What we learn to talk about when we talk about perfumery/basic glossary part one
Basic glossary/wearing Vert des Bois by Tom Ford
What initially drew me to perfume as a hobby was the combination of the simple, accessible sensual pleasure (well, accessible for people without anosmia and with disposable income) paired with a rich history of, well, discourse.
Perfume people seem to be a wordy bunch, and because this hobby is tied to a very lucrative industry, there’s a well-documented history of its modern period. There are dozens of terms to learn and thousands of ingredients to identify and smell.
But the thing is, perfume and scent doesn’t need to be complicated. Very few people feel self-conscious about identifying genres or compositional elements when they’re enjoying a song on the radio. They might not possess a rich knowledge of art history, but can point to the colour or subject as justifications for why they might like a given painting.
But if you ask that same person to talk about a smell or perfume they enjoy, they get flustered.
Scent is viewed as something mysterious, unknowable.
In a way, it is. We don’t actually know very much about how smelling works, although Luca Turin gives a tantalizing theory in The Secret of Scent; but there isn’t the same quality of medical research on scent as there is on sight, hearing, taste, or touch.
Like Wittgenstein’s pain as private language (page 97), everyone’s sense of smell is individual, and formed through a complex mix of epigenetics and personal history.
But there is a common vocabulary you’ll hear perfume people use.
Don’t worry about sounding sophisticated when talking about stuff you like. Unless you want to. Clearly, I’m somewhat invested in that.
But first and foremost, this is a hobby about pleasure.
You are allowed to approach it on that dimension alone.
Some basic terms you might read in this (and other!) perfume columns, part one:
Concentration: Perfume is usually (but not always) a mixture of aromachemicals suspended in a medium. The perfumer makes a base “perfume oil”, and then this base is diluted in (usually) ethanol for sale. Common concentrations are: parfum or extrait (20% perfume or higher), eau de parfum (15-20%), eau de toilette (5-15%), eau de cologne or cologne (2-5%).
Cologne: Colognes refer to either the concentration, as above, but also the genre of perfume based around citruses paired with aromatics, intended to be worn in hot weather. The first eau de cologne was named after the German city of Koln, but in Portuguese and Italian, these are called acqua/agua de/di colonia; waters not only of Koln, but also the literal colonies maintained by European empires.
Sillage: This literally means ‘wake’, which I think is a useful visualization tool (think about a boat passing on a lake). It refers to the cloud the perfume makes around the wearer. A perfume with a powerful sillage will be smelled by others before you enter the room—a dangerous game to play in today’s scent-conscious environment.
Note: A perfume’s notes are listed by its perfumer or marketing team. This is a guide to what the manufacturer wants you to smell. You may even smell it, but perfumes are highly complex mixtures, and just because rose is listed as a note doesn’t mean a drop of rose went into the composition.
Notes are typically sorted into a ‘pyramid’ of top, heart, and base. This represents the relative volatility of the components, i.e. which evaporate fastest to slowest. Citrus fruits are common top notes, because citrus ingredients and essential oils are extremely volatile, evaporating quickly. You’ll smell them first, but they won’t last long.
Drydown: This is the scent left on the skin after the sillage evaporates, usually after several hours or even a full day. Just as top notes are the aromachemicals that evaporate fastest, these will be the fixatives, the resins, the animalics and other ingredients that stick around. Some perfumes have marvelous drydowns worth waiting for. Others do not.
Accord: An ‘accord’ is much closer to what ‘note’ pretends to be. An accord is a mixture of at least two aromachemicals, but usually more, to produce a ‘building block’ of a perfume. A perfume generally contains a few accords, but some are simpler, others more complex. For example, if we’re working with natural ingredients, labdanum absolute and vanilla absolute will produce an ‘amber’ accord.
Aromachemical: An individual chemical used in perfumery, usually for its scent, but some aromachemicals increase projection, extend the life of other chemicals, et cetera. Natural ingredients, like absolutes or essential oils, contain dozens to hundreds of aromachemicals.
