Perfumery

  • Ingredients,  Perfumery,  Products

    Lactonic Scents

    peach; coconut; milky; nutty (various); osmanthus; fig; musk; jasmine; tuberose; solar; waxy. I’m smelling very “lactonic” today! This was a question asked on Bluesky which set me thinking. What makes a “lactonic” note or perfume? Initially, perfumes made of the notes of peach and coconut come to mind, gamma decalactone, gamma undecalactone, gamma nonalactone.Delve into this a little more, lactones are often described as “milky”. To make an osmanthus perfume, or a tuberose, one would use lactones too. Then as I put my perfumes on today, I thought, well, quite a few musks are lactones (e.g. cyclopentadecanolide, and ambrettolide), and fig notes can be made using gamma octalactone, so I…

  • Perfumery

    Vintage perfumes

    Years ago, in the ’80s, teenage me had a favourite perfume, “It” by Lentheric. Fast forward to today, I obtained a vintage bottle on eBay. Now, as a successful perfumer of many years, I know fragrances mature and reactions take place, sometimes undesirable ones. But I’ve had very little real experience of any vintage perfumes. It doesn’t have the “off” alcoholic notes. But this doesn’t smell as I remember, to be honest. It’s a lot more aldehydic, animalic (even civet?), and oakmossy, chypre. I do like a good chypre, but I didn’t remember “It” being one? What happens to fragrances after this many years, is it only these kind of…

  • Perfumery,  Products

    Fragrance Layering

    I have to say, I smell amazing today. I keep getting wafts of fragrance (just lately, I’ve got into fragrance layering).I’ve layered Liz Earle Vanilla & Clove Body Lotion, followed by J. Floris Chypresse, topped off with Liz Earle No. 15. I love the Liz Earle No. 15, it is probably my current favourite in my perfume collection. It is floral and woody, rose and sandalwood/an oudy hint. I’ve had very mixed results wearing it – one very balmy Spring/early Summer day was the first time I really sprayed a good amount on, and it was amazing, I could smell this cloud of it all day. That day I had…

  • Botany,  Perfumery

    Forget-me-nots

    These pretty blue flowers don’t really have a scent although I have seen perfumes inspired by them or interpretations (a floral bouquet can be made with rose and jasmine notes, and a powdery background). Myosotis sylvatica is the Latin name for the garden or wood forget-me-not and they are part of the borage family Boraginaceae. Flowering during April and May you can see a beautiful sea of blue at ankle level. There is also Myosotis arvensis, the field forget-me-not, and the national flower of Alaska is Myosotis alpestris or the alpine forget-me-not. Myosotis scorpioides has an interesting name – this is the water forget-me-not also called “scorpion grass”. Sylvatica has…

  • Botany,  Ingredients,  Perfumery

    Rosa damascena trigintipetala

    The pink shrub roses used to make rose oil and rose absolute for perfumery are from two main varieties, the Centifolia rose, and the Damask rose, or Rosa damascena trigintipetala. These grow in Bulgaria, Turkey and Morocco, and I was lucky enough to visit the rose growing areas in El Kelaa des M’Gouna, Morocco, in 1997. There, the rose bushes are actually the side crop, used as hedges to assist and protect the wheat that is also being grown. The town of El Kelaa and nearby growing areas are part of a large oasis in the Sahara Desert. This week I had cause to look again at my journal from…

  • Botany,  Perfumery

    Cherry Blossom season

    I’ve been trying to decide if my favourite time of year is Spring or Autumn. I used to say Autumn definitely, with all the leaves changing colour. But the last few years we have had such amazing Spring blossoms. I am learning that they aren’t all cherry blossoms, although some of them are types of cherry tree. But there are also other types of Prunus, which would include plum blossom and almond, along with apple blossom. I have learned about the different types of cherry blossom as well, like the Kanzan cherry (Prunus serrulata) which is larger and grows in clusters, and the weeping cherry or “Snow Fountain” which has…

  • Perfumery

    Rabbit Ear Aldehyde…

    A while ago there was an article on LinkedIn discussing the removal of butylphenyl methylpropional and hydroxyisohexyl 3-cyclohexene carboxaldehyde (HICC) from the Perfumers’ Palette due to regulations, and the use of floral pyranol, as one of the aroma chemicals that can be used instead to create a lily of the valley note. But there was mentioned in this article, “rabbit ear aldehyde” and as I’m a chemist as well as a perfumer, I’d love to know what molecule this relates to. It is presumably another lily note. Could it be cyclamen aldehyde, because that has a structure such that in it’s molecular diagram, the carbons and the branching are a…