Sample Winner Announced

Congratulations to Rachel Hutchins who won samples of L' Erbolario - Meharees and Chopard - Casmir by joining in commentary on the Odiferess Facebook page.

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Make Your Own Perfume - The Magnificent Perfume Making Experiment! Part 2

You are reading part 2 of a series of posts entitled “The Magnificent Perfume Making Experiment!” If you haven’t read part 1 it won’t make any sense, for enlightenment click here.

After much delight tinkering around with pipettes and amber glass bottles (which I find appealing to the point of fetishism), I bring you the encouraging results of my first few weeks of amateur perfumery.

The joy of mad scientist equipment

My olfactory imagination pictured an effervescent sparkling scent, something to offset the grim menace of the upcoming winter. I suffer greatly in winter, being one of those for whom travelling to and from my day job in darkness brings a flattening of spirit. Winter nights often see me curled up in bed with a gruesome thriller and a peaty whisky by 9pm. I’d be fond of the life of a hedgehog. Were it not for the brief romance of Christmas, I’d be quite content to sleep in a deep pile of leaves for 4 months. With this in mind I want to play with natural aromatherapy oils that effect a feeling of enlivenment and happiness such as; grapefruit, bergamot and cypress. I see it essentially as a sharp chypre softened with a comforting woody base, something to bring about a beam to my grumpy November face.

My starting point was to create the base i.e. A pre-mixed solution upon which you can add extra notes. A useful metaphor would be to think of the base as the foundations of a house, the underground layer upon which you’ll add additional floors. This is how I did it:

• Cut vast quantities of smelling strips (from artist’s cartridge paper) and select combinations of notes to dip them into. After dipping 2 or 3 strips each time, fan them out and waft them across your nose. This enables you to make a choice of notes that work harmoniously ‘in the air’.

• Place 5 ml of perfumer’s alcohol into a small bottle and begin to add very small amounts of your notes bit by bit into the solution. For the synthetics you can use a calibrated pipette (with millilitres on). For the essential oils you can simply use the dropper in the bottle. As you add you’ll be able to sense when to stop by closing up the bottle, shaking it, then having a sniff of a strip again. Write down every single measurement as you do it. I really liked the combination of Plush Folly’s slightly floral and very bright Aldehyde 2 with various wood notes so I made several bottle variations i.e. A2 + cedar, A2 + rosewood, A2 + sandalwood etc.

• Stop messing with it and go to bed, leave the bottles alone for a few days somewhere dark and cool.

• Smell them again and consider where to go next, you can repeat the smelling strip fan process now using your favourite of the first blends alongside new notes. Split the blend into 2 bottles and experiment with adding another note or two to each one. Be prepared to pour it down the sink and start again when it doesn’t work (I attempted to add teeny amounts of castoreum to my blend. Just the very tip of a pin dipped into the bottle and added to the base caused it to emit a stench akin to multiple cattle farts).

• Leave it alone again for a few days.

• After some time I found success in the combination of A2 + rosewood + cedar which gave me a wonderfully deep woody vibe. Rosewood has a similarity to oud in that it possesses a slightly rosy sharpness but without the removal of all the mucous cells from the back of your throat. I vastly prefer it to oud. Alongside the cedar (the scent of opening a flat pack box of untreated wood IKEA furniture), it gave a rich gravitas to the blend. It needed a tiny touch of sweetness to counteract the sharp so in went a few drops of synthetic Plush Folly’s Vanilla Bourbon. This is exceptionally strong so be careful with not to obliterate the gentler natural notes. 

Smelling it tonight (about 2 weeks into the process) I am delighted with my base. Here’s the current recipe:

6 ml of perfumer’s alcohol (Plush Folly)

4 drops of synthetic vanilla bourbon (Plush Folly)

6 drops of aldehyde 2 (Plush Folly)

5 drops of rosewood essential oil

2 drops of cedar essential oil

My recipe, pictured with the terrible castoreum mistake.

