostility. Odors get dogs aroused.

Why do we assume then, that we as mammals don’t share similar urges and associations? Nowadays we do everything we can to disguise our smells, but by allowing a little to persist—the hint of the armpit after a shower and other various scents that will remain unnamed—we attract our mate or potential mate. While in times past we relished each other’s aroma, we now must perceive these smells unconsciously or they will trigger our sense of disgust and revoltion.

Classic vintage perfumes contained natural animal ingredients that provided an erogenic effect. Natural deer musk (now outlawed since it comes from an endangered animal), ambergris (ok because it rinses up on a beach), castoreum (arguably ok because it’s a byproduct; the animal is not killed for the castoreum), civet (usually considered bad because the civet cats (no relation to a house cat) are sometimes irritated by being poked with sticks to get them to release more of their pungent anal paste; supposedly “humane” civet is being investigated). Civet, when properly tinctured, has a pronounced cat-spray aroma. So does sauvignon blanc. When aged for a year or so, civet tincture develops a gentle almost fruity aspect. Civet makes a glorious note when juxtaposed with florals. All of these ingredients went into vintage perfumes (I remember my mother’s) and gave them a richness very hard to achieve without them.                     

Much has been made of a perfume’s ability to induce sexual feelings and even to draw us to the person wearing it. While these claims have been made, few people I’ve spoken with seem to share this view and perfumes, while they can be delightful, are rarely thought of as true aphrodisiacs. In fact, it is often said, real aphrodisiacs don’t exist.

If asked a few years ago, I would have concurred. But I started to notice funny things. When I was working on my amber perfume, I came up with a precursor—something I thought might work as a base. When I met my best friend and his girlfriend for lunch, I brought along a vial of it for them to check out. When I passed it around the table, I sensed something--they were whispering to each other and nuzzling in a distinctive way—and soon made it clear that they wanted to return to their hotel room immediately, scrapping afternoon plans.

I returned to the lab to figure out what I had just come up with. The central components of the base were patchouli, tobacco, and castoreum, typical leathery notes. When I combined these three ingredients, while intriguing, the aphrodisiac quality seemed to have disappeared. I delved deeper into the formula and noted that part of it was composed of another complex made with sandalwood, burnt amber, castoreum, vanilla, and oud. I experimented some more and realized that the oud, tobacco, castoreum and burnt amber formed an accord. On one hand suave, the perfume also had an assertive animal quality which seemed to come less from the castoreum than the oud, tobacco and amber.

Sex pheromones: both male and female attractants

Many are confused by the word “amber.” Some think it is ambergris which it is not (in old books, ambergris is sometimes called “ambra”) and many assume it’s an accord based on labdanum, vanilla, bergamot and other ingredients. These “ambers” can be delightful and are often used as bases for finished perfume. I use a third amber, burnt amber, which is a distillation of the same amber we wear for jewelry. While the smell is acrid, there’s something irresistible about it. It’s smoky and phenolic and has a bit of a funk. When combined with tobacco, castoreum and oud, it becomes savage. A funkiness is present that some people might describe as smelling like a barn. There’s even something mildly repulsive about it. But the real give-away is finding you can’t take your nose away. Ambergris is like this. It smells underwhelming but those who smell just keep smelling it.

I’ve determined that it is funk that makes a perfume an aphrodisiac. After all, it’s the (sometimes) funky body smells which draw us. Studies have shown that arm pits, the crotch area, the anus, and the hair on one’s head all create a pheremonic response. Of course we don’t want to be aware of these smells except perhaps in love making. They must be used beneath the level of consciousness. All my eaux de parfums, except the sandalwood, have this quality. My oud perfume has enough oud such that the aroma of the oud contributes considerable animal dissonance. One perfumer on basenotes.org (an online forum for perfumers) declared that there were two aphrodisiacs in his life: the smell of his wife and Brooklyn Perfume Company’s oud.