Essential oil: Concentrated liquid containing all the volatile compounds removed from a plant. Essential oils are often sold by multi-level marketing schemes for their supposed health benefits, but they’re better used for scents, in my opinion. Essential oils are usually produced through steam-distillation.
Absolute: For all intents and purposes, absolutes are very very similar to essential oils, but are made from ingredients that cannot be steam-distilled, like jasmine flowers. Absolutes are usually made from solvents, like hexane, that are then evaporated away, leaving a very concentrated liquid—or solid!
Okay, I think that’s enough studying for today. There’s going to be a few entries in this series, but I’m going to spread them out over the weeks to come.
There is no pop quiz at the end. I’m nice.
Yours in chemistry,
Jake
Now for the perfume review part:
A teensy note: none of my links are affiliate links, and if that ever changes, you’ll be the first to know! I probably will only drop a link to the perfume house when they’re an indie I’d like to support. Tom doesn’t need my help.
House: Tom Ford
Perfumer: Oliver Gillotin
Formats tested: Tom Ford doesn’t release concentration info
Gender marketing: unisex
Perfume genre: “woody”, green
OG Launch date: 2016
Notes according to the house:
o Top: Poplar buds, olive tree, anise, plum
o Heart: Mastic, jasmine
o Base: “woody notes”, patchouli
Notes according to Jake:
o Top: mastic, lime, lily-of-the-valley
o Middle: blonde woods
o Base: ambroxan?
Sillage: loud at first but quiets quickly
Endurance: five to seven hours
Last “ep” I talked about two approaches to smelling good on hot months. Bal à Versailles embraces the funk, but there is a long tradition in taking the opposite path by wearing a bracing tonic. Like acids in cooking cut through fat, bitter and sour smells temper sweat. While this ep’s perfume isn’t technically a cologne, it’s operating within the same genre constraints.
Tom Ford’s Private Blends are some of the most expensive ‘fumes on the market per millilitre.
Why cover something so expensive?
Let me introduce you to the first two rules of Perfume Club.
The first rule of Perfume Club is: never buy a bottle without trying it first.
Never. You will do this even though I have warned you not to.
I did, though I was warned, and I have always regretted it.
And the second rule of Perfume Club is this: never pay full retail price.
No perfume is worth it. The ingredient list? A total fantasy. The venerable house? Made by the same Big Six fragrance and flavouring multinational corporations as all the rest.
So I will say, I cannot recommend Mr. Ford’s pricing scheme as is. But if you can get yourself on a split with ten other people, then plenty of his juice smells good, so here we are.
Tom Ford’s Vert des Bois presents a bitter opening bouquet of booze. None of the warmth of rum but without the blandness of vodka, this frag delivers chilled ouzo, something I would hate to put in my mouth but don’t mind on my skin.
Lime zest and melting ice entangle with what the house calls jasmine but smells more like a thin, pale lily-of-the-valley note to me.
This perfume’s raison d’etre is a soaring green mastic accord backlit by a warm, sweet and bland woody base.
Mastic is the resin harvested from the Pistacia lentiscus tree. To my nose, it’s impossible to forget once you’ve smelled it. If you’ve ever had Greek or Turkish coffee, perhaps on rue Rachel in Montreal, you’ll know what I’m talking about: the resin is green, piney and intensely bitter.
This bitter green mastic accord—like galbanum without the green pepper—cuts through the summer heat as effectively as any citrus oil would. This mastic accord hovers a foot above your skin until the drydown arrives.
Get a little closer to the flesh and you’ll encounter a sweet, blonde dryness, almost like the air above the wood in a hot sauna.
This is almost certainly some concoction of “woody amber” aromachemicals that I generally fucking hate but they’ve been applied with a delicate hand here. Tiny wisps of cedar poke through. I think this might be ambroxan-heavy, but since my aromachemical adventures have been foiled by lack of access to ventilated lab space, I can’t say for sure.
The scent is quite linear: what you smell up front is what you’re going to get throughout. The jasmine disappears real quick, and while the mastic accord loses its luster it’s a pretty pleasant ride while it lasts.
A nice thing to pair with a curtain of back sweat on a hot day.