A Random Art History of the Sense of Smell

Once upon a time, philosophers divided the senses into the noble, intellectual senses of sight and hearing, and the proximity senses of taste and touch, considered more physical and animal.  The sense of smell was positioned at the junction of these two groups, and just kind of ignored.  Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Descartes all wrote about the sense of smell at one point or another and dismissed it as a coarse and undeveloped sense, one that leads to more unpleasant experiences than pleasant ones (ha!), or couldn’t deal with how subjective scent is.  

In the 18th century, the Sensualist movement came about.  In opposition to the intellectualizing philosophers of the past, the Sensualists vaunted the importance of feeling as a part of knowledge.  Diderot considered the sense of smell to the sense of the imagination and love.  “Pity the man,” he wrote, “so insensitive as to unmoved by his mistress’s odor.”

The Ongee of the Andaman Islands live in a completely different culture.  So into scent are they, that the universe and everything in it is defined by smell.  Their calendar is constructed on the basis of the odors of flowers which come into bloom at different times of the year.  Each season is named after a particular odor and possesses it’s own distinctive “aroma force.”  Personal identity is also defined by smell: to refer to oneself, one touches the tip of one’s nose, a gesture meaning both “me” and “my odor.”  When greeting someone, the Ongee do not ask “How are you?” but “konyune onornge-tanka? meaning “How is your nose?”  Etiquette requires that if the person answers that he or she feels “heavy with odor,” the greeter must inhale deeply to remove some of the surplus.  If the greeted person feels a bit short of odor energy, it is polite to provide some extra scent by blowing on his or her palm.  The Ongee even paint their skin to trap their odors in their bodies to maintain their energy.  

Perfume historians like to say that the first modern perfume is Jicky from 1889, because it was the first perfume to use synthetic ingredients (as opposed to all natural).  In my opinion, I don’t see why that makes it art or not but I will say that it’s interesting that that is when perfumery came to be considered an Abstract Art, contemporary with Impressionist Painting.  Scent is a lot like Impressionist Painting if you think about it.  It conjures and alludes to something rather than showing it outright.  

I think the moment is ripe for scent as a Conceptual Art movement.  I think the popularity of niche fragrances (last year, 70% of scents sold were niche) shows that consumers are looking not just for better ingredients, but for something more interesting and deep.  Artists like Carrie Patterson and Sissel Tolaas are using scent as a medium.  And I’m thinking about the human heart and the tree of life as representations for compassion and humanity.  

The Grasse Institute of Perfumery in the Press

While I was off on a road trip to Spain, a journalist from the Global Post came and interviewed some of my classmates.

Creation Class

Our courses in raw materials are just about over, and I now know over three hundred individual synthetic and natural ingredients for perfume.  What’s crazy is, I walked past a lilac bush the other day, and the flowers were just about over, wilting.  All I could think when I walked by was “Ick, sticks like indol.”  Indol is a chemical that smells strongly of burnt hair and mothballs.  I’m beginning to pick out individual smells from the world!

We started chemistry courses last month, and just last week we added genealogy and creation.  In genealogy class, we’re learning and memorizing about one hundred perfumes on the market including old-time classics, trendsetters and perfumes that created new genres, and the top ten.  It has been extremely eye opening for me.  We’ve smelled just two so far, Chanel No. 19 and Amazone by Hermes.  I pretty much thought I disliked all main stream perfumes but never have I sat and really smelled them, taking the time to analyze and appreciate them.  We study the marketing materials too: the advertisements, the tag lines.  Marketing scares me.  

Creation class is a dream.  It’s taught by Max Gavarry, former chief perfumer at IFF.  For the moment, we are learning to reconstitute individual flowers using a mix of ten to twenty synthetic and natural ingredients.  Something clicked for me on the first day of class when Max said it.  I’ve heard it over and over but it didn’t get into my head until that moment, and when it did, it did so clear as day.  The reason we reconstitute flowers with many ingredients, including and especially with synthetics, is because the naturally obtained oils don’t smell like the real thing in full bloom.  When you think about the processes to obtain a natural oil - the picking, the drying, the boiling, the steaming - it makes sense.  Rose oil can be wonderful but it also kind of smells pungent and sour (we even nicknamed it fish soup when we were cramming for the tests).  We’re working in groups to create good solid bases and then manipulating them.  For rose, Vicki, Tessa and I made two versions: an earthy rose and a creamy rose.  The idea for the earthy rose is one that is just slightly before full bloom with pink petals still closed a bit, and hints of dirt and stem.  The creamy rose we accentuated with sandalwood and coconut.  