Brooklyn Perfume Company’s musk is another example. In theory, an artificial musk emulates natural deer musk, not used for decades. Natural musk, taken from the deer’s anal gland, is one of the most compelling of all aromas. Some are revolted by its funk (the musk from each animal is different) while others, like myself, can’t get enough. Which brings us to the musk perfumes currently on the market. As far as I can tell, they’re all rather smooth and funkless. Wondering why, it occurred to me that most people today (including perfumers) have never smelled the real thing. They don’t know what they’re trying to emulate. Giving away my age, I remember how my mother smelled when she got home late from a party and her perfume had mostly worn off. She stunk of pure natural musk. 

When I set out to make a musk for Brooklyn Perfume Company, I wanted something a little funky and very sexy. I made a blend of artificial musks, but then accented it with various animal-like synthetics. It has a definite funk, but one that seems to blend in with the skin as the perfume wears off. Is it an aphrodisiac? I suspect yes. A couple of weeks ago I was in a car with a dear friend who was wearing my musk. His ex-wife, who was sitting next to him, started touching him and rubbing him. She looked at him and asked “Are you wearing some kind of attractant?” My 94-year old mother-in-law wears it and says that it’s not really a perfume per se, but something that makes her skin smell more like itself.

More about pheromones in an up-coming post.

My Favorite Books VII

A favorite book of mine, Perfumery: The Psychology and Biology of Fragrance, edited by Steve Van Toller and George H. Dodd, is a rather technical tome that dwells mostly on the relationship between perfume and personality.

In one chapter, by Mensing and Beck, the authors ran experiments with groups of women, and analyzed which fragrances these women preferred. First establishing that personality had a profound effect on fragrance choice, they correlated personality and color preference. This led to the Mensing color-wheel, which predicts, with 80 percent accuracy, a subject’s favorite fragrance family.

This saves a lot of time sniffing around to the point of olfactory overload. After consulting the chart, the salesperson can bring out two or three fragrances, instead of having to go through a dozen or more.

More outgoing, “emotionally stable,” types, are drawn to chypre notes, deep and mossy and grave, but they like their fragrance a touch floral and almost imperceptibly fruity.  This same kind of customer, who’s more on the introverted side, might like her perfume a little aldehydic. She wants her fragrance to be discrete, but with subtle floral tones running through the base. Those who are attracted to fresh and green scents, are extroverted and find fulfillment being with people. Those who are “emotionally ambivalent,” but lean to being extroverts, are most likely to choose florals with fruity aspects.
Further down the wheel, we find the capricious, who, while, often changing their fragrance, tend to be drawn to not-too-sweet florals. Another group, described as emotionally ambivalent, but this time more introverted, is drawn to slightly “oriental” florals. Last, are the oriental scents, rich, complex, with a bit of funk, often preferred by introverts.

As I said, these experiments were done with women. I have never read whether men fit into this paradigm, or into any paradigm, but it might be worth the research.

After all, I want to play, too.

My Ambergris

Brooklyn Perfume Company’s Ambergris

I’ve been at a loss to describe Ambergris, my latest eau de parfum. One of my perfume friends could only exclaim, “This stuff is weird.” So, Kate has gotten on me for a more thorough description.

The opening has the classic aroma of isopropyl alcohol, which is like saying Romanée Conti opens like wine. For this is special isopropyl alcohol, beautified, rendered elegant and sparkling. Even perfumers, who think of ambergris as a base note, forget that it also has this incredible delicate top note.

Within 30 seconds, this note passes and we enter an aquatic, air-like phase. There’s the ocean and a smell of ozone, like just after a lightning storm.

The background resonates with various sea plants, which leaves it full of complexity and reminiscent of the sea—spray, sand, and the aroma of water itself.

After about an hour, while some of the ozone remains, we move into a primordial ooze, indescribable, but resonant and grave. It’s dark and alluring; it brings complexity and intrigue.