This is a very heavy concentration that will need some serious maths work as future notes are added. I’ll ultimately use Mandy Aftel’s marvellous natural perfume making manual ‘Essence and Alchemy’ to determine what amounts will constitute an EDP or Parfum Extrait.

Tips:

Buy a lot of pipettes to avoid cross-contaminating your notes. Wash them in warm soapy water, let them dry, swill them in a little perfumer’s alcohol or rubbing alcohol to sterilise them.

Fiddle A LOT to get the right base, it is after all your foundation.

If you detest maths and adore stationary (this might be a female thing), invest in an object of desire for your record keeping. My gorgeous Moleskine notebook made recording measurements a pleasure.

A bizarre thing happened to me when I created my base, I could see clearly where to go next with my notes. It’s as if some sort of intuition occurred and stopped it all being the purely hit and miss testing that formed the multitude of sink fodder in the early stages. I can’t wait to test my ideas this week and see if any of them work.

See 'number 3', my chosen base in it's little bottle. 'Jumbled up' is a few discarded trials mixed together, it smells infuriatingly good and I haven't a clue what's in it..

Keep an eye out next week for an interview with Plush Folly’s Sally Hornsey where she speaks of her own adventures in perfumery. 

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Review: Byredo, M/Mink. The Bloody Toothed Beast

A peculiar event takes place when you pair patchouli with marine notes, it turns into an animalic beast.

We are fond of smelling our patchouli alongside ‘soft’ notes such as an amber accord, vanilla or balsamic benzoin and tonka. No wonder really as it’s strident character benefits from a little gentility. Together with some sweetness, patchouli is a sensual, warming note that evokes a comforting hippy vibe (as in L’Artisan Parfumeur’s Patchouli Patch) or a dose of late night glamour (at it’s best in Givenchy’s original Givenchy Gentleman).

Patchouli-fest

Byredo created an unusual (I’m understating here) patchouli beast in M/Mink. By beast, I refer not to a hideous ogre, more to a grand fierce animal.  It belongs in the category of ‘very close to human/animal/marine effluence that is strangely beguiling’. It shares it’s category with Maison Francis Kurkdijan’s Absolue Pour Le Soir, mentioned in my last post for it’s notably ‘pissy’ top note. To see the post click here. Alike Absolue Pour Le Soir, M/Mink becomes more comfortable after it’s challenging top notes wear off, leaving you with something quite beautiful.

Very pretty packaging indeed

It reminds me a little of ‘Secretions Magnifique’ by the notorious Etat Libre D’ Orange. However, it doesn’t make me gag or scrub at my wrist with Swarfega industrial gunk remover (which I did after first trying Clinique’s hugely abrasive skin Claryfing Lotion which is best left for cleaning a filthy computer screen or moments of terrible perfume sample application). What it does share with Secretions Magnifique is a veritable ocean of saltiness and minerals.

Back to M/Mink. At first application, you are hit (strongly, in the face) by a gigantic musky and leathery whiff. This often smelt, albeit with less intensity, in fumes that contain labdanum. It’s not the gentle Hermes saddlery leather, more a ‘bag from a market in Tunisia’ leather which still holds a little scented suggestion of the ‘only just about cured’ skin of it’s animal benefactor. This sounds revolting but it’s not. It’s (just) on the right side of animalic, beastly but not deathly. Leather is not listed as a note in M/Mink so I am presuming that the sensation comes from the pairing of a sea water note and patchouli, like an old lost boot washed up shore-side to dry in the sun.

Alongside the animal note is a very clear re-creation of the sea. Unlike polite refreshing scents such as Aqua Di Gio, this ocean is reminiscent of industrial docks, where working ships float in the murky water giving off a faint whiff of diesel, damp ropes and wood varnish.

M/Mink is said to have been inspired by a lump of solid oriental calligraphy ink, something I’ve never had the delight of smelling, but a quick flick through online reviews reveals a shared sense of printing toner arising in the nostrils of many.  Again, adding to the connotation of ‘industrial’ scent.