Clary Sage and Geranium

I may have mentioned before that I’ve been learning the raw materials of perfumery.  Three times a week I study ten to fifteen new synthetic materials, and twice a week natural materials, with an accompanying explanation of how they behave in formulation (Are they long-lasting?  Are they top, middle or base notes? etc.).  In the case of naturals, I’ve also been learning where the plants, and in rare cases animals, are cultivated and how the oils are obtained.  In addition to my class notebook I keep another just for recording scents that may be relevant to the Humanity project, and in it I jot down my personal impressions of a particular scent, and if it’s a natural material, I check later it’s aromatherapeutic qualities.  

Two materials that struck me as particularly interesting for Humanity are natural clary sage oil and natural germanium.  For the moment I am going purely by instinct, and although I’d like the experience of Mexico to guide the selection of the final materials used in the scent, some materials make it to my preliminary list.

Clary sage has a diffusive, uplifting, sweet earthy hay scent.  It was used before hops as a flavoring in ales.  It is said to have sedative effects and calm nerves.  I’ve smelled it before and every time I do there is something refreshing, natural, down to earth, and sunny about it.

Geranium has a really lovely floral smell.  But not the kind of warm floral that stays all over you like jasmine or rose, but a cooler, greener scent.  There are over 700 kinds of geranium cultivated and only three species are used to obtain the essential oil, so not to be confused with the potted plant you usually see at the garden store.  It’s scent is classified in the rose family but it’s fresher than rose oil (I wish the internet could transmit smell...).  In addition to treating a variety of physical ailments, geranium is known as an antidepressant.  

Memory

Interesting article in the basics (yes, please) Science section of the New York Times about selective memory.  It explains why one can remember some things but not others, the gist of an event but not the details, and the difference between short term and long term memory.

A large part of why the Humanity project uses scent as the artistic medium is because I’ve found that scent can conjure obscure memories and transport one back to an experience in a unique way.  It’d be interesting to know how memory and olfactory sense are connected in terms of neuroscience.  

7 Questions for...Fabrice Penot, Co-founder of Le Labo

I first encountered Le Labo when I was still working at The Apartment, and the lovely Amber would stop by wafting Rose 31 all around her.  I would say it was the first time I was actually intrigued by a scent.  

I met Fabrice in the spring of last year at his shop in Nolita and since then we've had fascinating discussions on perfume as an art and an industry.  

As the founder of a niche fragrance company with eight years of experience in the corporate perfume world, one of your missions, as stated on your company treatise online, is to fight against “the rising tide of conformity.”  Please explain.

Everything smelled alike in the perfume world, which is supposed to be a place of creativity.  That’s my opinion anyway, though his might be challenged by some people.  I joined perfumery because I like the new, the unexpected, the surprising, the marvelous, and I thought I could be a part of this.  When I realized reality was far from what I expected, I started to be frustrated and unhappy.  I bitched about it, but  I was still part of the system.

That’s when I decided that being the man I wanted to become was to “stop bitching, and start a revolution,” and that’s how Le Labo was born.

Who do you think is the most innovative perfumer today and what is he/she doing to push the boundaries?

With no hesitation, Daphne Buget.  Creation is in her blood and she never gave up with her ideals.  More importantly, she never gave in.

Le Labo sells a notebook scented with Santal 26, and the scent Tubereuse 40 was originally created for Kirsten Dunst to get into character for her role as Marie Antoinette for Sofia Coppola’s film.  Do you think consumers are open to having new and non-traditional sensory experiences with scent?  

I really do, more than we think at least.  More than ever people need to experience wonder through all their senses.  They need to feel alive.  You don’t provide such an experience with a scent that does not evoke anything else than the last fruity floral on the market.

