past life present {onycha :: part 2}

It took over twenty years to finally get Onycha into ‘clear enough’ focus to start work on a formula.  One of the things that made it clearer was the arrival of traditional ‘Choyas’ on the aromatics market.  I am sure that in India and many parts of the ‘olde world’ these fragrant beauties were nothing new but to western artists, they were something exciting and new coming our way.  Choyas, like traditional ‘attars’ or ‘ittars’, are co-distilled essential oils.  Whereas, attars are generally co-distills with Indian sandalwood (Santalum Album) as the partner to flowers, herbs, and the like, choyas have charred Himalayan cedarwood (Cedrus Deodora) partnered with incense / resin materials, and in the case of Choya Nahk, seashells.  Yes, that’s right: roasted seashells.   🙂  The first time I saw this oil offered I immediately began considering it for Onycha.  Perfect, right?  Well, part yes, part no.  Choya Nahk has it’s beauty, but it is dry…really, DRY.  Intensely so.  I don’t generally like sugary perfumes, but this was a bit beyond the pale.  It was going to need some help.

partial: shells in a clay sculpture c.1992 – DSH

As I worked in some resins that I thought would balance the intensity of the charred nuances, and of course high doses of benzoin and labdanum as the other two notes in the “onycha” triad, I wondered if there were any aromatics sellers that had the actual seashells that were used, before they were roasted.  A quick internet search found some incense purveyors with something they were offering as ‘onycha seashells’.  SOLD.  I ordered them and began tincturing.  At this point in the formulating, I decided to make this perfume an ‘all naturals’ project instead of mixed media.  Not just because it’s depicting an ancient concept (the Secrets of Egypt collection is all mixed media, with the intent on creating updated interpretations of the ancient designs) but using an all botanical palette seemed to give the ‘antiquity’ feeling I wanted to convey and I wanted some of that murky, slightly inky quality that many all natural perfumes have.  (It’s not a bad thing to be murky / inky, at times).

After introducing the seashell tincture, I vacillated between a densely smoky incense perfume like being in a temple filled with burning censors…but this just didn’t work (nope, too much in the vein of Axis Mundi, which I also released last year) plus, it is way too easy to just make ‘smoky smoke and more smoke’.  And a sweeter, purely resin-based kind of incense scent seemed kind of bland.  Then the whim to just push it toward woods and amber came and I followed the impulse.  Choya Loban (cedarwood and frankincense) and Choya Ral (cedarwood and sal tree resin) both made their way into the design in subtle proportion as well as precious woods (eagleswood, Siam wood, more Himalayan cedarwood, and amyris) and ambery resins ( more benzoin, labdanum, and oppopanax).  Yes, this push of the ambery aspect brought out even more of the salty / umami and subtly briney aspects of Onycha that I was hoping for.  As well, I love what the woods did to build the space to allow the resins, smoke, and oceanic pieces to move around and ‘swirl’ in the way I later envisioned it.

“family” egg tempera on panel 1992, DSH

In creating Onycha, I had to dig deep into my past and remember all that had inspired me about the concept when I was first falling in love with fragrance and seeing it as the art form that it is now, generally, recognized to be.  It’s also allowed me to examine some of my early work, universally, and bring it full circle.  ❤

This post gives me the opportunity to give thanks for some of the lovely reviews of Onycha:
Thank you Trish at Scenthive for her wonderful words for Seve de Pin and Onycha;  and the immensely poetic review from Lauryn Beer at CaFleureBon.  I am blessed by your beauty.

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the retrograde files :: part 1

Mercury has just gone direct.  (woo hoo!)  I’m sure that a bunch of you have heard of the astrological term “Mercury Retrograde” which basically means that the appearance of Mercury, as it moves in its orbit when seen from earth, looks like its moving backwards.  Symbolically, it means that everything you are trying to do to get ahead on projects, move through traffic, deal with communication of any kind, etc, will also be moving (or feel like it’s moving) backwards, too.  Travel goes haywire, electronics get goofy, and the basic gist is to stop working on moving forward as it’s time to do a re-wind so you can reexamine old ideas, old projects, and or older works to see if they can or should be updated, made more perfect, or reworked in some way or just tossed on the heap.  It’s great for clearing out and making room for the new as well.  So while now is the time for getting back to the *new* stuff, as this phase passes I’m still working on something I’m calling the “retrograde files”.  Its actually kind of exciting.

 

 

I’ve been slowly compiling a list of materials, oils, single notes, and older designs that I used to sell on my website that people still write in and ask for.  Usually clients can get these items by special order or what have you but I’ve been attempting to create some “Archives” pages for the site so as to make the process easier.  And instead of getting annoyed at the apparent cosmic slowdown, it’s been a wonderful journey, like taking some extra quiet time to look at a scrap book or an old photo album.  It’s the scented equivalent of “This is your Life”.

 

 

As I’ve looked around in my notebooks and dug out some old bottles I’ve rediscovered some very interesting ideas and lovely perfume names (you know I love that) that I had sort of forgotten about.  Some of these designs are from very early in my body of work and I see now that had I had some of the materials available now, the concepts might have been realized very differently.  So, my big idea is this: when Mercury goes retrograde I’m going to set myself down to re-imagine some of these older works.  It’s a go with the flow and artistically grow kind of thing.  I don’t know if I will release the new visions or not but I know that I will enjoy the process.  I like this looking back / looking forward notion.  We’ll see how it goes and I’ll keep you posted. ❤

ps: here’s the next retrograde phases for 2016: August 30 – September 22; and Dec 19 2016 – Jan 8, 2017.