Maritime whiffs

Once you’ve ridden out the magnificently fearsome journey of M/Mink at it’s peak, the whole thing dries down to a very pretty and gentle trail of patchouli as we know it. It’s possibly the most charming dry down of any of it’s genre, the mewing kitten at the close of the bloody toothed roaring lion.

It’s not for me but I admire it’s eccentricity and powerhouse punch. So who would I recommend it to? 

• Those seeking a truly niche perfume that will mark them out as unique and adventurous.  
• Those who liked the idea of Secretions Magnifique but couldn’t contain their gag reflex.
• Those who frequent leather/rubber fetish clubs or adore German Industrial Techno.

A brilliant beastly marvel.

Make Your Own Scent - The Magnificent Perfume Making Experiment! Part 1

I’ve a damn good nose. Or so I think..

Having always been utterly obsessed by the scent of things and places, I imagine that given the chance, I could be a perfumer. This is a dream shared by so many of us, especially after the BBC televised a three part series about the industry several years ago. One episode in particular was enthralling, as Jean Claude Elena was shadowed at work with his fortunate apprentices. No one could forget the sight of this strikingly handsome fellow with his nose pressed to the metallic edge of his patio doors, inhaling deeply and speaking of the conceptual scent of ‘cold and smooth’ in his mellifluous French accent.

JCE at work, sniffing an asthma inhaler?

When researching my article ‘The Scent of British Spirit Part 3’ (click here to read it), I encountered Sarah McCartney of 4160 Tuesdays. As a more or less self taught perfumer, Sarah creates a splendid range of quirky but wearable niche fragrances that prove that you don’t need an extraordinary amount of scientific knowledge or years as an apprentice churning out flavours for laundry detergents, to create a fragrant delight.

Think about your existing knowledge, if you’ve been using Fragrantica and Basenotes for years you’ll already know many of the notes that form the top to base structure of a perfume. If you use aromatherapy essential oils at home you’ll have experience of which fragrances blend together harmoniously. The experience of years of sample smelling will have taught you what works and what doesn’t, both in terms of personal taste and generic success.

If we assume that we have a little talent, what we are really only lacking is access to the enormous range of ingredients that make up the ‘perfumer’s organ’ (which appeals enormously to my puerile sense of humour..), the masses of money that pays for endless revisions to our experiments and minutely accurate scientific measuring equipment. There is no way around any of these immense problems so we’ll just have to accept it and try to make something less complex than the professionals.

So, I’ve decided to have a go at making my own scent. As I’m hugely impatient, slapdash and overly optimistic, this could be a pit-falled adventure. It’s already gone dreadfully wrong with the spillage of a little aldehyde C11 on my fingers, queue copious gagging at the extraordinarily tenacious scent of undiluted plasticky whiffed torment!

I’ll be updating you about this adventure roughly once a fortnight as the experiment progress, but for now here’s how I’ve started:

 1) Last year I bought a tiny bottle of Agmark Mysore sandalwood essential oil and a bottle of perfumer’s alcohol. I used it to make a pure ‘authentic’ sandalwood scent. This arose out of discussions about the death of ‘real, i.e. Mysore’ sandalwood in perfumery. Priced out of possibility, manufacturers began to replace it with cheaper species from Australia. The blend was magnificent and possessed all the creamy, unctuous, softly wooded qualities that I remembered in Sandalwood scents of years ago. It felt like meditation in a bottle and fuelled my enthusiasm to create more.

 2) A few weeks ago I ordered a plentiful wodge of essential oils and absolutes from Neat Wholesale (see listing and link under the ‘shopping tips’ page). I couldn’t afford to buy any expensive florals (though I’d loved to have tried their Champaca and undiluted Rose and Neroli) so I stuck to a few that I have used and loved before such as Rose Geranium and Rosewood and a few small quantities of things I’ve never smelt before such Roasted Coffee and White birch. The sensation of smelling their Lavender Absolute (the purest concentration of Lavender) was extraordinary. This bright emerald green liquid contains so very many notes within itself that it was a stand alone perfume, lavender bright with a musky, mossy warm undertone that I’ve smelt in By Kilian’s Taste of Heaven and Caron’s Pour un Homme.