Trust Art is being launched during a recession, but as the name suggests, we can, and still should trust in art.  It’s been said that this time might “cleanse” the consumer market.  Do you think that the current economic climate is affecting the way we think about and purchase perfumes?    

The market is in recession but it does not mean that perfumery as an art is!  I think this crisis is a blessing for perfumery.  It is a catastrophe for the perfume market, but a blessing for perfumery.  This recession could prompt the obligation for brands to deliver more interesting creations in the bottle and merit their prices, which would be an opportunity for perfumery as a whole.  People won’t stop buying, but they’ll buy better.

We live in a fucked up world where we assess the importance and the health of things and people by the amount of money they produce.  Perfumery is not restricted to the perfume market.  It should be an art first, and a market after, at least in the eyes of creators.  As for how business men treat perfumery, that is another issue which i don't have the time or the will to discuss.

Your partner is a holistic nutritionist and you have a young child together.  Do you have a take on synthetic vs. natural ingredients in perfumes?

Oh yes, a long take.  But in a few words, I am a big believer in synthetics.  I disagree with what you say -   that synthetics is only a way to use cheaper ingredients to replace naturals, even if it is true that some companies do.  Among the top four most expensive ingredients we are using,  three of them are synthetics.  

I would also add that synthetics are helping us to get rid of animal cruelty, like the civet for example.  I can already hear the reactions of readers who will say, “ but we don’t kill civets to extact the scent.”  I invite them to do some research on how the civets are treated to do so.

What is Le Labo’s connection to Grasse?

The original idea for Le Labo bloomed there during a training I did with Jean Claude Ellena in the lab he had there at that time.  Le Labo was born in Grasse and raised in NYC.

What were you doing the moment you decided to start Le Labo?  

I was drunk.

Experiences Transform You

Natural Raw Materials and Variability

Most perfumes are made from about 90% synthetic materials, if not more.  Probably the main reason is that synthetic raw materials are far cheaper than natural raw materials.  Synthetic materials raw are also more stable than natural oils.  The smell, texture, and character of a natural raw material can very depending on a number of factors: the weather, the crop, etc.; in the same way the fruits and vegetables we consume vary from season to season.  However, for perfumes sold on the mass market, natural variation poses a problem, as consumers expect the perfume they purchase to be the same, time after time. 

In my opinion, the variation in natural oils is wonderful and can make a scent unique.  I understand that natural variation makes it difficult to maintain consistency in the product, but I think that if consumers were more educated about the perfume process, they would come to understand and perhaps even like that the perfumes they wear have a natural variation, much in the way that wine is prized and collected based on it’s year.  Apparently, Givenchy did just that, introducing what they called the “vintage collection” but I’ve heard they are not selling well, despite an extensive marketing campaign.  I wonder if consumers are wary of the marketing campaign itself, believing that it is exactly that, marketing.  I will try and find out more on Givenchy’s collection soon.  

P.S.

I just wanted to say that I was in no way dissing deli flowers.  When my friends bring me flowers, any flowers - picked, deli, supermarket, mom’s garden - it’s one of the sweetest, simplest gestures and I appreciate it every time.

What I am trying to say is that there is a complete inundation of products right now, and this applies especially in the perfume world.  In 2008, there were seven hundred new perfumes launched.  That’s two a day!  That’s in addition to all of the perfumes already on the market.  The market is saturated and consumers are confused.  The quality of the ingredients is too dependent on price (keeping costs down for maximum profitability), and the term luxury only applies in the marketing of a perfume.  Like the Saipua flowers that served as my example, beauty can be found in simplicity and naturalness. 

Natural Raw Materials: Is It Wasteful?

I was talking to my sister and explaining my delight upon seeing the Robertet production facilities, and knowing me well, she asked me if I thought it was wasteful.  That is, cutting down 18,000 tons of mimosa  to create just 400 pounds of concrete, which then gets further reduced to it’s final product, the absolute.  

