Fragrance Terms

[churchilllafemme]

Fragrance Vessels - Part 1

I started reading about scent bottles and found the topic to be quite interesting. Nearly all of the information available pertains to perfume bottles, but generally the evolution of the vessels for holding perfumes includes men's cologne bottles as well. I hope a few of you find this interesting, too.

Earliest Perfume Vessels

The earliest examples of perfume containers have been found in archeological digs in the Mideast, including those of Egypt and Mesopotamia. It appears that perfume compounds were used mainly in burials, both as a 'mask' for the smell of the deceased and to help preserve the body, subsequently becoming used also by the living. The Egyptians created vessels out of wood, alabaster, and clay to hold resins, fragrances, plant materials, and embalming ingredients, because the containers were water resistant. From around the 6th century BC, these often were formed in the shapes of animals such as ducks, cats, or rams, or gods and goddesses.

Subsequently, glass was invented and proved to be much easier with which to work. The date and location of glass discovery is debated: some records from Pliny claim that the Phoenicians inadvertently invented it by observing that shiny solid substances were created when silica combined with other chemicals under the extended heat of their beach campfires. Others contend that glass making began in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and Syria). It is known definitely that the Egyptians began using glass around the time of the late Bronze Age (about 1500 BC). Initially, they just used it for protective glazes on clay and tiles and for making small objects such as beads. Eventually glass containers were made by core-forming, created by dipping a core of clay and animal dung into a small pot of molten glass, so that the glass fully encased the core. When the layer of molten glass was solid but still hot, trails of glass of contrasting colors were wound onto the vessel as decoration. After the glass cooled and hardened fully on the core, the core material could then be scraped out, leaving a hollow glass vessel. These containers worked relatively well at protecting the materials from light, temperature extremes, and oxidation, but they were labor intensive to create, so they were available only to the wealthiest.

Sometime later in this period the technology was improved to permit roping of threads of glass around poles and smoothing them out into what would then become small vessels.

Glass Blowing

During the first century BC, the technique of glass blowing was invented in the eastern Roman Empire (probably Syria), and small, personal-sized bottles blown into mold shapes became more common for use in carrying scents. Roman glassmakers also created luxury glass bottles using techniques such as cameo glass, which remained affordable only by the wealthy. Cameo glass was produced by fusion of layers of differently colored glass, which were then carved to make designs, usually with white opaque figures and motifs on a dark-colored background. This was an alternative to luxurious engraved gem vessels that used naturally layered semi-precious gemstones such as onyx and agate. During the 3rd century, the use of glass objects spread throughout the Mediterranean, and they became larger, used as holders for other liquids such as wines. At this same time, the use of clay vessels also continued.

The Greeks provided a particular flair for creative glasswork, sometimes using blowing techniques that are non-reproducible even today. Advancements in glasswork created greater competition for the markets, along with sharp decreases in the price of glass. In the 4th century, silver, gold, and cobalt were added to glass to produce rich, deep colors, while advances were made in material enhancement for greater strength, resilience, and clarity.

 

[churchilllafemme]

Fragrance Vessels - Part 2

The Middle Ages and Islamic Glass

After the Western Roman Empire collapsed around 476, Europe entered the Middle Ages, characterized by the rise of Christianity and a sharp decline in the production of luxury glass, including perfume bottles. The art of perfumery and of glass perfume bottles was only kept alive during this period by the Middle Eastern Islamic world, with its flourishing international spice trade. Early Islamic bottles often were covered with indented, crimped and wavy coils, disks, and other types of applied decorations. Their designs included geometric patterns, depictions of plants and animals, and texts in Arabic script and arabesque (interweaving and scrolling of flowering plants). Islamic glass design reached its peak during the 13th and 14th centuries, but it experienced a decline after the invasion of Syria by the Mongols.