Some of my little bottles of EOs from Neat

3) I also made an order for synthetics with Plush Folly (again see the shopping tips page) who specialise in ingredients for making perfumes, candles, cosmetics etc. I ordered three types of aldehyde, a sample pack of animalic notes, some ISO e Super (of eccentric molecules fame), a musky ambrettia base and some perfumer’s alcohol. The box arrived at my work address and upon opening, stank out our tiny office. It obviously provoked disparaging glances and wrinkled noses from my co-workers as I ran to open the window. I think a little of the aforementioned Aldehyde C11 might have leaked. It wasn’t pleasant.

Tiny curious bottles of Plush Folly's synthetics

Upon arriving home, I started to mix small amounts of the synthetics with perfumer’s alcohol, to enable me to smell then without overpowering my olfactory sensors. The most exciting of these ingredients were the two musks – Castoreum and Civet. I handed them to my partner for his thought’s.

“This is civet, what can you smell?”

“It’s piss. Defintely piss, and erm.. that one we smelt in Selfridges, the brown one”

“The Francis Kurkdijan? Absolue Pour Le Soir?”

“Yup, think so”

“This is castoreum, what can you smell here?”

“Piss, piss and cowpats”

It was a fairly accurate description of the notorious ‘skank’ note that we enthuse over in it’s purest form. This maybe a revolting association but I imagine that either of these notes would beef up a soppy floral or add some quirk to a strong oriental base. I was impressed.

I was also mightily impressed by the Ambrettia base. My curiosity for this ingredient was sparked by my love of the ambrette note (derived from a plant called the musk mallow) that appears in my beloved Annick Goutal’s Musc Nomade. In actuality, the Ambrettia potion is both enlivening (bright, optimistic, sparkly, slightly floral) and grounding (depth, strength, powder). I’m looking forward to making something with a ‘vintage’ feel with this one.

Of the aldehydes, numbers one and two were marvellous, projecting an airy bright opulence, each with a distinct character. I imagine that these will ‘lift’ compositions beautifully if used sparingly. Aldehyde C11 upset my sensibilities so much that it went immediately in the bin, double bagged for the safety of never smelling again. I surprised myself in that I can cope with the smell of, in Andy’s words ‘piss’, but can’t cope with the smell of ‘plasticky ironing’.

4) I’ve made a beginning with the bases of two scents. The first (a coffee and woods combo) smells so good that for now, I’m keeping it a secret (sorry!). I’ll be splitting the base and fiddling with top notes over the next few days.

In the making of the second scent I’ll be revealing every step and ingredient in upcoming posts here at Odiferess, telling you of the successes and failures that will make this either a good quality, wearable scent or complete bin fodder. We’ll see..

Make sure you check back in regularly over the next few months to follow my adventure.  

Review: Ormonde Jayne, Ormonde Woman - The Witch's Brew

Have you ever contemplated a link between perfumery and witchcraft? I presume it depends upon what your perception of witchcraft actually is/was. I’ve long held a fascination with the concept of ‘the witch’, indeed hailing from Lancashire, my county was famed for the notorious Pendle witch trials in the early 1600s.

A rather romantic depiction of the witches of Macbeth

Witchcraft was feared as an unholy power, an ability to charm something/someone, enabling it to flourish or to wither, or to cast some personal wish. This was thought to be achieved by some sort of devilish incantation, the aid of a ‘familiar’ (often an animal spirit form such as the ubiquitous black cat) or the use of a magic potion formed from all manner of herbs and voodoo-esque ephemera.

