After sun comes amber

I must admit, even a base note woman like myself can find pleasure in a perky summery fragrance. Not many, but a few. But I do look forward to boots, blankets and fuller blends. A launch that makes me curious is L’Ambre des Merveilles, a new interpretation of Hermès' Eau des Merveilles from 2004 that will be in stores in August. Eau des Merveilles was created by Ralf Schwieger and Nathalie Feisthauer but the new interpretation is created by Jean-Claude Ellena (as were L’Elixir des Merveilles and Eau Claire des Merveilles). Ellena often speaks of how a perfume's identity and character can be given different olfactive expressions. It is always interesting to study his creations, just take the EdT and the EdP of Voyage, and compare them for example.

Lovely detail with the two bases on the bottle of L’Ambre des Merveilles that can be used to create movement of the sparkly stars.

Bespoken life.

One of the most beautiful and enchanting persons I know, fashion journalist and author Karin Falk, had a birthday party yesterday. A party that was the perfect reflection of herself and her unique mesmerizing blend of sweetness, elegance, charm, style and... magic sparkle. If I one day (wishing) have some kind of perfume-making in my life she is one of the first persons I would want to make a bespoke perfume for.

Happy birthday magic person 

The party in itself was beautiful. For me, it was also pure ego-bliss as I spent most of the evening talking about perfume with Anders and David. I hope they were not painfully overwhelmed by my neverending discourses. I can't help it. Standing in that kind of setting, surrounded by all these Karin-kind-of-people, with fantastic playlists in the background and a candlelit cake-vaganza and neverending champagne...and then these two men ask me about perfume... It is almost too much. My heart went all...well, like this:

Photo by fellow party guest Karin Jacobsen

The conversation revolved around a new perfume for Anders. Anders is special so his perfume has to be also of course. He is one of the stars of Diablo Swing Orchestra, a band that creates music made of this world, other worlds and everything in between. Listen to the song A Tapdancer's Dilemma, you will understand, this man obviously cannot have just some "nice perfume". David, works at Swedish fashion brand Acne and his girlfriend wore a striking red folded envelope/clutch-ish pièce de conversation handbag that he had chosen for her. He was also totally in the zone when it comes to perfume talk. Isn't that just a really great quality in people?

So. Now I am looking for a special scent. Masculine but young, something that captures unusual width of heart and depth of soul. Warm but with integrity. Soft but strong. Solid but with a charming twist. Poetic but sharp. Infinite but present. Present but free. It will include amber, neroli and wood notes. Also definitely bergamot. And then something else... Animalistic notes for sure, but not sure which one. As you understand this is a challenge that I embrace with great enthusiasm.

I wish all parties in my life were like Karin's party. I wish all days in my life included searching for someones scent.

Life is bespoken. Cherish the people that remind you of that.

Ambergris

I know you have heard of amber. The word appears often in the perfume world when talking about oriental fragrances for example. Makes me envision nature caramel. Then you hear of ambergris. I am guessing many of you assume these two are, if not the same thing, that at least linked to each other. A very logic assumption and it seems even the perfume industry sometimes likes to blend the two (on purpose?). They are not the same… And the difference is significant, so my suggestion is that you keep an eye on which one it is that you are going for when looking for a new fragrance. I will definitely do a post on amber soon but tonight it is time for the nastier of the two.

I will admit, I was a bit surprised the first time I googled ambergris. This, for example, is the first sentence that you find if you look it up on Wikipedia:

Ambergris is a solid, waxy, flammable substance of a dull gray or blackish color produced in the digestive system of and regurgitated or secreted by sperm whales.

If you follow this blog you might have gotten accustomed by now to the fact that perfume and animal secretions have a lot in common, and accepted that probably you have had both one and two of them on your skin. You have also probably noted that most of these secretions are replaced with synthetic options nowadays. But not always. Perfume houses are not always enthusiastic when it comes to defining whether they use synthetic or natural ingredients but I have heard that for example Creed use natural ambergris. Some people are put of by this but in my opinion, if the animal is not harmed and the synthetic option can be allergenic – then nature’s gifts are definitely my preference. 

Wood, floral or oriental and does it matter?

Does it matter if you can classify what fragrance you’re wearing? If you know whether it is a floral, fougère or oriental? In theory, if you ask someone like me who is against superficial pointless namedropping – the answer is no. There is absolutely no point in keeping that sort of stuff in your head just for the sake of it or because you “should” know. In practice however, there are two reasons for you to think about perfume classification – the main one being that it’s a great tool for new discoveries as it will provide you with concrete links between what you like or dislike, and this will lead you to new fragrance pleasures. And pleasure is a great reason to care about things. The other reason is just simply curiosity. Some people just like maps. I do.

19th century perfumer Charles Piesse was one of the first to start classifying perfumes. He quickly turned to the world of music for symbols and so the language of perfumers became similar to that of musicians (which it still is today). The terms used in perfume language have the purpose to describe the different aroma layers in a fragrance, like chords. We also talk about top notes and different tones when distinguishing between ingredients and specific scents. We talk about the tonality of a fragrance just like we when analyzing a music piece.

There is also a more architectonical way of visualizing perfumes. William Poucher was one of the first to use the ‘fragrance pyramid’ to explain the top, middle and foundation as layers. He created the structure based on measurement of evaporation rate of perfume ingredients (fastest evaporation = top).

Image borrowed from davidreport.com/201103/scent-tokyo/

Here are some terms (from different eras, let’s not be so dogmatic) that are good to know when going on your perfume quest. The terms continuously develop and some perfumes contain traits of different families.

Feromones...

I'm thinking... don't go there? Or can't avoid going there?

In the meantime, here is some hairy chest.

Dior Homme is a woody aromatic created by Olivier Polge. It is characterized by the top note iris (Tuscan) and has an amber/wood base dominated by cedar and ambrette from hibiscus seeds.