_____

image credits: I found these images on the web: beautiful mercury planet image found here; moving backward image here; berlin 1994 photo album here.

 

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i never promised you a rose garden {well, maybe i did} :: roses part 1

austrian copper – yellow roses

 

June is right around the corner and so with it brings the big blooming season of my cherished roses in the garden.  The yellow roses are in bloom now as they start early but the others are just beginning to bud.  This may be in reaction to a long, cold but very wet snap we’ve had since mid-April.  The roses are loving the extra moisture and I’m expecting an incredible show in about a week.

It actually couldn’t be better timing as I’m preparing a talk for the Denver Rose Society at the Denver Botanic Gardens on June 10th.  The talk will be all about roses, rose molecules that give the aromatic signature of ‘rosey’ and how this applies to the creation of rose perfumes.  I’m really excited!  I LOVE talking about roses and rose fragrances; especially how they might seem easy to create because there are so many of them and the rose scent is so recognizable.  Of course, it’s really deceptive.  There are a gazillion different roses with as many varying scents and if you’ve started to *smell the roses* you know this is true.  It’s actually true of lots of flowers: we think we know them but if we start to examine them more closely they show many ‘faces’ and many fragrances.

 

napoleon’s hat centifolia

 

Since last Fall or maybe even earlier I’ve been immersed in flowers and floral perfumes.  I’m not sure why, exactly; the inspiration as well as the work itself has brought me to the garden again and again.  With the Brilliant Collection for the Cartier exhibit a multi-facteted white floral emerged for Deco Diamonds, a lush, damp earth hyacinth for Jacinthe de Sapphir, and a deep ruby-hued rose for Rubis Rosé.   There’s a fascinating array of fruit nuances found in roses, from zesty citrus nuances, to crisp apple and juicy pear, to lush blackcurrant and berry-like notes.  Rubis Rosé has a deep tea rose in the heart and a bright red raspberry top note.  It’s a combination of influences: my neighbor’s vintage (1960’s) tea roses and the fabulous berry quality of classic red long stems.  I also wanted to create a rose design that spoke to a real classicism as well as the mid-century fruited-aldehydic-floral.

You know, speaking of aldehydics and roses, I find it very interesting that some of the roses in my garden display a sort of green aldehydic quality.  Part of it is a linalool-ish citral (citrus-y) flash and other parts are the geranium-like,  green rosey aromas of geraniol and geranyl acetate.  The yellow roses (the Austrian Copper roses especially) that are blooming right now have this incredible scent.  It has those geranium-rose notes at play with an almost metallic kick as if it were a constructed perfume with the citrus-green rosy mix of aldehyde c-8 and aldehyde c-12 Enic in the top.  I love it!

 

harrison’s yellow

 

Years ago I created an all-botanical yellow rose scent called “en Vacances” which is based on a Harrison’s Yellow that grew in my back yard when I was a kid.  It always bloomed on the last day of school.  To me it was the scent of Summer Vacation.  Saving Grace, also in the Garden Bathe aromatherapy perfume collection, is another more woody-based, more clearly rose (I smell it as pink) design that has some of these characteristic gernium-rosey tonalities as well.

 

blooming eglantine

 

But it’s not just the geranium-rosey aromas that are coming out of the rose garden.  One of my favorite aspects that is showing up is the characteristic peppery-green notes wafting from the leaves and stems on the centifolias and the fabulous scent coming from the green apple – aldehydic fragranced leaves of my eglantine.  It’s reminiscent of certain peonies, which for me are filed away in my mind as a subcategory of rose note flowers.  They are their own delicious, wonderful thing, of course, and they too have quite a lot of variation from dewy, ever so slightly powdery-apricot-y, to softly watery pear, to a very deep and spiced rosy-green.  Last year I created a Peony perfume after many years thinking on it.  I wanted to tell a story like a ‘day in the life’ of the peony flower kind of experience.  I could bring it from a slightly metallic-green, softly peppery – softened with dew note at the beginning, through its most ‘rosey’ phase and into a twilight shaded and darker aspect in the drydown.  I’m not sure it’s for everyone but I really like it and I feel it tells it’s story nicely.

 

jacqueminot rose

 

I grow a fair number of “Old Roses” but I hadn’t really pushed myself to decipher their varied nuances to the point of creating a perfume to speak to their unique characters until recently.  Deeply honey – spice, almost carnation-esque, the old rose types are rich and can be a bit heavy.  It would be very easy to get involved with a perfume design around the old rose scent and end up at “granny rose” in no time.  Not that the roses themselves do the powdery note that I most associate with granny rose but the density of their scent and how you work with that quality could get you there if you weren’t very careful to avoid it.  I’ve smelled too many old rose and tea rose perfumes that, for me, smell of granny rose due to their sheer density.  (If you couldn’t tell: Granny rose is not my thing. At all. But I digress).   I can’t talk much about a recent project I’ve been involved with for Denver Art Museum just yet but I will say that it’s allowed me to delve into the old roses character some and pull it into a rose bouquet that is unlike any of my other rose designs.  First off, it’s not intended to be a rose soliflore but the rose is clearly experienced along with a couple of other focal floral notes.  There will be more on that topic, and more very soon. 😉

This seems like as good a place to stop part 1 for now.  I’m hoping that as I send this out and in the next few days, some of the other buds will pop out into full blossom.