Pomanders

Worn from the mid-10th century was the pomander (from French pomme d'ambre, i.e. apple of amber), a small ball made for perfumes, such as ambergris, musk, or civet. The pomander was worn or carried in a vase, as a protection against infection or merely as a useful article to mask the bad smells of unwashed bodies. The term "pomander" can refer to the scented material itself or to the container holding such material. The globular pomander cases, at times just a cloth bag but more often made of perforated metal such as gold or silver, were hung from a neck-chain or belt or were attached to the girdle. Sometimes they contained several partitions, in each of which was placed a different perfume. Even smaller ones were attached by a chain to a finger ring and held in the hand, and the tiniest versions served as cape buttons or rosary beads.

The European Renaissance

The perfume bottle industry as a whole did not rebound until the Renaissance sparked its re-emergence. At this time, in the early 15th century, the center of glass innovation had moved to Venice, especially its island of Murano. There are tales that the secrets of Venetian glass were so precious that glass makers were kept as virtual prisoners in Murano to prevent spread of their knowledge. However, soon their technology spread, and the glass of Murano was followed by that of Bohemia and Medieval France (eventually known for spectacular cathedral windows). Initially during this period, perfume and related fragrant substances were still considered to be a part of hygiene, and perfumes were sold in plain bottles with cork stoppers very similar to those used for medicines, and often in wooden boxes exactly like those of medical and dental products. The perfumes were then decanted by the consumer into smaller decorative containers in the home.

To differentiate fragrances from medicaments and avoid confusion, manufacturers became more creative with paper labels, which soon featured not just information about the product and company, but also had fancy decorations. (An important later paper artist of the 18th century, Pierre Paul Prud'hon, designed labels for Lubin, Houbigant, and other perfumers, and his ornate style was later adopted by many other perfumers, including Guerlain.)

 

[churchilllafemme]

Fragrance Vessels - Part 3

16th-18th Centuries

During the 16th Century the elaborate bottle making originating in Venice spread further through Europe and the Middle East, and decorations became more creative.

 

[churchilllafemme]

Fragrance Vessels - Part 4

By the late 17th century, the central perfume and glass bottle industries had moved to France and had become essential parts of the economy. Catherine de Medici introduced a trend for little bottles in gold, silver, or semi-precious stones; and in the 18th century, with the increased high-society pursuit of seduction and pleasure, artists competed to create small imaginative boxes, caskets, and bottles to contain the essential sweet smells. Their popularity was linked to the century's love of miniatures in other aspects of art and fashion. At this time the pomander reached its peak of design, many being virtual works of art made from the most precious of materials and using very innovative designs. During this 'Age of Enlightenment,' the court of Louis XV was described by Voltaire and Rousseau as the 'Perfumed Court,' and various perfumes - all in different types of containers - were worn at different times of day there. During this time, many perfume companies had their names and logos molded onto the surface of their bottles, generally on the back, perhaps to make production of counterfeit products more difficult. In the 17th and 18th centuries, French and English glass makers also became influenced heavily by archeological finds in Egypt; and the Egyptian fascination with colors, especially black, was reflected in European goddess- and sarcophgus-styled perfume bottles. Rococo design, known for its asymmetry of ornamentation, usually including flowers, leaves, shells, and scrolls, also became popular.

By the mid-18th century, England in particular was known for producing unique glass perfume bottles decorated with gilding and enameling. Many European perfume bottles resembled the shape of wine bottles (and usually were made of clear glass covered in paper, which was carefully folded to cover even the base, probably to conceal the generally poor quality of the glass). However, some bottles of that time were made of either crystal or porcelain and were much more creative. These sometimes were iridescent blue or ruby red and decorated with precious metals and gems, and some of them were kept in small leather boxes known as 'caves.' The bottles frequently took on the themes of love, music, dance, comedy, flowers, and birds. Some vessels, especially in England, were decorated in the 'chinoiserie' style (a romantic, theatrical perception of life in the Far East), designed to imitate Chinese porcelain.