I liken it to the flowers on every corner, at every deli, in New York.  I’ve always been miffed about those, and how I imagine the flowers grown on large tracts of land in South America, fertilized with abandon, and then flown to some other city, wasting gas, depleting soil, etc.  Yes, of course, I buy deli flowers sometimes, but just to say that every once in a while the thought crops up;  it is a waste, and it is bad for the environment.  

But then I get inspired by places like Saipua, where flowers are so obviously respected, a place to purchase flowers on special occasions; to get to know what you’re buying, and where it comes from.  That’s why I want to start my own line one day of small-batch handcrafted scents.  I want them to be precious.  I don’t need 18,000 tons of mimosa.  Just a little.  I want the customers to cherish the scents and make them theirs.  In some ways I think of perfumery as a means for a message.  Isn’t that what all art is?  To communicate?  The message I want to communicate is to cherish.  Cherish your experiences and your memories, cherish nature, cherish people.  Oh, I know people will think this is idealistic, or that it doesn’t fit in with the consumerist society, but I think that’s not giving people enough credit.  We’re always bringing about change.

Here is a picture of a Saipua bouquet from Design*Sponge.  Not your average deli flowers, right?

A Visit to Robertet

Robertet was established in 1850 and is one of the oldest perfumeries in Grasse.  They create fragrances, cosmetics, and flavors; they also a produce high-quality raw materials.  Robertet created the scents for Bond No. 9 Bryant Park, the latest Chloe women’s fragrance, Gucci Rush, various hair products for Origins, and L’Oreal kid’s shampoo, among others.  On Friday my class visited the Robertet factories with the intention of seeing the the production of the mimosa tree into a natural absolute.  

The particular species of mimosa that grows in Grasse is native to Australia.  It’s a medium sized tree that has pretty fern-like leaves and when in bloom, has beautiful pea-shaped bright yellow flowers.  The flowering season is only two weeks long and occurs in mid-February.  On Sundays, local people looking to make extra money drive out to the hills surrounding Grasse and prune the outer branches of the tree, gathering the flowers, leaves, and small stems.  They sell their truckloads to collectors who in turn bring the mimosa to the production facilities.  In the past, the main source of mimosa oil for perfumery was Grasse, but now there is competition from Morroco and China, because the labor to collect the branches is far cheaper.

On Thursday a batch of mimosa had been delivered to Robertet but the quality was not good enough for processing.  In this case, the discarded material was used to render into fertilizer.  Fortunately, we were able to see parts of the production process and smell the oils of treemoss, iris, beeswax, vanilla, tonka beans from the Amazon, champaca from India, and maté from Brazil.  Heaven!

For natural raw materials, there are three common ways to extract the oils from the plants.  For citrus fruits, most of the time the peels are expressed, or squeezed.  For many plants, steam distillation is used whereby the plants are boiled in a still with water and the oil is later separated from the water.  The resulting products are called essential oils (in some cases the water is also used in perfumery or flavorings, such as with rose water).  Some plants, like the jasmine flower, will not release their scent through steam distillation.  Using a chemical solvent, the scent is captured and turned into what is called a concrete, basically a wax.  The wax can be separated out, producing the absolute oil, a highly concentrated viscous liquid containing the scent of the plant.  (These are obviously abbreviated descriptions of the processes; for more information, wikipedia has thorough explanations.  Also, one of the reasons that Robertet’s raw materials are so expensive is because of their finishing process.  An oil can be refined any number of times to alter the composition, and customized to suit the needs of a client.)

There is also a process called CO2 extraction, and I was able to visit Firmenich’s plant in Grasse yesterday, but don’t understand the process well enough to be able to explain it, even rudimentarily.  All I know is that it’s by far the most technologically advanced method and the inside of the production room felt more like a place where they would manufacture cars, not natural oils.  That said, the final products smell wonderful and admittedly, closer to the fresh source (in hydrodistillation the scents can change a bit due to the boiling of the natural materials; in extraction, there is wilting).  Yesterday I smelled carrot seed oil, sesame oil, tuberose, and white pepper, all from the CO2 process and they smelled amazing.  According to Firmenich, their perfumers love working with CO2 products.  

