“Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; camphire with spikenard, spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all chief spices…”
(From the Song of Solomon)
People have turned to nature for fragrance since time immemorial. In the Assyrian Books of the Herbs, a collection of cuneiform-inscribed tablets from around 2000 BC, there appear not only recipes for established medicinal herb compositions but also for fragrant ointments and perfumes.
However, as scientists started to understand the structure of natural fragrance and flavour complexes, the syntheses of important ingredients became possible and soon artificial fragrance substances were being produced. As these last-named materials were not found in nature, they opened up the possibility for entirely new odour effects. The classical perfumers looked down their noses at these laboratory created facsimiles but the fresh and exciting fragrances they made possible were accepted enthusiastically. For example, Chanel No 5, launched in 1921, owes its classic aroma to the presence of synthetic aldehydes.
Increasingly, the demand these days is for “natural” in most things but perhaps not always. Traditionally, musk fragrance was obtained from the male musk deer. The trouble was, it is a glandular secretion contained in an internal pouch between the hind legs of the deer. So, to get your musk you must first kill the deer.
Synthetic chemists came to the rescue, creating musk ambrette and musk ketone. The ambrette has a floral-sweet, somewhat heavy musk-like odour whereas the ketone has a warm, sweet erogenous musky odour.
Meet the families
No perfume is unique as, no matter how original or exclusive a creation may seem to be, its fragrance is always compared to other related ones. So, as fragrances developed and flourished, a system was established for putting fine fragrances into a clear order and it made sense to group them into families.
Seven families were established:
Green notes – ‘green’ describes the fragrance conception of leaves, meadows and grass. The family is sub-divided into fresh – associated with light and cool notes of lemon, lavender and herbs, and also balsamic – the soft and warm notes of natural odorants.
Floral notes – this is a large family and is probably the most used in the fine fragrance industry. It is sub-divided into fruity-fresh, floral-fresh, floral and floral-sweet.
Aldehydic notes – have an especially strong diffusive quality, which makes them difficult to compare with natural aromas, Chanel No 5 is an example. This family has a woody-powdery characteristic, in addition to their basic aldehyde-floral direction.
Chypre notes – based on the harmonic contrast of bergamot-accented freshness with an oak moss foundation. Can be rather heavy and earthy, and is sub-divided into fresh-mossy-aldehydic, floral-mossy-animalic and mossy-fruity.
Oriental notes – have a distinctive heavy sweetness, reminiscent of fragrances from the East. The ingredients can be exotic blossom notes, spices, balsams and resins.
Tobacco-Leather notes – obviously would be considered as ‘masculine’ but lend themselves to ‘natural’ fragrances; along with tobacco, notes of amber, plum and honey are widely used.
Fougère notes – primarily considered as a masculine fragrance type, they consist of herbaceous-fresh notes ie fresh herbaceous lavender notes on a mossy foundation. Used in many ‘fantasy’ fine fragrances.
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