I’m so thrilled to be talking flowers and roses in particular, that I’d like to offer a little drawing for 3 sets of 3 – mini sprayers of Rubis Rosé EdP, Peony EdP, and en Vacances EdP.  Please leave a comment about your favorite rose and/or rose perfume to enter.  The 3 winners will be chosen at random in the wee hours of June 6th so the deadline to enter is 11:59 pm on June 5th.  Winners will be announced on June 6th.  I hope that everyone will enjoy the start of Summer and good luck in the draw!   ox

 

* images are all my own.  you can see most or variations on them at my instagram page.

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denver legal :: the cannabis culture collection {part 1}

For awhile now, since cannabis became legal in Colorado, it’s been on the news, on talk shows and buzzing just about everywhere.  There of lots of folks having a lot of fun with this whole thing and I’ve been thinking that it’s about time that I had some fun with it, too.  In all honesty, I have played with various marijuana accords for years (I think that I started in earnest in about 2005 when a friend said that a various strain was their favorite smell EVER).  I’ve created and even used a few of my accords in perfumes, from Bodhi Sativa for the PLAP-athon in 2010, to Le Smoking for the YSL Retrospective collection in 2012.

 

 

It’s funny to think that I have smelled and “appraised”?, “reviewed”?, no, dissected? quite a few strains of cannabis over the years, mostly as a kind of parlor trick for many of my musician* / stoner friends even though I’m not a smoker myself (being asthmatic and all, smoking anything is OUT).    My friends think it’s hilarious and / or fascinating as they hear me describe the top, middle and base nuances of their favorite kind bud.  There is an intrinsic sort of perfume to this generous plant from animalic (skunk) to fruity, incens-ey, conifer, floral, sticky sweet, dry woody and green leafy, etc.  To check out some real flavor / fragrance profiling, this chart from a Netherlands seed company has some amazing variation:

 

 

So, here comes the fun.  I’ve busted out some of my older notebooks and taken a look at some of my early accord notes and yes, I like what I started.  It’s time to finish and I’ve chosen four variations to focus on.  I’ve actually been contacted many times to create some cannabis perfumes using exclusive strains for some of the dispensaries, but none of these potential clients has taken the final plunge into investing in the concept.  Mores the pity for me as it would be wonderful to play with some of these unusual flavor/ fragrance profiles that these unique strains possess.

Back to playing with the accords: I’m going to start at the beginning with my very first which was based on a conifer-resin / dried  bud / green smoke kind of scent.  It’s quite woody with a definite conifer (junipers, spruce and pines) feel but it’s the ‘green smoke’ that interests me.  I want this scent to be a kind of “you’re walking in the woods and you smell the smoke(rs) over the trail” kind of thing.   All of the cannabis scent designs feature an atmospheric quality; I think that is just part of the mystique around the plant and the imbibing culture.  Cannabis has such a distinctive aroma that it tends to evoke some kind of ‘otherness’ which is transporting.  The real design challenge is to create with this distinctive / atmospheric note and still end up with something you would call ‘perfume’.  To my mind, a perfume has a sense of presence that is beautiful, well constructed, tells some kind of story (or sings a song or paints a picture… you get the idea) and very often displays it’s sense of continuity to the history of perfume.  There are artistic references and precedents that came before that show up in a contemporary work that make it seem to ‘fit’ within the structure of our expectation.  This is just part of my loose definition, however.  I suspect that there are many other perfume designers out there working today that want to break with any sense of continuity and create purely abstracted / atmospheric / story telling aromas and that’s great but if it’s not wearable and recognizable as perfume, maybe it isn’t.  It’s aroma but not perfume.  Anyway, that’s a debate that could take far too long to ever get to a conclusion with.  These are just my thoughts on it.  Back to the perfumes (and yes, I want these to be perfumes within my own criteria, so they have to be wearable).

 

The conifer design has come together with the help of some unusual materials that I had to bust out just for this project.  One of them is chrysanthemum.  I haven’t used this note in too many designs; one reason is that studies show that many people associate the scent of chrysanthemum with death.  (I don’t really want to create funereal perfumes – unless I am expressly trying to do that).   But paired with the sulfuric, tangy-sweet scent of hemp, it works beautifully.  Another aromatic that I haven’t had the opportunity to use much before this design is the common juniper oil that I got from my friend, distiller Eric Bresselsmith.  It’s a great fresh, green juniper note that doesn’t do the too terpenoid signature that juniper berry oil does.  It gives a fresher, sweeter feel to the topnote and does part of that sticky sensation that speaks to ‘bud’ as it heads to the heart.  Lastly, the Ayurvedic co-distill Choyas, which I just can’t seem to get enough of these days, were indispensable.  I used a combination of  the rich, smoked wood Choya Loban as well as the densely calcined Choya Nahk.  It took a bit of doing to turn this smoke note from brown / black to ‘green’ but I did it, I think, with the help of galbanum and sweet basil.  The entire foray into the woods and back rests on a smooth bed of sandalwood, both natural and some of the sandalwood-like molecules, as well as some animalics (yes, I had to use the synthetic skunk note I found).  All in all, this design dries down into a very elegant, masculine-leaning perfume that displays the hemp thing but doesn’t totally flaunt it (even with the skunk).  I really like that.