Ancient medicine relied upon the potent power of herbaceous plants to aid recovery. Nicolas Culpeper’s ‘Complete Herbal’ of 1653 gave ordinary folk advice about how to treat common illnesses with easily foraged indigenous plants, a practice that had been going on for many hundreds of years before the book was published. In the Complete Herbal, in addition to treating physical ailments, plants were also recommended to treat ailments of the mind or soul, much in the same way as they are used in contemporary aromatherapy and psycho-aromatic perfumery. Next time you spritz Penhaligon’s Lavandula consider Culpeper’s advice upon the lovely herb:

“Two spoonfuls of the distilled water of the flowers taken, helps them that have lost their voice, as also the tremblings and passions of the heart, and faintings and swooning, not only being drank, but applied to the temples, or nostrils to be smelled unto”

So it doesn’t just smell nice, it can also sort out untimely swoons and histrionics in the presence of your beau.

Equally, as plants could be used to heal, they could also be used to bring about demise. With no such thing as forensic science, a down trodden and abused wife could be rid of her violent husband with the careful administration of a poison over time, “Belladonna apple pie my love?”

Frequently it was the job of a woman to act as the village healer, midwife and general wise sage to whom others could turn to for help. It’s no wonder that during the religious confusion and superstition of the middle ages, she could be thought of as ‘against god’ in that she held the power to give or take life. As Europe was transformed into a superstitious and religiously vehement place during the Protestant Reformation of the 1500s, the practices of a healer would no doubt be under scrutiny as devilish activity.   

My own maternal grandmother would have no doubt been tried as a witch with her use of folklore remedies. My mother’s coughs and colds were kept as secret as possible as my grandmother’s primary remedy for this ailment was to wrap her chest in brown paper smeared in goose fat, a grim cure. In her cellar brewed great vats of wines, dubiously created from anything, be it elderflowers or potato peelings. Containing curious detritus and cloudings they were possibly as poisonous as they were intoxicating!

Witches were thought to be able to create a potion, a substance capable of bewitching a person to an ultimate aim such as making them fall in love becoming fevered with amorous intention.  Dsquared borrowed this idea to market their line of ‘Potion’ fragrances, suggesting that the wearer become infallibly attractive as if under a spell. Dior of course utilized the idea of a witchy liquid in the creation of ‘Poison’, hinting at the notion of a dangerous seduction, the dark power of a woman. The apple shaped bottle recalls the poisoned apple that bewitched Snow White, the curse of a jealous vengeful hag. It’s glass was of a deep amethyst, a colour associated with spirituality.

Those who’ve read Patrick Suskind’s fictitious novel ‘Perfume’ will remember the protagonist Grenouille’s grand feat of magic as he seduced the crowd of bloodthirsty folk assembled to witness his execution. With an application of his masterpiece perfume (created from the skin secretions of beautiful young girls), he turned himself from murderer to angel, bewitching those who sought his death into a writhing mass orgy of heaven sent love. 

Which brings me to my favourite fragrant witch’s brew, Ormonde Jayne’s Ormonde Woman.

Linda Pilkington, Creative Director of the Ormonde Jayne line looks nothing like a fairy tale witch, with her expensively tailored clothes, bright eyes and lush mane of hair, she is a far cry from a hooked nosed hag. However, as a creator of potions she is a fine witch indeed.

Ormonde Woman, is a forest scent, loaded with earthly pleasures. It is reminiscent of being deep in the woods where the sticky saps and resins come forth from trees and bushes to grace the air with a pagan whiff. The dominant note here is grass, softened by a magnificently earthy vetiver. Indeed if Ormonde Woman holds the bewitching power of a love potion, the carnal act will most certainly take place outdoors, there are no satin sheets for the witch’s brew. This is ‘knickers full of ferns’ stuff.

A frolick in the woods

Grassy chypres can be a little cold and astringent but this one projects warmth from it’s ambery base, again adding a sensuality to the already heady concoction. We tend to associate a ‘sexy’ fragrance with the inclusion of grand indolic notes of tuberose or jasmine, perhaps amped up by a dose of animalic musk. This is the opposite. Ormonde Woman’s jasmine is barely traceable, in fact I can’t smell it. I imagine it simply serves to round off a little of the astringency of grass. We don’t need flowers, what could be more arousing than the smell of the forest, where all manner of life abounds in the flourishing vegetation?