 

[churchilllafemme]

Fragrance Vessels - Part 5

As Europeans moved to North and South America, they found an abundance of sand of excellent quality for glass making, and the overall quality of glass began to improve. Glass production eventually became an important part of the economy of the U.S., particularly with the invention of the pressed mold (a new take on the Roman blown-mold concept) in the early 19th century, through which glass could easily be reproduced in many like-sized shapes and sizes. Soon entire forests were being depleted to keep glass manufacturers operating, which necessitated moves to new sites to meet the demand for timber.

[The Industrial Revolution[/i]

With the the Industrial Revolution, glass bottles became quickly and easily mass-produced using the new mechanical glass press. During this era, glass makers became intent on producing both affordable and unusual and unique glass and crystal vessels. The increased use of glass in perfume bottles led to evolution of crystal glass bottles with different flacon designs, resembling crystal whisky bottles. This new structure made the bottles look more elegant, and the thicker glass used in making the crystal cuttings improved the bottle stability. A cultural shift also occurred at this time: perfumes previously held in containers designed and created specifically for them by glass houses became part of the perfumers' whole process, and companies such as L.T. Piver began to make their own beautiful bottles, as well as packaging.

 

[churchilllafemme]

Fragrance Vessels - Part 6

Following the Industrial Revolution, different design trends emerged. Some perfumers brought new fragrances to market in distinct bottles that were part of the unique design and identity of the scent, while others streamlined their glass products to show a uniformity of creative vision, a sense of familiarity and comfort through repetition. Examples of this contrast in approach include the widely varying glass bottles of Guerlain versus the regimented proportions of Chanel and Serge Lutens bottles. Said one brand packaging designer, "There's something powerful and visually arresting to see a display of uniform bottles with clean graphics all lined up in a row." Part of this state of clean lines and simple elegance is based on economic forces: it is easier and more cost-effective to create a reusable bottle or box so that new items in a line can be added without the expense of creating a new container. And the Industrial Revolution's new technologies created for the first time an affluent middle class that was able to afford luxuries like perfume, once associated only with aristocracy.

In the late 19th century, with scent bottle popularity at an all-time high, there was a shift in how perfume was applied. For centuries fragrances had either been spread as incense smoke or applied to the body as a scented oils. With the advent of alcohol use as a solvent and carrier, it became possible to use the atomizer bub (invented in 1870) for creation of a mist that could be distributed as an even layer on the skin instead of dabbed with the delicate glass applicator.

 

[churchilllafemme]

Fragrance Vessels - Part 7

Beginning around 1890, perhaps partly in reaction to the mass production uniformity that followed the Industrial Revolution, artisans and glass factories began to produce elaborate cut or blown glass Art Nouveau perfume bottles with ornate caps, some of which had hinged silver stoppers and collars. Purse-sized conical bottles with very short necks and round stoppers were also made and often were decorated with gilt flower-and-leaf patterns. Some of these, including some from Tiffany's, were produced in cameo glass style in colors ranging from pink to purple or green, all encased in white. These Art Nouveau bottles were whimsical, floral, and delicate, with smooth curves. Adorned with gold lettering and brass caps, they often were corked with stoppers that acted as wand for application of the fragrance to one's wrists and neck, maintaining the old method. Said designer Robert Ricci at the time, "A perfume is a work of art, and the object that contains it must be a masterpiece." It was at this time that distinct schools of bottle design developed, some using vibrantly colored cut glass, others with porcelains, and some with very ornate crystals.

Early 20th Century

At the beginning of the 20th century, two famous crystal manufacturers began to craft exquisite fragrance bottles, René Lalique for Coty and Baccarat for Guerlain, meant to be displayed on a vanity table as a symbol of luxury. Lalique brought a jeweler's eye to this, even using a jewelry-casting process called 'cire perdue' (lost wax) for bottle making. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Lalique preferred a demi-crystal, without added lead, because it was easy to work and inexpensive and because it gave the bottles his trademark milky opalescence. He also made bottles for d'Orsay and Roger & Gallet, and later he made and sold empty vessels so that customers could transfer their own perfumes into his more elegant containers.