The pictures here are of mimosa concrete, produced earlier in the week.  The barrel contains about 400 pounds of concete, but roughly 18,000 tons of mimosa were needed to produce that, for a yield of just 1%.  The largest stills at Robertet hold about 450 pounds, so one can imagine the number of times the process needs to be repeated, and the amount of labor necessary.

Iris oil is highly-prized in perfumery, and Robertet’s prices for the absolute can exceed $100,000 per pound!  The irises used for perfumery were traditionally grown in Florence, Italy, where the older generation would pick the roots of the species iris pallida.  Now there is competition from China and Morroco, although the species grown in these areas are different.  One reason for the astronomical price is the length of the process.  The irises are harvested and three years later their roots are ready to be picked.  The roots can either be peeled, producing a pale concrete and absolute, or left unpeeled to create iris noir.  The roots are dried for fifteen days, after which they are put in storage for three years to age.  Only then are they ready to be distilled.  Natural iris absolute is used in perfumery, and also in flavorings where a small amount can enhance the taste of red berries.  The absolute oil smells strong and herbaceous, dusty, heavy, with a woody aspect and a powdery dryout.

These pictures are the first step of distillation, as the ground iris roots are being put into the stills:

Here is a picture of beeswax concrete.  Beeswax absolute is one of my favorite raw materials.  It’s rich and warm, and has an animalic note.  

After smelling all of these wonderful materials, we were treated to a tour of the rest of Robertet.  We passed a laboratory where people were creating cosmetics and detergents, and were led upstairs to the perfumery.  The perfume laboratory was absolutely silent, despite six people in lab coats working.  Bruno, the sales director guiding us, said of the perfume laboratory, “It’s almost like a church.”  Immense concentration is needed to measure and detect the minute changes made while creating a scent.  The perfumers, however, are in an adjacent room where they are creating the formulas for scents on their computers.  The formula is printed out and given to a laboratory assistant, who mixes the solution and gives it to the perfumer.  Sometimes hundreds of revisions and are made to a scent before it is complete.

Yes, please.

I was just told by a friend and classmate that Firmenich has been working on distilling the air in the Amazon.  I didn’t even know that was possible but I’m prepared to say that that is basically the reason I got into perfumery.  That’s my dreamboat!

The Origin of Synthetic Materials

One of my teachers, Jean-Francois, is a chemist who previously worked in sourcing natural ingredients for perfumery.  He has images and anecdotes from around the world.  He has helped cultivate patchouli in Java, photographed the wild mimosa trees of Australia, and researched how to modernize distillation equipment for roses in Turkey.  As we were smelling citronella today, I asked him how synthetic raw materials come into being.  In short, some synthetic raw materials originate in nature, and some are entirely the product of chemistry.

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of chemical constituents in varying quantities in natural essential oils. Citronella oil contains about 10% of the chemical citronellal, and 20% of citronellol and geraniol combined.  Therefore, the synthetic raw material citronellal could be considered as having it’s origin in nature, as it is merely separated out from the natural source.  Note that citronellal can be further separated into the chemicals hydroxycitronellal, citronellol, and menthol, all synthetic raw materials used in fragrances and/or flavorings.  The combination of citronellol and geraniol that I mentioned above is renamed and marketed as rhodinol (ex citronella), and rhodinol is a sythetic raw material that smells like a combination of rose and citrus with a dryout that gives the impression of soft red rose petals.  The combination of citronellol and geraniol is found in other natural oils, the best quality being geranium, which is then called rhodinol (ex geranium).  

On the other hand, there are synthetic raw materials which do not originate in nature at all, and are created entirely in a laboratory.  Muscone and civettone are two important ingredients used in perfumery manufactured by Firmenich, imitating the scent from the gland of the musk deer, and the smell excreted by the gland of the civet cat, respectively.  Obviously, it is no longer practical to source these ingredients naturally on a large scale.  The chemicals muscone and civettone are created by mimicking the structure of the natural molecules, but have no natural source. 

I asked Jean-Francois on his opinion about whether inhaling synthetic ingredients was harmful to our health.  He did not think so, explaining that the amounts we ingest through inhalation are minute.  Alas, we are surrounded by synthetic materials and ingredients, and have little control over our exposure to them anyway.  I’m not entirely convinced that consuming excess chemicals causes no harm.