 

My second indulgence is way more playful and another completion of an older accord / idea from more than a few years ago.  It’s a fruity – indolic floral cannabis that is *very* hemp, and very clearly a pot perfume.  It’s got a surprising amount of fruit, at least *I* am surprised at how many / much fruit the cannabis could handle and require, really, to fulfill the design.  One of the elements I love about this perfume is the topnote…all tangy grapefruit, rhubarb and cassis bud juxtapose  a richly sweet blackberry, apricot and mango accord.  ( I said there was a lot of fruit).  I never would have thought that I would go for anything quite like this but it’s surprising.  The dominant cannabis note with the ‘super fruit’ in the top and a big sampaguita flower heart makes for a sensuously wild ride.  I did want at least one of these designs to read as a big sweet bud and this is the one.  I don’t think that this kind of design is for everyone (well the whole cannabis thing is divisive) but for those that love that smell, this will be the one that hits the spot, I predict.  There’s also a very nice oriental lily, osmanthus and some ylang ylang in the heart and  more than a few fun resinous-wood with incense nuances in the drydown.  Of course one of the notes that many folks associate with pot is patchouli and this is where patchouli is the most featured of all of the designs.  I couldn’t call this a typical “fruit-chouli” but on some skins it may actually read that way.  On my own skin, which has gotten way sweeter since I had a child, it’s bright, sweet, and very hemp-ish in the first notes but dries down into a soft, green edged, fruity-floral-woody.

The third of the collection is probably my personal favorite, but on that, I’m going to say goodnight, and save the third and fourth designs for next time.  I will say that this third scent is one that I have a hard time getting enough of…especially in the drydown.  It’s kind of, (gulp), addictive.

(Disclaimer: * This isn’t to say that musicians are synonymous with pot smokers, either).

image credits: lab of cannabis vials image found here; flavor wheel image found here; rocky mountain high image found here;  i love you mary jane image found here;

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winners of the draw :: seve de pin

 

As promised, I have shown up again to announce the winners of the (long-awaited) drawing for the 3, preview, 3 ml samples of Seve de Pin.  And the winners are:

• Michelle H

• Anita

* Linda

Please email me at:  dsh at dshperfumes dot com with your address and it will be on its way!  I hope that you will love them and that you’ll let me know what you think.
Be back soon  ~ox

*image found here with a poem (that evokes perfume no less … though I’m not so keen on the musical choice).

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the trees are speaking to me :: seve de pin

Something is happening to me.  I can’t seem to get my head (and nose) out of the woods these days.  It’s a trend that seems to be popping up in all parts of my creative world: in my own (paltry at the moment) design time at the studio, in my classes with private students, and even in terms of what I am wanting to photograph right now. Of course,  I have been working with conifers and fougeres in my studio for awhile now, but I think that this shift in my psyche really set in in 2011, right around the time I got pregnant (hmm…) with some more classical constructions as well as some more modern ‘abstractions’ in the making.  The thing is that while I have been dancing around this concept I have had few actual launches to show for this line of exploration.

Last year’s Matsu, which was a rather abstract, Japanese influenced ‘pine’ scent expressed a humid, green woody concept with a brilliant bergamot flash at the opening (and containing no actual pine of conifers) is really the only launch that I have managed.  Until (sometime close to) now.  Well, I’m not ready to launch this particular design just yet but I think that it is finished.  It’s a much more literal experience of a pine / spruce fragrance but it doesn’t read at all like pinesol or worse, in a way, a bad interpretation of Polo or Pino Sylvestre.

 

Something that may have spurred on this creative indulgence in the conifer arena has been a lovely friendship that has sprung up between myself and the micro-distiller, Eric Bresselsmith and his wonderful company that features *rocky mountain region* materials.  I have been getting new materials from him for years without having the space or time to really jump in and work on crafting the perfumes I have in mind when he shows me samples. Finally, I have little by little managed to get something going with some very wonderful and rare aromatics.  I want to take a quick moment to touch upon a few of my favorites that Eric has brought me: Concolor White Pine (distilled from recycled Christmas trees in Aspen, CO),  Common Juniper (a shrub that I have torn out of my own yard to make way for a rose garden but yields a lovely, GREEN take on juniper oil), Engelmann Spruce (a delicious, slightly fruity, airy, clear as a bell, spruce) and Great Western Sage (a dry, spiky but gorgeous sage scent.  If you like smudge sticks, this is for you!).  Eric also makes some very wonderful and creative co-distills using the woods, leaves/needle and cones of the conifers sometimes mixed with shrubs and sometimes different but similar species of evergreens.  I really like some of the juniper and cedar co-distills that I have tried.

One of the most incredible and very rare oils that I have gotten (and used in this new design) is an infusion of 50 year old resin crystals in pure pinion essential oil.  It is magical in the extreme.  It was also a labor of love as Eric told me that he was out with the ancient felled pinion armed with tweezers picking the crystals off, little by little, by hand.  As soon as I smelled it I just said, I want this.  I didn’t ask how much; I just knew that I needed to get as much as I could afford.  Seve de Pin (Pine Sap) is based upon this beauty.  There is wider story than just wanting to showcase a new material, but I had started this design years ago and it seemed to be waiting for this last ingredient to make everything fall into place.