Over the hours, as these various marine aromas fade, there emerges the smell of pure, natural ambergris. The ambergris, having outlasted everything else in the perfume, leaves behind a beasty smell, between hair and bear: beasty, maybe, but impossible to resist.

While I set out to make a perfume that amplified ambergris’s natural aroma, I soon realized I was laboring against an inherent contradiction—how does one take a delicate melody, in a minor key, and amplify it into something, big and stentorian?

I’ve included a lot of ambergris and other natural and aromatic compounds to bring into focus many of the facets that typify the authentic product.

The perfume presents natural ambergris, but also the idea of ambergris, what we expect of it, be it the sea, the salty air, or the decomposing vegetation on the shore.

Soon, people will react to it. What will they smell? What will they say?

Sandalwood I

Fifteen years ago, I had a midlife crisis and bought a powerful motorcycle. Instead of slowly building my skills and becoming comfortable with the machine, I’d ride the bike on the FDR drive, the highway that runs along the east side of Manhattan. I would clench the handlebars desperately at the average speed of about 80 mph, drivers constantly weaving between lanes. The road had plenty of cracks and pot holes. After 6 months of terror, I gave the bike up.

Sandalwood of Unknown Provenance

I took the same bold approach when it came to perfumery. Within a month of beginning my passion, I set out to create an artificial sandalwood, unaware that this has been the quest of perfumers for at least a century.

Most sandalwood calls itself “Mysore,” the city in India that is (or was) the source of the best quality. It came from wild trees, of which now there are few, if any, left.

I have 20 different samples from around the world and only one smells like genuine Mysore, with a subtle, almost medicinal complexity, that runs through it. I would be happy to duplicate any sandalwood, provided it comes from santalum alba, versus the less-charming Australian species, santalum spicitus.

BPC's Sandalwood is made bold with vetiver and frankincense. In addition to acting as fixatives, these rest over a sandalwood-like substructure and allow the aroma of the wood to emerge as the perfume dries down. This substructure is frightfully complicated, but it provides an authentic sandalwood note because it contains a fair amount of the real stuff. It also contains santalol, a distillate made from sandalwood itself, but more assertive.

Of all my perfumes, only Sandalwood lacks aphrodisiacal funk. It is clean and robust and starts or ends the day with a note of bold freshness. It lasts long on the skin. It draws commentary, especially when kissed on both cheeks, à la française.

“What is it you’re wearing?”

What is an Eau Fraîche?

We’ve all been exposed to a great number of perfumes, usually made from complicated formulas, and often consisting of chemicals alone. While some of these perfumes can be fantastic, pure naturals can inspire us even more. A whiff of authentic vanilla, the scent of herbs and spices, of truffles, of ambergris, move us with their sensory beauty.

The notion occurred to me, a couple of years ago, of celebrating single natural fragrance ingredients without altering them in the lab. The perfect medium seemed to be an eau fraîche.

Eau fraîche is French for “cool water.” There are many ways of interpreting this, but I took it literally and decided to create a line of natural sprays that have the cooling effect of water sprayed on the face and elsewhere.

Row of Eaux Fraîches

To do this, I include water in the formula, creating the effect of a splash from a fresh stream and not the burning heat of pure alcohol

The sprays are intense, cleansing, and evanescent. For three, I chose the greenest ingredients I know—vetiver, galbanum, and violet leaf to create an olfactory tang. Vetiver smells like fresh grass, galbanum a bit like gin, and violet leaf a tad like cucumber. Because these aromas are unfamiliar, most people become fascinated. There are those who buy the whole set and experiment with various combinations.

The fourth ingredient stands out because it’s not green at all. It’s orange, but not orange juice or orange rind, rather, orange flowers. It is neroli, distilled from orange blossoms, with a scent that’s floral and citrus at the same time.

The sprays wash over us, each its own natural aromas. They leave us fresh.