There is one point I’d like to make concerning the possible advantages of synthetic raw materials over natural, and that’s for the environment.  Sandalwood oil, with it’s meditation-inducing calm woody scent, is prized in perfumery.  Sadly, the tree is an endangered species, and it could be considered irresponsible to use it in perfumery.  Here, the synthetic raw material sandalore sandela can be used to attempt to rebuild the scent of the natural oil.  

It seems to me that if we could change our demand for all types of products in such lavish quantities, we could perhaps find a more sustainable way to produce the commodities we enjoy.  In turn, we could raise the quality of our goods, making more precious the food we eat, the clothes and perfumes we wear, the houses we build, and nearly everything else we consume.  

Words of Wisdom

Thanks to kottke.org for posting the link to a collection of wonderful commencement speeches by Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Toni Morrison and others, collected on a website which shares the name Humanity.  Living in a small town like Grasse is quite a drastic change from the life I left behind in New York, and my nights are free to read inspirational essays such as these.  Sometimes it’s easy to get lost in the details and forget why we’ve entered into the work we do.  Reading those essays helped me to remember and appreciate why I’ve chosen to become a perfumer, and why I’ve chosen to do the Humanity project.

"Grow Up Strong"

Chie is twenty-nine years old and comes from Japan.  Since she was very young she has had an avid appreciation for the traditions of her culture.  Chie wears a kimono to school, and every day at about 4 pm she has an abbreviated traditional tea ceremony where she serves a few of us matcha green tea.  Sometimes she stares out the window, overlooking the valley out to the sea, and proclaims that in that moment she is content.  Before coming to Grasse, Chie studied traditional Japanese incense for three years.

Today she wore a kimono that caught my eye, as the pattern seemed so modern (honestly, to me, it reminded me of Nike and even M.I.A.).  It was bright purple with a yellow, honeycomb-like motif.  Most kimonos have symbolism or a story woven into the fabric.  What I perceived as honeycomb is actually hemp fiber.  In the olden days, many Japanese people died young or had ailments as children.  For this kimono, hemp, being such a durable material, expresses the hope to grow up strong.  

How Personal Culture Effects our Sense of Smell

I think it’s pretty obvious that I love natural essential oils and absolutes, and in the past I was resolute about using only natural ingredients in my perfumes.  However, I have to admit that the synthetic raw materials we have been learning over the past few weeks have been compelling in their own way.  In three weeks we have covered about 90 synthetic raw materials and 60 natural raw materials, and I want to share some of the names and scent descriptions of the synthetic raw materials, just for fun.  

Phenyl ethyl alcohol smell like pink rose petals.

Aldehyde C14 smells exactly like the peach Victoria’s Secret lotion all the girls in my high school wore.

Veltol +, also known as ethyl maltol, smell like all the foods at a carnival mixed into one - caramel apples, buttered popcorn and cotton candy - amplified and sitting right in front of your face.

Methyl octinecarbinate smells like the violet candies in the old-school packaging that my roommate used to buy.

Cashmeran smells ambery, crossed with pine.  Like a handsome man taking a walk in the woods, wearing a scarf.

Amyl salicylate, which my teacher says smells like “fantasy clover” makes me think of Don Draper and what his after-shave would smell like.  The color of Polo Ralph Lauren navy blue, clean and sort of common.

What’s interesting is that one’s sense of smell relies so much on an individual’s memory and culture.  To take a broad example, the french students in my class have no problem recognizing raw materials classified in the anise family.  Anise is flavor of licorice, and a main ingredient in pastis, a french liqueur.  When I smell anise, I think of cinnamon.  To take a more personal example, I have no problem identifying methyl iso eugenol.  To me, it smells like the Knight’s house on Chappaquiddick Island off of Martha’s Vineyard.  My family visits in the summer, and the house smells a little musty from being locked-up in the winters, like the ashes from the fireplace, and the wood with which the house was built.  Technically, methyl iso eugenol is classified as spicy, but each time I sniff it this image crops up in my mind, and the classification is neither here nor there.  Of course, we are reminded that to really know a raw material, we must blend with it and see how it behaves in formulation.