 

Seve de Pin was partially inspired by the smell in the night air on my first overnight trip away from my parents when I was 4 years old and in pre-school summer camp.  *The trees were speaking to me all night long* and in this construction, there is the distinctive smell that was in the air (in the drydown) that night.  I would know this smell anywhere.  It is mysterious and ancient and all-knowing.  Like the earth itself.  And that there are secrets that may be revealed to those who listen (and smell it).  Along with this sense of peering into other realms, there is comfort and protection, too, inherent in this aroma.  Like lying cozily on a soft bed of needles, nestled in the trees with only the night sky above;  you are sure to see the shooting stars.

 

There is another inspiration, which was simply the incredible sensation of the first clear, oozing pine sap from the pine trees in my own back yard each Spring.  Maybe the reason this scent has been so long in the making is that I can only really work on it during a few weeks in Spring; I need experience that wonder first hand.  The new sap is unlike the aged sap that you find incrusted upon a more worldly tree and I wanted to really capture the airy freshness of that first exudation.

It has been interesting to construct this from almost all natural ingredients (99% botanical) with just a touch of green note accord in the top and an augmented resinous base to give the architecture something firm and stable.  Naturals have their intrinsic beauty but many times it is just impossible to get the structure to hold it’s form.  At least the form that I am working to sculpt or to use the former metaphor, build.  The tendrils of the naturals want to collapse on themselves and rush to be together in the middle.  It sometimes takes a lot of skill to get the pieces to confirm to the shape that you have in mind; something that is quite vertical as opposed to horizontal (landscape) or rounded / voluminous (a bouquet of sorts).  These few synthetic structure “poles” support the flickering nuances of the different shades of green leaves and needles, the cones and most of all the sap that dries into the crusty, delicious resin.  The fluidity of the design needs to be upheld.  It is sap and air after all.

I’m deliriously happy about the final result, I have to say.  Ask anyone who has been around me as I test it.  They will tell you of a crazy woman who can’t stop huffing the blotter (I almost NEVER do this) and swooning about, rolling her eyes in ecstasy.  I am that child again under the stars hearing the whispering murmurs of the trees and dreaming of the possibilities of life.

*******

I’m not sure when I am releasing this new perfume BUT I would love to share~

So, I am offering a drawing for 3ml EdP deluxe spray samples to 3 lucky winners.  Please leave a comment about your favorite conifer, or evergreen scent or better yet a favorite scent memory.  The drawing is open until June 8 at midnight MST.  Good Luck!

* images are all my own.  you can view some and others by me at my instagram page.

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scent of hope :: making iris gris {part 2}

So, where I left off in my last post about making Iris Gris de Fath was in the skeletal structure that I began to test on my client’s skin.  Let’s start there.

As you may have surmised by the description given by Mr. Coifan, the fragrance starts on a cloud of fluffy, soft, creamy lactonic peach (the ingredient is commonly known as aldehyde c-14 but is undecalactone gamma) so I began with that as well.  Of course, the orris absolute and butter came right in next along with the ionones (alpha, and methyl gamma) to color in the correct amount of “grey and purple-y violet” in the heart.  I ended with the addition of musk, ambrette and civet. There is a sheer clean-ness that the musk imparts and the sensual humanity that the ambrette and civet breathe into the base.  As a skeleton goes, this one was lovely with high cheek bones.

When I am creating a bespoke fragrance I always want to get the ‘sketch’ on the skin as soon as I can which will give me some indication as to how the wearers skin will react, and in turn will inform me as to how I need to proceed toward our ultimate destination.  The upside to working on a reformulation is that you have something concrete to ‘match’.   I put a test patch of the original perfume on her skin and a patch of the sketch on the other arm so that I could determine what was happening on both arms.  I was delighted (and rather amazed, really) that at the ‘first fitting’, the sketch was already at least 80% proportional to the original.  I did notice that her skin exaggerated the ambrette and civet in the drydown and would need some extra peach to balance it but it was immediately elating; like hitting the ball right onto the green in the first stroke.

 

 

My next step was to expand the design to include the notes that give the perfume it’s nuances: the muguet, carnation (!), jasmine, lilac, and heliotrope in the heart and the oakmoss absolute, cedar, and vetiver in the drydown.  The peach, along with the slightest touch of lemon, bergamot and violet leaf absolute is all that commands the topnote.  This overdosing of peach gives the impression of incredible softness and approachability at first sniff that would just not be the case without it.  Orris can be rather cold, aloof, and as others have also written, quite melancholy.  But Iris Gris is not melancholy or aloof.  It is elegant, to be sure, and so, so beautiful but not in a way that you must admire her from an ivory tower.  Iris Gris comes down to be with you, and hold you close; lovingly.

 

 

A light touch was needed to balance all of these other notes.  It would be all too easy to overpower that violet / orris heart and put a dent in that poof of peach meringue.  So I went slowly and tread softly all the while keeping the original in mind.  My client came for just two more fittings and we were done.  She beamed so brilliantly as she sniffed both arms, again with the original extrait on one arm and her new perfume on the other.  We both agreed that the only detectable difference seemed to be that the original smelled ‘aged’ and the other, well, new.  This was the moment that she told me that she calls this her “Scent of Hope”.  I was so, so moved by her passion for this fragrance and what it meant to her that I almost cried.  She and I can both relate to medical difficulties and what it means to have something to inspire hope; the hope of a life free from (a lot of) pain, filled with optimism and most of all, beauty.  It was right then that I thought that it would be something great to be able to release what we had made to a greater audience.  When she came back to finally pick up her presentation bottle I asked how she felt about an actual release, with her name for the fragrance, Scent of Hope.  She was not only very gracious, she was delighted to know that she would be instrumental in giving others a deep and meaningful pleasure in the smelling (and wearing!) of this design.