Eaux fraîches are great for getting out of the shower, for men who shave, and for a splash of cool water near the end of a tiring day.

Roses Again

Perfumers forever state that a well-made perfume has a synthetic frame, ultimately fleshed out with essentials, absolutes, and enfleurages, each derived from natural ingredients. I have nothing against aroma chemicals since most of the time they are the same compounds that occur in the flowers anyway. (This isn’t completely true; some molecules are mirror-images of their natural counterparts.) The agreed wisdom is that aroma chemicals persist more on the skin (they do this best when they form accords) than do naturals. This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. If the chemicals are the same compounds found in the naturals, one would assume they’d last the same amount of time. Empirically, however, it does seem to be true—to make most perfumes persistent enough, you need isolated compounds, synthetic or otherwise.

To go about learning how to make this chemical frame, I’m using charts from one of my favorite perfume books, by Stephan Jellinek and Robert Calkin from the early 1990s. In one section of the book (which I’ve copied to avoid wearing the book out) there is a list of “compounding notes” for certain well-known flowers. For example, under rose, in a left column is a list under “Basic Formula.” Listed on the right column are “Selected Variants and Modifiers.” While this sounds like giving away the game, keep in mind that no quantities are given. You must smell your way through the array until you get to a rose.

The first chemical listed is phenylethyl alcohol. This isn’t surprising since phenylethyl alcohol smells just like roses. (not really; if you hold it next to a real rose, it smells “chemical” and flat and has no complexity). So, I start with a base of 30 drops of that (why not?). The next chemical is citronellol.  I added about 10 drops of that until it came into balance with the phenylethyl alcohol. I never would have thought of citronellol as being part of a rose’s fragrance—it’s used to repel mosquitos. Geranyl acetate, another nuance, is added next. I continued in this way, until I had put together 12 aroma chemicals. The result did, in fact, smell like a rose, if rather a clumsy one. It was a bit too green and sour. The two are separate in my mind. Green is of green things like crisp sugar snap peas snapped open (galbanum and violet leaf smell this way) and instantly sniffed. Sour is something tangy like clary sage.

After establishing the basic (clumsy) rose, I moved on to the variants and modifiers. Next to phenylethyl alcohol, Jellinek recommends pheylethyl acetate, “phenylethyl esters,” and phenoxyethyl isobutyrate. Keep in mind that an ester is the result of an alcohol combining with a carboxylic acid. For example, ethyl alcohol and acetic acid, when combined under the right conditions, form ethyl acetate, which has an aroma all its own. It’s good to keep this in mind when trying to figure out which aroma compound might work. If you’re working with linalool, for example, try linalool acetate. It has a freshness and a naturalness that augments and balances linalool itself.  

Under “Other rose chemicals,” we find “damascones.” There is more than one, each with its own nuances, but the gist is fruitiness. They’re beautiful molecules that add a lovely freshness to a blend, provided they are used very discretely. A drop too much can ruin an experiment.

I tried something else. I added naturals to back up some of the compounds. I added geranium to geraniol, neroli to nerol, clove to eugenol, and orris (iris root) to ionone alpha (a violet-like compound) to give complexity and nuance.

At the very bottom of the list is an array of recommended naturals. Many are surprising in a rose: two kinds of chamomile, palmarosa (which smells like tarragon), carrot seed, guaiacwood, sandalwood, iris (orris), mimosa and benzoin siam.  By adding a drop here or there, the rose moves in one direction or the other. Carrot seed is surprisingly effective in bringing out “rosiness.”

I did find it surprising that Jellinek doesn’t mention animal ingredients as he does for the other flowers. Perhaps it is because they distract from the rose itself, but I would certainly like to experiment with civet, ambergris, and musk.