More on Vitamins

Scientists suspect that the benefits of a healthful diet come from eating the whole fruit or vegetable, not just the individual vitamins found in it. “There may not be a single component of broccoli or green leafy vegetables that is responsible for the health benefits,” Dr. Gann said. “Why are we taking a reductionist approach and plucking out one or two chemicals given in isolation?”

Click to read more ...

The Tree of Life

I wonder if they’ve thought seriously about handing over the redesign of Darwin’s tree of life to a kick-ass graphic designer? 

Inspirations for the Humanity Scent

For the scent used in the Humanity fountain, I have three sources of inspiration.  I want to take as my basis natural aromatic plants indigenous to the San Miguel de Allende region of Mexico.  The research for this will be done when us group of volunteers visits the Charco del Ingenio Botanical Garden with the children of the Casa de Los Angeles day care center.  Since this is a tribute also to my friend Bailey, I take her as a muse.  She was fair-skinned, blond, light, airy, aloof but sensitive, determined, and individualistic.    I remember her wearing daisies in her hair to the prom, and daisies always remind me of her.  I would call her a free spirit.  Lastly, the experience which we have during our week in Mexico will provide the biggest creative influence.  An experience can move one in a myriad of unexpected ways.  Will the air bestow a desert heat on our skin?  Will the children smell of clean and sickly-sweet sweat as they sit in our laps?  Will we bring them sea shells as gifts and be reminded of the sea?  Will looking at the stars at night make us feel cool and free?  

The final choices for the raw materials for the scent will then be whittled down to ensure that they impart the intended psychological effects for those experiencing the fountain (as well as, of course, smell pleasing).  My intention is for the scent to uplift, encourage relaxation and making connections, stimulate compassion, and nurture a sense of letting go.

Synthetic and Natural Raw Materials

During the first three months of school, we are learning the raw materials, or individual scent ingredients used to create a perfume.  Three times a week we are taught synthetic raw materials and two times a week the natural raw materials.  Every day we learn 5-15 new scents, with the expectation that by April, we will be able to recognize about 500 raw materials from memory.  

Most of the natural raw materials would seem pretty familiar.  The citrus family includes lemon, bergamot, sweet orange, and mandarin, amongst others.  There’s a rose family and a jasmine family, woody and minty.  But it’s funny how when you’re handed the essential oil of grapefruit on an unmarked paper blotter, your mind seems momentarily to go blank.  Is this...orange?!  No, wait...lime!!  

Despite the entirely foreign sounding names, in some ways the synthetics are easier to define because they have fewer scent aspects.  For example, the natural essential oil of vetiver, a plant native to india whose roots are distilled to create a complex woody, rich, almost smoky scent, contains 152 chemical constituents and attempts to reproduce it in a laboratory have been largely unsuccessful.  On the other hand, geraniol is a synthetic ingredient with a simpler citrusy rose smell that is a chemical constituent of palmarosa, a grass native to india, and is used, along with other ingredients, to recreate the scent of a rose.

Is synthetic geraniol created in a laboratory, or is it extracted from the plant?  If it is created in a laboratory, how?  If synthetic ingredients originate in nature, can they still be considered synthetic?  Are synthetic ingredients harmful to our health and/or the environment? 

A couple of years ago i took a series of cooking classes at the Natural Gourmet school in Manhattan.    I remember the founder, Anne-Marie Colbin, discussing vitamins.  Her opinion was that taking a vitamin out it’s context, outside of the food from which it came from, whose system was created by nature to provide nourishment, depletes the vitamin’s ability to provide that nutrition.  A recent study published in the New York Times seems to agree with this wisdom, citing that no health benefits were seen by regular multivitamin users.  In contrast, research does show that people who eat nutrient-rich diets of whole foods experience better health.  

If this is the case, I would conclude that using natural essentials oils and absolutes in a perfume intrinsically produces aromatherapeutic qualities, while synthetic raw materials have no psychological or physical effects.  But, is there harm in using synthetic ingredients?  I hope to find out, as I am learning about many fascinating synthetic raw materials that I look forward to experimenting with in formulation.