 

 

Now our final step is to find a partner organization to give 30% of the proceeds to.  Ideally, we would like to find a women’s cancer organization, perhaps locally, who will help women with the resources they need to handle their treatment and when they are finished, to help them rebuild their lives anew.  We know that after something like cancer, it is a re-building that must happen; there’s no going back to how it was.  So, this is our wish and goal.  The perfume will be released, in extrait only, when we find our ‘mate’.  In the meantime, I will leave you swooning about the chance to wear a legend; the stuff that dreams are made of.  ox

 

image credits: iris drawing by jan church found here; iris gris vintage ad found here.

 

ps: So for all of you who have always wanted to smell (and wear!) Iris Gris but won’t be making it to the Osmotheque in Versailles any time soon, now is your chance. 🙂  If you would like to pre-order, you can.  Please just email us at dsh@dshperfumes.com as we can put you on our list.  Nothing will be charged until we are ready to release and ship.

 

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violet femme :: making iris gris {part 1}

There are some very exciting things going on in my studio lately.  Of course, as per usual I have about two dozen designs (or more ??) written down in my working notebook for  2014, but after the last four new design launches, I have been busy working with a client on a custom / reproduction.  I should mention that I rarely do this kind of work anymore (reproductions) as they are VERY labor intensive and therefore time-consuming (researching ingredients, many times locating these ingredients is a task in itself; sniffing out and reverse engineering the design, creating samples and getting feedback….).  The cost in time alone can become exorbitant.  In the past, I used to take quite a lot of commissions to do this sort of thing just for the opportunity to see and feel what other perfumers had done, what choices they were making in the constructions, what materials produce what results, etc.  It goes back to the ‘copy a masterwork to learn’ method that I came out with from art school.  But those were the days when I had a fair amount more time to devote to that kind of learning and taking on those clients who just could not let go of their (discontinued) beloved.

I recently made an exception.  Not merely because my client is so lovely and I wanted to work with her, nor because she is battling cancer and this scent is her dream, but because the perfume she wanted to have made is a true gem.  I wanted to work on it purely from an artistic standpoint.  You know by the title which masterpiece of perfume history I am referring to, the incredible and so ridiculously hard to find, Iris Gris de Fath.  This perfume is one of legend among connoisseurs; the proverbial ‘white whale’ among iris / orris perfume lovers in the know.  Any vintage perfume collector can tell you how hard this fragrance is to come by and if you do, how expensive just a sample or decant can be.  I have seen mini *eau de tolette* bottles go on ebay for upwards of $300.  For less than 10 ml, that’s a serious investment.  I happened to get very lucky when I found a partial bottle of the pure perfume for less than an arm and a leg.  It’s one of my “preciouses” that I found for my little perfume museum and it is perfect.

 

 

This commission, too, was really perfect for me in so many ways.  First of all, I love the behind the scenes work of developing my sense of history and working at becoming a perfume historian.  It gets right to heart of my geeky / hermit streak.  You know, I adore the thought of being hold up on a desert island with my museum pieces, notebooks and my computer to just spend countless hours exploring the ins and outs of what’s happening in these precious bottles of living history; what they meant and mean to us now, as well as their construction, materials (many now long gone from the market and use) and the artists intent behind them.  It’s like having conversations with Picasso, Shakespeare, Michelangelo… finding the avenues to their greatness on a trail of crumbs left behind.  It’s pure bliss and I can’t express how much joy these objects contain for me.  But I digress (as I often do).

 

 

Can I just say, Iris Gris is magnificent.  Truly.  It’s subtle and bold at the same time; elegant and cool but beneath that haute couture outfit lurks a real, sensuously warm-blooded being.  I love that it feels so timeless as well.  Yes, there is a vintage feel in that ‘they just don’t make ’em like they used to’ vibe but it’s so flawlessly constructed that I believe we would love to smell like this today (and every day).

You may be wondering how I go about deconstructing a perfume in order to create an original formula based on my research and smelling it on my ‘subject’.  Well, it’s just that: smelling.  I don’t use a GC or any kind of computer to detect the chemistry.  I have always felt that the key to getting reproductions right is in the smelling and the human experience that’s in the feel of the perfume, not just its smell.  Another key is to attempt to get into the head of the ‘lover’ (the person who is commissioning the perfume) to understand what they are smelling, experiencing and taking note of.  Everyone smells in a unique way, so what is important in a fragrance or aroma signature to you may not be the points of importance for someone else.  The trick is to get into another person’s heart and mind to find those sweet spots and be sure to hit them in the new design.  Not an easy task, but very worthwhile.  You will learn A LOT about people and fragrances…and so I have.