Finally, I added a drop of 10-percent red rose otto. Since I was working with 10-percent tinctures, this seemed an appropriate starting point to add to a solution of about 200 drops. I figured I’d work up to four percent rose otto since this was the percentage of rose absolute typically used in perfumes up through the 1950s. Wrong. Very wrong. Rose otto is far more powerful than an absolute. My one drop transformed the whole thing. My clumsy rose, which now contained almost 40 ingredients, sparkled with subtle nuance. While no masterpiece, it had become a real perfume. It lasted on the skin at least a little while (an hour?); rose otto just evaporates. 

Working with this list has familiarized me with more aroma chemicals and has given me insight into the relationships between them. I want to remember enough of them so I can think in them and construct my own florals, either duplications of natural flowers or fantasies of non-existent things.

From Perfumery: Practice and Principles by Robert R. Calkin and J. Stephan Jellinek, published by John Wiley

ON HOLD

Rose

I’ve been going to various perfume and beauty product events and have found that people, primarily women, want a floral. I’ve been letting people smell rose otto and they go nuts.

So, to the drawing board it is.

I’ve started out with phenylethyl alcohol which has a definite aroma of roses, albeit in a chemical context that reminds me a little bit of coal tar. Artander (the reference for this kind of thing), describes it as “Rose-honey-like of moderate to poor tenacity…” and, later, describes how it is used up in concentrations of up to 20% in a formula. Most enticing is this: “…with an apparently weak crystalline fixative/odorant, such as trichlolo methyl phenyl carbinyl acetate…” in 5% solution will make the smell more rosy and also make it last longer. Jellinek doesn’t mention it, but does mention Rosatol (which I don’t have), phenylethyl dimethyl carbinol, dimethyl benzyl carbonyl acetate, and dimethyl benzyl carbonyl butyrate, these last three which I do have. Experiments will ensue.

Jellinek suggests that phenylethyl esters be combined with the alcohol to give it character and nuance. I looked through my collection and found phenylethyl acetate, phenylethyl isobutyrate, phenylethyl proprionate, and phenylethyl benzoate. My own notes: I detect no odor from phenylethyl benzoate. The strongest smell is from phenylethyl isobutyrate. It’s clearly persistent (it smells on the strip after hours), but not terribly agreeable, at least on its own. I get fruity and nutty notes. Phenylethyl proprionate is similar to phenyl ethyl isobutyrate, but with a fruity aspect. Phenylethyl acetate has a fresh, rosy aspect.

Here’s what Arctander has to say:

Rose Absolutes and Ottos

Phenylethyl acetate: “Very sweet, rosy-fruity, honey-like odor of moderate to poor tenacity. The fruity notes are mostly peachy with a pleasant leafy-green tonality, the rosy notes are very sweet, almost towards Gardenia.”

Phenylethyl benzoate: “Very faint floral-balsamic odor reminiscent of dry rose leaves and petals with a soft, honey-like undertone and excellent tenacity. The odor of this ester may not impress the observer on the first encounter, but in use it displays very attractive effects, other than the fixative effect.”

Phenylethyl isobutyrate: Not mentioned

Phenylethyl proprionate: “Very warm, herbaceous-rosy, deep-fruity and moderately tenacious odor with a delicately spicy note (warm-balsamic).” “This ester is, in the author’s opinion, one of the most useful of all the derivatives of phenyl ethyl alcohol. Its virtues are often vastly underestimated by many perfumers, and the material is left unused on the shelf…”

Clearly, I must try combining phenylethyl alcohol with each of these to see which will lend itself to my rose.

My attack plan consists of building a basic chemical structure that is both persistent and projects. Once that’s in place, I’m going to add an unreasonable amount of white rose absolute, rose otto, and white rose otto. White rose otto costs about $50 a milliliter. If everything goes according to plan, I’m going to make a white rose perfume that’s going to blow the mind.

Magnolia Craziness

Brooklyn Perfume Company’s Magnolia Perfume

I had been searching around for a new smell to play with when Kate (my consultant) noticed the smell of the magnolia tree next door.