The scent is famed for the inclusion of a rare note – black hemlock (or Tsuga). The word hemlock itself connotes witchcraft, as we associate it with ‘poison hemlock’ or Conium maculatum. This herbaceous plant, when ingested in high quantities causes death by paralysis, ultimately leading to respiratory failure, a fine way to see off your accursed enemy! I’d like to see IFRA contend with that one.. Luckily, black hemlock is an entirely different plant, in fact it’s an entirely harmless tree from the conifer family. I couldn’t possibly tell you what it smells like as the woody/grassy notes blend seamlessly into a harmonious brew where nothing ‘pokes out’ as unusual.

So dear readers, what is your opinion? Have you cast a love spell with your fragrance? Or do you use scent to evoke a spiritual meditation? I’d love to hear your thoughts..

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When mainstream rivals niche - The Odiferess guide to a bargain, plus a giveaway!

How much would you consider too much to splurge on a perfume? Are you the proud (or even guilty) possessor of a deck of Clive Christian and Amouage bottles? Or do you hunt with diligence for a good deal?

 Clive Christian No 1 limited edition cost £115'000 per 500 ml and came delivered in a bentley!

Discussions with friends from the online niche fragrance community seem to indicate that we are not affluent. Our habits have largely stemmed from fanatical love rather than the necessity to get rid of a wodge of spare cash. We share the need for a bargain, be it in the form of a used bottle or decant on ebay, a swop with a friend in an online community or a patient wait for a store to have a discount day. I admit to breaking into a genuine hand tremor and heart palpitation upon finding a Keiko Mecheri for £30 in TK Max, such was the climatic thrill of the bargain hunt.

With this in mind I ask you, how long is it since you’ve thoroughly explored the less covetable or more mainstream brands? We are lured by the exoticism of the niche market but we must remember that in addition there are some damn fine fragrances that don’t necessarily require getting into debt for or risking a blind buy due to the exclusivity of niche distribution. So, I give you..

The Odiferess guide to saving money for the niche obsessive or 'stop being daft and pay your rent this month'.

How it works – The cheaper scents listed here are not intended to be a ‘smells like’. They are simply scents that I feel are worth a sniff or that possess a similar atmosphere to their niche counterpart or share many of the same notes. Some of the cheaper scents are still niche or high end designer, included here because they are available at great prices online.

If you like Mancera -Aoud Cafe: Try Gaultier - Kokorico, this massive commercial flop probably occurred because it smells beautifully niche but was marketed to the mainstream. It’s now discontinued but very easy to get hold of and worthy of a blind buy if you like bitter and gourmand notes alongside an oudy whiff. Main discernible notes – coffee, cacao and woods. Projects for miles and lasts forever, not subtle. Guide £15 to £25 online.

If you like Mancera -Roses Greedy or L’Artisan Parfumeur – Traversee du Bosphore: Try Yves Rocher – Rose Absolue, a curious jammy rose with a Turkish delight note, high quality ingredients. Turin and Sanchez like it. I think it’s dreadful, but I can understand it’s allure if you have a quirky gourmand loving nose. Yves Rocher do exceptionally cheap discounts regularly (50%) on their website and give a free gift and samples with every order. Guide £20 ish with the discounts, if there isn’t a discount immediately wait till the following month and there should be one. You could also buy their brilliant bitter almond scented body ‘Nourishing Moisturiser’ at the same time which is extraordinarily lovely when layered with Mitsouko.

If you like Guerlain – Spiritueuse Double Vanille: Try Chopard – Casmir. This is a high end designer scent outside of the UK but for some reason it’s a bargain bucket delight here. Main discernible notes: This has the wonderful balsamic combination of Tonka, Vanilla, Opoponax and Benzoin with a slightly fruity apricot tone on top. It’s notably peculiar but very appealing, particularly when you feel the need for opulence and depth. My 30ml bottle cost me £13 brand new on ebay and is the prettiest in my collection with it’s perky little golden Arabic minaret.