 

 

The first thing I learned was about the construction.   Barbara Herman wrote beautifully about Iris Gris on her blog, Yesterday’s Perfume, and also listed some of the ingredients based on the expert Octavian Coifan’s notes from his now (sadly) defunct website, 1000 fragrances.  Octavian is an amazing resource for the perfume lover / historian and it’s so lucky that Barbara listed the notes that Octavian had published about Iris Gris.  This is what Ms. Herman quoted from Mr. Coifan:

“[C]lean but not soapy, rich but not old-dusty…The perfume (a floral woody fruity but in fact an orris soliflore) is constructed around 2 ideas: orris notes + peach. Because orris and violet molecules are in general metallic/cold and usually express melancholy, the perfumer avoided this tendency with a soft peach note (undecalactone) that evokes a girlish skin complexion. The orris note is composed with all known orris notes (ionones, irones, methyl ionones, natural orris more than 35%). The woody note is mainly cedar-vetiver (their acetates for a light woody note). All other notes (jasmine, lily of the valley, heliotrope-lilac) are delicately drawn to support the floral-orris note and not to show their presence. There is an almost hard to detect chypre note (oakmoss – but I’m still not sure for that) and a light celery note (tuberose aspect and another trendy note in the 40-50’s used in traces) still to check. There is of course musk and a very light carnation like that in l’Air du Temps.  Iris Gris is the breath of angels!”
(From Octavian at 1000Fragrances.)

As I began working on my formula, I did find that some of the true notes in the original formula were not available: the musks would have to be replaced by some slightly more modern musk notes and the civet would need to be synthetic as well.  So, I set to work making a skeletal structure to test on my clients skin…

And that’s where I’m going to leave you for now.  Stay tuned for part 2.  🙂

I hope that imagining what’s happening on the skin sparks your creative juices for today.  I’ll be back with more before you know it. oxox

 

image credits: photo image by jennie marie schell found here; iris gris drawing found here; iris gris perfume bottle image found here; iris gris perfume ad no.1 image found here.

 

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petite printemps: lilac + peony + oranges, oh my!

There are always new designs that I am working on.  I never seem to feel completely satisfied and ready to put my materials down for any extended length of time.  I realize that I have way, way more designs available on my website than any reasonable person should have from a business standpoint but it seems that the artist gets her way just about all of the time where that is concerned.  I just can’t help myself. { So be it }.

Right now in my studio I am creating my own “little Springtime” while it’s still officially winter on the calendar.  And since time matches on, faster and faster it seems, March 20th will be here before we know it.  (Woah, this week!!!!  😀 )

Some of the work that has really been on my mind is re-habing or re-thinking old designs or even old design names that I still love; to breathe new life into them.  I started doing a lot more of this inward gazing at some of my formulations last year and now I wonder if this is a form of art therapy for me… as a parallel to the sense of re-creating my work and creative life post baby and post trauma.  There is something to taking a work apart and shaping it anew.  Or maybe this is just what Spring does to me.

It’s interesting too, that many other makers, from the big players to niche artisans have also been re-vamping and re-launching their work as of late.  I seem to see it everywhere I look.   There’s new interest in older works or maybe the big makers are just looking for winners from the past to be remade for new audiences.  One might think that this shows a great lack of creativity but I don’t really think so.  I actually think that it can present a greater challenge to remake something great from an old design and not get stuck with what the former once was, but to transform it, while remaining true to some form of the original inspiration.  What I can say is that I have been enjoying this work of redesign, in perfumes at least, and I am trying to find joy (truth? goodness? authenticity?) in the other more personal work of “coming back” trough transformation.

So, here’s a sneak peak at some upcoming Spring delights.  These lovely flowers are among the first sensations of Springtime, once the snows have truly gone for another year.  They are the harbingers.  And I feel they are some of the most beloved of the Spring florals.

Peony is as classic a Spring scent as there is.  I have been creating and selling a relatively simple, straight forward peony perfume for my clients in Japan for the past 5 years or so.  It’s a very important flower to both the Japanese and Chinese as a symbol of health and prosperity and this “simplicity” is really quite approachable.  Plus,  I love fresh peonies when they blossom in my garden.  Their elegant presence speaks of utter beauty and femininity.

So, for this new Peony design I wanted to do more than just create the flower.  I wanted to give the wearer a sense of experience.  Peony starts at dawn with the dew still on the bud that hasn’t yet opened.  The deep green leaves of the plant and a bit of grass are present.  Then the peony opens and releases it’s delicate yet definite aroma and we experience the fullness of a fresh blossom.  As the perfume dries down it is dusk, and the peony has turned a bit more rose-like as the sun sets and a shadow covers the blossom as night falls.

White Lilac .   This *IS* one of the quintessential Spring aromas although not everyone has experienced white lilacs as opposed to the traditional light purple or even dark purple lilacs.  White lilacs tend to take on a more ethereal, dewy quality and even exhibit a subtle, sweet fruitiness in the first wafts.

A few years ago I started growing roses and lilacs specifically for research into the live plant scents as well as for their glorious aesthetics.  I have to admit that the white lilacs and the Persians are two of my most anticipated blooms.  I can never get enough of them and get just a little sad when they start to recede (even though that means Summer’s right around the corner here in Boulder).   To make a perfume based on these delicate flowers makes me really happy…I could get lost in this luscious but light, sweet lilac haze for sure.

Oranges.  Yes, it’s oranges.  Kind of the odd man out in terms of ‘getting into Spring flowers’ but there it is.  And these are fresh AND spiced.  No, it’s not a pomander (which is so Autumnal and looking toward the Holidays).  This is a new kind of Fire Opal.  It’s ORANGE; a bit fiery still but fresh, juicy and most of all lively.  Not that the older version wasn’t lovely and yes, lively, but I have wanted Fire Opal to be something more.  I guess I want to watch it blossom again.

The reworked Fire Opal is a fresher take; spiced and still tea – laced but with a whiff of warm earth and a noticeable green edge that the first version of Fire Opal didn’t have.  Strangely, it’s the whiff of warm earth that makes it all the more Spring to me. And the fresh juicy-ness mixed with green leaves.  It makes me feel elated and ready for adventure the same way that Springtime does.