[Moser]

In 1907 the first spray bottles, called 'perfumizers,' appeared on the market. This change was significant in the evolution of the glass bottle because the previous bulb atomizer often took up a great deal of the size and visual profile of the perfume bottle. The new crimped spray top was compact and offered the chance for perfumers to use the cap as a new design element. Sometimes the caps were simply an extension of the bottle; at other times they were completely different and served as a 'finishing touch' to the perfume's presentation. At this point a new industry also arose, as manufacturers began to mass-produce decorative empty spray bottles.

 

[churchilllafemme]

Fragrance Vessels - Part 8

At the end of World War I, as soldiers brought back fragrances from overseas for their sweethearts and wives, perfume sales in the U.S. expanded, bringing about the growth of new fragrance companies and collaborations, with new bottle designs. This period saw a great variety of approaches to bottle design, boundless in their shapes and sizes, often whimsical or neoclassical in design. More fashion houses introduced their own perfumes with a total 'presentation' of bottle, label, name, and box; both the perfume presentation and the accompanying advertising were intended to sell an image rather than merely a fragrance. Design trends were strongly influenced by the lifestyle changes of the roaring twenties and the emergence of the newly 'liberated woman.'

During the 1920s and 1930s, glass perfume bottles also became inspired by the rising success and glamour of Hollywood and by the Art Deco movement, with the forms of natural, organic objects and then urban-inspired geometric shapes (such as zigzags, prisms, and hexagons, influenced by Cubism). Czech designers took this to extremes, creating sleek bottles with stoppers so large that the containers have the appearance of a showgirl wearing a top-heavy headdress. Although elaborate bottle designs remained the most popular throughout these decades, there was increasing popularity of simple rectangular vessels with a glass stopper and paper label, such as those of Coco Chanel, reflecting a growing trend of practicality and unadorned utility.

When the Great Depression hit, perfume sales dropped sharply and many manufacturers were forced to shut down, putting a temporary end to fanciful bottles. The intricate, handmade containers previously seen gave way for the most part to cheaper machine-made bottles. Some perfume houses 'cheated' around these inexpensive bottles by enclosing them in fancy outer packaging. One example is the Coty fragrances of the 1930s whose bottles were packed in boxes with glass-slipper high heels on them. However, one of the most unique fragrance collaborations did come about in 1935, when perfumer Jean Patou was commissioned to create a fragrance to mark the inaugural sailing of the Normandie cruise ship. Each guest on that initial cruise was presented with a bottle of perfume in the shape of the ship. During this interwar period, there were some fruitful collaborations, but they were the exception.

 

[churchilllafemme]

Fragrance Vessels - Part 9

Post-World War II

As World War II came to a close, there was once again a resurgence of perfume demand and of creative fragrance bottle design, yet still with a kind of uniformity. The war had ended the glass blowing industry, so perfumeries answered the demand by creating elaborately-shaped molds which allowed fanciful bottles to be mass-produced by machines. It became common to see the same bottle designs released from several different companies, who would personalize them with paint and enamel, as well as metal or plastic attachments. In 1946, couturier Elsa Schiaparelli collaborated with artist Salvador Dali to create a remarkable perfume bottle, Le Roy Soleil (The Sun King). Shaped like the sun, it was crafted by Baccarat with shapes of waves symbolizing the liberation of France from Nazi Germany. Dali also designed bottles for the fragrance company Marquay. Fashion designer Nina Ricci used a similar inspiration for his l'Air du Temps bottle designed by Lalique, featuring two intertwined doves that symbolized freedom and grace. Others artisans soon became involved, such as hat maker Rose Valois designing a set of miniature bottles for the perfume Marotte, each topped with a different tiny hat.

During the 1950s there was extensive use of colored glass, including pastels, but without much variety. In that decade, perfumes became increasingly affordable for the working classes, for whom cosmetic houses such as Avon and Max Factor produced fragrances. However, specially designed bottles produced as decorative objects continued to be produced by a few art-glass companies like Steuben and Baccarat and were sold in department stores.