If you like Serge Lutens – Ambre Sultan or Chergui or Dior - Mitzah: Revisit your Estee Lauder counter to smell the enduring classics Youth Dew and Cinnabar. Extraordinarily good quality orientals with killer projection. Likewise remind yourself of YSL – Opium. Opium has been the subject of many a moan about IFRA’s restrictions on clove, cinnamon etc but it still smells immense in it’s current formulation. For a genuine bargain from both of these brands, linger until 3 days after Christmas and acquire a discounted gift set where you’ll benefit from some free body lotion or shower gel.

If you like Tom Ford – Oud Wood or Serge Lutens - Bois de Violette: Try Cartier Essence du Bois. This is essentially a cross between the two scents, a very gentle and somewhat watery oud, citrus and cedar fragrance with a subtle and not overly sweet note of violet (flower and leaf). A thing of wonder for those who find oud notes too sharp and astringent. Although relatively expensive in department stores, it appears on ebay for about £40 for 100ml.

If you like Frederic Malle - Musc Ravageur: Try L’ Erbolario - Meharees (to see my review on Meharees click here). It’s annoyingly hard to get hold of in the UK but much easier in mainland Europe. Price guide: £30 (but import costs from Italy could make it more expensive for UK folk).

If you like (or liked the idea of but actually disliked) Byredo – Pulp: Try Van Cleef & Arples – Oriens. Imagine the striking blackcurrant astringency and sweet praline of Pulp but without the ‘bin juice’ vegetal note that many people could not tolerate in this cult niche and you have Oriens – wearable Pulp. Also worth a sniff could be Mugler’s Womanity – salty Pulp. Both cost around a third of the price Pulp (around £25 to £40) and don’t smell of bins.

And if you’ve ignored the mainstream department store counters lately, revisit: Chanel – Pour Monsieur, Dior – Eau Sauvage and Lancome – O de Lancome for beautiful lemony oakmoss chypres. Dior – Dior Homme and Guerlain – Shalimar Initial for cosy warm woods.

Lastly make frequent visits to TK Max for a lucky surprise (my recent findings included Annick Goutal’s Nuit Etoilee and Ninfeo Moi at about half normal retail price and other rarities such as Brosseau’s Ombre Platine and the original Halston Cologne) You’ll have to root underneath Britney and Beyonce’s awful effluence but that’s part of the thrill akin to the sensation of watching the Grand National hoping for a winner.

I will be giving away 1 ml decants of both Meharees and Casmir to one lucky reader (just UK due to our daft postal regs). To win, hit ‘like’ on the facebook page and leave a comment there with your tips on bargain hunting and cheapo masterpieces. I would dearly love my international readers to join in too, please come forth as you are appreciated, I apologise for my country’s postal service..

https://www.facebook.com/odiferess.

Castaña, Cloon Keen Atelier, Review: The Anti-gourmand

As a fume writer I get to smell an abundance of perfumes. Increasingly, with the more I smell, the more I can spot repetition or creative idleness. Especially at the moment where we are oud and ambered to the point where almost nothing smells like innovation, merely copycats.

Once in while I’ll sample something that smells truly original, something that is markedly different to that what exists en mass. A very special example of this is Castaña by Irish perfumery – Cloon Keen Atelier. Why is it so special? Because it’s a nut themed scent that doesn’t smell like cake.

In recent years we’ve seen a trend for gourmand fragrances, i.e. Scents that contain edible ingredients such as plentiful vanilla, nuts, fruits, sugary and boozey notes. Gourmand lovers sometimes gain emotional gratification from these creations, claiming that they provide comfort or nostalgic memories, often of homely pleasures such as baking or family gatherings. They can perform as a hug in a bottle. Gourmand haters speak of their often cloying sweetness, their dislike of wearing food rather than scent.