Of course, there are even more Spring floral designs that I am still working on so I suspect that they will have to wait to bloom for another Spring.  Well, it’s great to have something to look forward to…right?    Happy Spring everybody!

** PS: We’re celebrating Spring with a SPRING SALE at the site .  Use coupon code bloom14 for 15% off through April 10.

image credit: I found the spring bike image here; peony image found here; white lilac image here; oranges image here

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la reine des fleurs {untitled #63 :: part 2}

The Queen of Flowers by Svetlana Valueva

What an exhilarating evening it was on January 31 in Denver.  It wasn’t the snowstorm or the bitter cold but the hoards of people who flocked to Denver Art Museum to enjoy the first “Untitled” evening of the 2014 season.  And lucky, lucky me; I was there to share in the festivities and better still to present a new work of aroma-art commissioned by the museum for the event (Untitled #63: au naturel) that was a ‘translation in aromatic form’ of a painting in the museum’s permanent collection called “Young Girl with Flowers”, by Eugene Carriere.  This isn’t my first project with DAM but it may be the first time that I have been able to present a new work that has never been smelled before as well as to give a talk that is specific to my process as an artist (as opposed to presenting researched designs and speaking about the aromas from a more purely educational standpoint).  I have had the pleasure of doing this sort of thing at BMoCA (Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art) but this was my first at DAM and I liked it.  I liked it a lot.  It was right up my alley, as my grandmother used to say.  To invoke the historical content available in a visual work from the late 19th Century and to apply it to an aroma art translation allows me to delve into the concurrent themes in perfume history, materials in use, trends in art, culture and scent as well as to speak directly to the image and what it feels like to view it.  To bring all of this to play when designing is for me, instant love.  I can feel all of my senses engaged and it is like riding a delicious wave taking you to distant times and places.  I can feel myself there smelling the air and sensing the fabrics of the costumes and the bodies of the people around me (and what their skin emanates).  It is immersive and complete.

Young Girl with Flowers by Eugene Carriere

When I first saw “Young Girl with Flowers” I knew that this would be my chosen subject for the perfume.  I have been asked many times how I come to find inspiration, or what makes me want to create perfumes and often I have answered that the name and scent come together or there is some sort of sensory stimulation that sends me down the rabbit hole in search of what the perfume story wishes to be.  With this perfume, the name came last.  I wanted to work purely from the image without a ‘product name’ potentially distracting me.

The image is striking, no?  It’s dramatic and rich, but playful and sweetly innocent.  I love this girl playing with flowers in her hair (with that shock of red, they would be roses.  Or maybe geraniums?  Let’s use both).  And that porcelain face so light and smooth.  Is she playing dress up?  Is she the Queen in her own heroic story?  Is she working out how to be a woman and how she wishes to be perceived?  There are many ways to come to this image and decide what it’s all about.  What came for me was to speak to the drama, the sense of light and dark as well as the playful innocence paired together with the woman she will ultimately become.   I made this perfume for her to wear.  She is the Queen of Flowers.

this image perfectly evokes the rich texture of La Reine des Fleurs

Anyone who has studied perfume has come across the concept that “jasmine is the King of flowers and rose is the Queen”.   The image itself sets up the first impulse to make this perfume with a rose dominant heart.  And as geranium comes to mind as well (plus it has so much in common with the chemistry and aromatic signature of rose) it’s a natural pairing.  Now the 19th Century influence…yes, it must be a more classical construction and yes, it will contain mostly naturals as this would have been the norm for the time.  But, the dawning of synthetics had begun and this perfume must have a modern element.  There is youth mixed in this after all.  Peach…oh yes, that face speaks to me of peach, but a soft note; it can’t be a juicy, jolly rancher of peach.  Aldehyde c-14 can do that soft, fuzzy, creamy note that is that smiling face that comes out of the image and floats on top.  The base needs to be dark and rich.  The blackness is there and this says that the perfume must rise up and float at places and plunge into depths as it dries down.

What I chose is ultimately an oriental base (balsams, resins, vanilla and civet) but winks at chypre with just a little moss.  The effect is something that I personally adore: a rich, luxurious velvet of a dry down that is kept from being too sweet by the balsams and civet but keeps you coming back for one kiss after another with just the right amount of deliciousness.

Rose perfumes are not usually my *thing* to wear for myself.  They don’t really smell good on me, with the exception of Rose Vert, which I love.  La Reine des Fleurs is the second exception.  It unfolds like the opening of the most sensuous flower and seems to last forever on my skin (until the next day).  I can’t stop smelling my arms when I am wearing it.  In fact it makes me feel like the heroic queen in my own story, too.

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In case you’re interested to read more about the perfumes that I created for DAM and the Passport to Paris exhibit, you can check out the interview I did for their blog.  I also created some pared down versions of La Reine des Fleurs with recipes that you can check out on their DIY tumblr.  There’s some great shots from the Untitled #63 to check out on flickr , too, in case you’d like to take a peek.

Lastly, I’d love to share by giving away three 3 ml deluxe spray samples of La Reine des Fleurs!  Please post a comment and tell me about your favorite roses, rose perfumes and/or 19th Century paintings to enter.  The draw will be open through February 25.   oxox

image credits: queen of flowers image by svetlana valueva found here; young girl with flowers image was generously allowed by Denver Art Museum.

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