And here is my weekend reading tip for you: The new edition of the Sniffapalooza magazine is out! Roses, roses and more roses and Karen’s thoughts on Incense rosé.
Please read the article here and find out why she thinks it is an interactive fragrance (wow!): Sniffapalooza Magazine.
And now….please enjoy your weekend.
(picture: Church window, seen in Samedan, 2008)
Today, I got the latest batch of rose absolute (I buy it in 100 gram batches) and rose oil, and linalylacetate which brings an end to the linalylacetat shortage in my cellar. I had to wait a while for it… the world markets for Linalylacetat seem to go havoc these days, probably due to the economic changes.
Now, the last remaining item to wait for is: Jasmine absolute where I want to stock up. Talking stocking up….
.. I have to say byebye for today: I need to stock up samples. Again. A neverending story.
The still picture below shows you the folder of my certificates of analysis, also for the latest batch of rose absolute. It says “scent description: heavy, flowery, rose, wood”. Well. Yes, I guess, that’s a starting point. I would add “luxurious, velvet, thick, creamy, powdery, citrus, ….
Having brought up impressions of orange flower and toilet water and shaves, we continue…regular readers of this blog know about the writer’s desperate orange flower trials and the various failures ranging from donkey poo to aqua de nada or waste of treasures. And this post deals with how inspiration can work its way through.
Orange flower is tricky to work with. What is intoxicating clean and clear turns into mud and a puddle after monsoon in eastern Asia. At least in my hands, except for the eau d’épices in all its variations, where I used a lot of spices. As a matter of fact, what follows is somewhere related
Every year, for X-mas, I make soaps for friends, pumped up with clementine, red mandarine, and a hint ambergris.
How the two fit together? I realized that in the soap might be one answer to my orange flower conundrum. An aspect of being clean and clearness.
Thus, I started a while ago, working on a fragrance with a “running title” mandarines ambrées, as the soap runs under this title, keeping one line of thought coming from the soap: Mandarines, ambergris, and extending it towards….orange flower! Juhee.
Without even thinking to touch its clean aspects (yep…soap) and keeping a clarity that runs all the way down into the base of the fragrance. Like meeting this guy and looking into eyes that tell you everything, a book open to read. From a chemistry point of view: Irisone, aurantiol, lilial, ambroxan, ambreine, C12, hydrocinnamaldehyde, to name a few.
I was looking for a picture this morning that might explain this clear aspect, and I run over the picture of the lenses of the San Diego Light Tower, seen autumn 2008.
Picture: Lense of the light tower in San Diego Cabrillo National Monument, seen 2008, October by Andy
before we follow Michelyn’s recommendation, (see her comment here), where she was so right, we do wrong.
And talk chemistry. Just a little bit.
Like jasmin, orange flowers are white flowers. They are white and rich in indole which you would, in its pure form, not associate with white but rather with chocolate, but only for its color. It has a flowery smell if diluted and if not… well…imagine. In the orange flower oil I recently bought it is concentrated to 0.8% which is already a lot, but nothing compared to the Jasmin sambac, where Indole makes up 11 % of the total absolute.
Imagine. Tough stuff.
It is this fine line between the cloaca maxima and the white floral innocence that brings about the fascination of citrus flowers. The trick is juxtapositioning, white and black, the feather and the ambos.
How can something with 1 % indole smell so clean? And, be so sexy?
Now, coming back to Michelyn. She insisted on not talking chemistry. But rather talk imagination, pictures.
Thus, citrus flowers: Like you meet this guy. And you want to have sex before he shaves. And again, when he did, because of his toilet water. And afterwards you sneak into his bathroom and reach for the bottle.
This picture works also the other way round, but she does not shave.
Picture: a close up of a citrus flower, seen in Zurich, in a warm apartment in December.
Yesterday, I bought “breakfast in America” from iTunes and now, I suffer from a severe nostalgia attack. Thinking back in college days, laying for hours rather lazy on the bed with a friend and listening to breakfast in America. Later, being completely clueless, when I got 20 years old, I had the urge to visit the US when I finished college. I did so, bought a car over there, and started in Florida, driving all the way west, up to the Tampa area where the car broke down and needed a fix. This did not stop me.
The car would later bring me further west, all the way to the Pacific ocean, and back again in a big circle to Chicago and then NY, down the coast to Florida again where the car was basically falling dead and I got into the plane with 3 months full of memories.
Thus, you see: A lot of breakfasts in America. A couple of them in LA, in the 101 coffee shop, close to highway 101, in Hollywood, later in my life.
From there it is a few blocks to canyon road.
There I was jogging last spring.
Citrus trees in bloom.
This week we leave the roses of last week and start talking citrus.
You see: Full fledged nostalgia.
Picture: Memories of 101 coffee shop and orange flower
Today we praise the virtue of keeping things. Keeping like not throwing stuff away although you are tired of it or feel like you need something new and get rid of the old shabby bottle. The W.-factor is good when it comes to keeping stuff. And then, after 25 years or so keeping a bottle in a crowded cupboard (yes: This is the price to pay for keeping things), a spontaneous move brings treasures of the past all the way up into daily use again.