My opinion resides somewhere in the middle. I own the Serge Lutens creation, Jeux de Peau (games on skin), which basically smells like a terrific sandalwood mixed up with sticky Danish pastries. I adore it for about 6 days a year. Otherwise the bakery bomb bottle lingers at the bottom of my collection cupboard underneath those which are more easily wearable.

Other appealing gourmands that have caught my attention include Parfumerie Generale’s Praline de Santal (uber sweet hazelnut liqueur sandalwood) and Tonkamande (fulsome almond vanilla with a curious ‘vimto’ dry down). I appreciate both but couldn’t wear either without commencing insatiable cravings for confectionary. Perfume should not make you rush out to purchase most of your supermarket’s bakery isle within minutes of application (which interestingly I have done since starting this post earlier today).

Which brings me to Castaña. Cloon Keen say of it’s composition:

“Inspired by a childhood memory of the mouthwatering aroma of street roasted chestnuts in Andalusia, Perfumer Delphine Thierry has captured this fleeting sensation and translated it into a sophisticated and signed perfume. The centre piece of this composition is an overdose of Haitian vetiver, which is traditionally a more masculine note. However, when combined with the super feminine and luxurious floral notes of cassia and jasmine absolute, an opulent nontraditional feminine perfume is created." 

Which sums it up rather well.  

Castaña’s roast chestnut theme is unusual, in fact a check of Fragrantica’s ‘search by note’ reveals no other fumes in the database that contain it. I imagine that it’s more or less impossible to extract a natural odour of roast chestnut and that it is in fact a delicious synthetic and a composite of other notes. What it does bring to the perfume are two notable sensations, overwhelmingly lush creaminess and a just a hint of smokiness.

Traditional Portuguese tiles depicting chestnut roasting in the street

At Christmas, my mum puts out a great wodge of nuts in a crystal bowl with an ineffective nut cracking device. Said device does two things; it a) forces you to grip really hard and ultimately captures and crushes your finger as the shell finally cracks (cue swearing and pain) and b) explodes chards of nut shells at high speed all over your clothes/the carpet. Basically, it’s an ardous task to get into a nut so when you finally manage it you have to savour it’s consumption without haste. My favourite is the Brazil nut, which I like to gnaw tiny bits from and then suck slowly. Brazil nuts taste of exotic dairy, like milk but woodier and sort of foreign.

This is the only time I’ll ever write something as daft as this at Odiferess (apologies) but the chestnut in Castaña ‘smells of the sensation of eating creamy woody foreign nuts very slowly whilst sat in a garden full of white flowers on a humid evening within half a mile of a neighbour having a bonfire’  

Which isn’t a cloyingly sweet moment..

And doesn’t make me desire a cake binge..

As for the smokiness, I think this might be coming from the vetiver as much as concept of a chestnut roasting. Whilst vetiver is usually favoured for it’s delightfully green, grassy and pungent earthy pleasures, the real thing smelt as an essential oil additionally has a distinct smokiness and dryness reminiscent of baked hay and bonfires.

It’s all sounding very conceptual at the moment but place these notes alongside the floral heart and you’ve got something extraordinary – a perfectly harmonious floral with a rich, smoky, deeply natural atmosphere and no screechy edges. And it’s not very often I say that about something containing buckets of Jasmine.

The danger of curious rare notes is that they can stick out of a composition, a bit like someone playing the spoons on their knee in the middle of a cello concerto. Castaña is smooth, so smooth that you probably couldn’t guess the individual notes unless you’d already translated it’s Spanish name. Even then you’d have a tough time contemplating what sits alongside the chestnut so seamlessly.  

Who would I recommend it to? Probably people like me who can’t tolerate too much sweetness with their foody scents, perhaps even (again, alike myself) those who can only tolerate jasmine in a supporting role. Ultimately, it's for those seeking a magnificent quirky floral with a great deal of wearability. 

Thank you to Les Senteurs for my sample.