Magnolia has a peculiar aroma, floral, but with an underlying sense of something decaying. This last smell is so particular to magnolia that my greatest efforts have been to replicate it. The floral part seemed manageable, but that smelly part a bit harder to match.

This led to a dilemma. I have two sources for magnolia absolute. Both are good, but only one has that particular nuance I so crave. The unfortunate part is that the one with the aroma I want is $22 a milliliter. In other words, a teaspoon would cost $110. 

Now, I know my tendency is to buy only the best (and, usually, most expensive), but at these prices I’d have to make it so expensive. Brooklyn Perfume Company is not known enough to sell $300 perfumes.

So, I’ve decided to use half and half. The combination works perfectly because one magnolia fills in where the other leaves off.

I constructed a typical floral perfume—a kind of setting as for a stone in a ring—and set the magnolia on top.  Amazingly, it all seemed to work out.

To get a sense of what other people are doing, I obtained a sample of Frederic Malle’s Eau de Magnolia. My immediate impressions are that mine is greener (which I love) and that Malle has included something to replicate that special gentle funk. Whatever this dark element, it doesn’t quite work. It holds back what could be a too-sweet floral, but it doesn’t completely do the job of finishing the smell of magnolia.

His is a lot smoother than mine which leads me to think of some minor changes such as using a special musk (helvetolide), something that seems to coat everything with a layer of satin.

Keep your eyes out; I have a feeling this is going to be coming out soon.

Blending Day for Ambergris

It takes many months, sometimes years, to develop a new perfume. When I finally decided to create Brooklyn Perfume Company’s Ambergris, I went through my collection of about 800 odoriferous substances and selected anything that smelled like the ocean or had facets of ambergris’ complex scent. My intention was to underline and to frame the ambergris with similar-smelling substances.

My Ambergris’ most important ingredient is ambergris itself. Once I established what tincture I was using (each has its own nuances), I fleshed it out with substances—artificial and natural—that smell like the ocean. I use a generous amount of ambroxan, justifiably a very popular molecule. It has a subtle, some would say marine, fragrance and while it blends beautifully with other ambergris ingredients, there is at least one successful perfume that uses it alone, as the sole source of its aroma.

With the ambroxan in place, I fleshed it out. Chemicals, when sniffed alone, can be harsh while natural ingredients tend to be more welcoming. Beeswax absolute is a fixative—it makes the perfume last long—and gives it a vaguely animal foundation like that of ambergris.

Brooklyn Perfume Company’s Ambergris Perfume

Immortelle lends a softness and complexity that smooths out many of the other ingredients; hay gives the perfume longevity. Seaweeds—I use a number—contribute their unmistakable scent of the ocean. Opopanax and labdanum bring an earthy complexity and again make the perfume last longer. I add oud which gives a wood note (some describe ambergris as smelling like an old cathedral) and of course makes the perfume more expensive. A trace of porcini absolute adds animal-like notes.

When I’m developing fragrances, I use 10% tinctures, but for the blend I used the pure ingredients. Once combined, the fragrance is aged before being diluted to the appropriate concentration. It is then aged some more.

Some ingredients, especially base notes, are hard to work with. For some of these mixtures I heated the bottle in a saucepan with boiling water to soften them. Other compounds are powders or crystals. The mixture ended up a hopeless ugly mush, but it smoothed out when alcohol was added for the final fragrance.

Once finished, the perfume had hardly any smell, but there was something more worrisome: the blend was black. I had hoped it would get lighter once alcohol was added, but it was still black as night. Will the public wear a black perfume?

After allowing the blend to settle for two days, I found a bunch of black gunk at the base of the cylinder. I poured off the clear (now, very dark green) liquid and filtered it into a clean flask for more aging, a process during which certain aromas come to the fore while others recede.  Adjustments made, the final batch smelled too strongly of nonadienal—very strong and green—so I added a little oud to ground the perfume. As the aging continues, I will make more adjustments. In perfumery, very little is predictable.