Yesterday, I was amazed to smell the scent of Marc Aurèle Cyprus body lotion again. A product that is more than 20 years old (says the W.-factor), sold back then by Migros (translate Migros into largest supermarket chain in Switzerland), not available in stores anymore and guess what: It smells great. Yes. It smells really good. I said immediately: Bottle this scent and sell it expensively and it would be a success. Provided you are still allowed to use what is in there.
Heavy loaded in Dihydromyrcenol, linalool, some lilial like things, a lot (tons) of musk, oakmoss (can this be….?) and stuff I do not know. And yes: I ‘d bet its formula is far off from what the International Fragrance Organization recommends today for body lotions or other scented products.
And there we’ve been sitting on the dinner table yesterday, sniffing Marc Aurèle and we wonder why this early 80-ies cheap body lotion smells so good.
Maybe it is a memory of days when we were young and innocently used tons of musks. Or…
Picture: An almost empty bottle of Marc Aurèle Cyprus body lotion. The W.-factor claims it is 20 years old. I do not know. But I like it.
…that was the SMART car slogan a while ago (for sure when they launched) and now they reduced the slogan to “open your mind”. By the way: The Smart car, developed originally as a 100% hybrid concept by SWATCH in Switzerland, was a touch too early on the market. Like Apple’s Newton. Interesting to think about: You can be too early with a new idea and if the time is not ready, it is not ready. And you should better wait. Anyhow: Back to the slogan. I liked their first slogan better. It fits better in a sense.
And it can be used about anywhere: It is perfect for stock markets, postal services and perfumery.
Reduce to the max for me is key when building a fragrance and working on its formula: While going from version to version the formulas tend to become more complicated and after a while the formula is like a big thicket, where the path is hard to see and no light gets through.
Reduce to the max: For the actual version of the light rose this translates into about 8 components for the base notes: A touch green, spicy styrax, some ambergris, a layer of tonka beans, a touch berries, and some powdery, aldehydic woods (C12, isoE, sandalwood).
Talking max: Please follow Max’s thought on the Rose chyprée (running title) here, on his blog.
Enjoy.
Some of you where happy enough to get a sample of the rose chyprée. A rose chyprée is a chypre fragrance, that I built in 2008 and that sits now as excel file and waits until it is released.
When? Later!
Form? to be decided….
The rose I have been circling lately is a different brand. Internally, it runs as “eau de rose”, a “clean rose”.
The anthemis nobilis oil of yesterday is part of it; other rose components are a geranium complex (geraniol, Bourbon geranium oil), rose oil (steam distilled from Bulgaria). The camomille bridges a hint of a herbaceous, rough line consisting of red thyme oil and cistus ladaniferus oil (and extract, a special quality from Essencia). The later two are important to add a twist, to bring in a contrast.
They do not stand out as such, and the thyme is hard to get but it is there and it is needed because the composition would fall apart right into heavy soap area. Clean, but the cheap way.
picture: A few roses, uploaded by Andy
Finally, I got my batch of Anthemis nobilis, aka Roman camomille essential oil from Essencia. I had a sample to play with and got my 100 ml of their latest batch. The essential oil is clear, derived from 2008’s dried flowers and smells slightly camphorous, clean, flowery with a rose touch, a hint of a ripe fruit.
The original idea was to put this together with rose oil and use it to make the rose wilder. Well.
About 50% of the essential oil are angelate esters, such as isobutyl-angelate. The isobutyl derivate makes up around 34% of the essential oil of the analyzed batch according to the certificate of analysis, and if you’d care for this one alone you could get it from Sigma-Aldrich. Like most essential oils it is very complex…the composition as well as the scent.
Thus, I am playing with the new kid in town… Originally, the idea was to use chamomille to bridge a somewhat sweet rose line with a slightly herbaceous, rough line from cistus ladaniferus and maybe a (hardly distinguishable) thyme line. Just adding a twist to an otherwise clean rose (yawning…) story line.
We will see where we get there.
Back we are from Winter Wonderland. Back to sending mails and making samples today. And with next Monday, I shall start with a very regular perfumery blogging life again :-)
Until then: Here a few impressions. We took the train Wednesday, a special train: The Bernina Express that goes from Chur over the Bernina pass at 2200 meters all the way down (we got out at Poschiavo at 1100 meters).
Picture: Inside the train with the minibar, nicely decorated…..
The view: Driving through winter wonderland.
First the Albula valley
then the Bernina pass.
After a day with clouds and snow: Thursday was a day in the sun and this is what you see if you sleep in Muottas Muragl, when you wake up…..
And this is what you see if you enter a glacier.
The Morteratsch glacier allows you to just that. There is a little grotto, and the ice and its colors are just spectacular.
Wow!