In the 1960s, with a return to craftmanship and folk art, handcrafting bottle artisans and independent glass-blowing studios proliferated. Bottles were often inspired by fashions of the decade (angular shapes and bright colors).

 

[churchilllafemme]

Fragrance Vessels - Part 10

Perfume bottles of the 1970s went through many changes due to practical concerns, as marketing was adjusting to new trends. Functionality, freedom, liberation, and abstraction were some of the styles explored. Bottles were evolving in different sizes to support sportswear, a faster lifestyle. Perfume changed from a coveted, sacred bottle on the bureau top to something carried, sprayed freely, and worn with ease. Proper parfum concentration of scent was getting smaller and usually reserved for keeping on a dresser at home, while colognes and eau de toilettes were sleeker, easier to port around. Bottle design reflected these changing needs, but also had characteristic artistic flourishes of its own. A few different trends in bottle design prevailed. There was still a willingness to experiment with artistic styles, but whimsical designs that crept up in the late 1950s and 1960s took a backseat to a more serious look at how scent and design could meet. Voluptuous curves appeared in glass. There were a number of fancy pure parfum bottles with crystal stoppers in floral shapes, a holdover from previous decades. And there were modern sculptures, but also a lot of retro, almost deco throwbacks. The 1970s were big on elliptical designing, coinciding with the developments in architecture and the arts in general. In the 1970s, with women increasingly seen as strong, liberated, and independent, and with a growing popularity of musk for both genders, metal was re-introduced into perfume bottle designs, making them seem more unisex and utilitarian: stoppers were sometimes replaced with screw tops, allowing fragrances to be applied as splashes.

Late 20th Century

The 1980s introduced a revolutionary new concept in the fragrance world: perfume as a cosmetic toiletry item. With use of the built-in atomizer, perfume became truly portable for the first time, able to be carried along with other cosmetics in a purse or bag. Cheaper plastics became more commonly used at the same time, making perfume available to an even wider population of customers. However, styles of the 1980s remained quite gaudy and flamboyant, and some perfume bottles became more grandiose, with gold metallic lids and other flashy details. Hard edges, geometric designs, and architectural intrigue were out, replaced by soft, arching, oval forms. All were vaguely feminine and slender but voluptuous.

Eventually style in the 1980s came to resemble that of the dramatic 1940s. Two prime examples of this larger-than-life presentation in the perfume world were the scents drawn from the Dynasty TV series (Carrington, and Forever Krystle) and the popular perfumes from Elizabeth Taylor. Both alluded to wealth, power, and position. The public was also becoming more enamored of film stars again and wanted fragrances from them; and the 1980s saw the true birth of celebrity fragrance. Cher, Debbie Gibson, and Sophia Loren all added perfumes to our vocabulary; and stars fronted the campaigns of 1980s perfumes, like Jaclyn Smith for Epris, Sharon Stone for Charlie, and Jane Seymour for Max Factor’s Le Jardin.

The 1980s also represent somewhat the end of an era: styles were about to radically change, and bottle appearances would follow suit. By 1988, there were hardly any unisex perfumes, no simple, minimalist bottles, or eco-friendly packaging. Consumers were still swept up in the excesses of a booming worldwide market and a palette for broad and expansive scents. The bottles that held these perfumes were refined and almost neo-Classical. Forms generally were very tall and lean.

As the decades passed, perfume evolved once again. A revolution would occur soon with the launch of a few key fragrances - scents that would change perfume, and bottles that would change our sense of functional art. The merging of music, video, perfume and advertising reached an epoch of cross-influences, where one easily led to another, and back and forth. It was a time of creative exploration, ranging from innocence to indulgence, with many surprises. Gucci experimented with one of the most radical designs conceived for a bottle before with Gucci Rush, presented in a hard-edged box, more reminiscent of a piece of electronics. Other perfumers, like Lancôme, pushed boundaries by playing with classic designs and flipping them on their sides, and some perfumes began to express themselves through their inventive caps.

No bottle reflects the revolution in design that was the 1990s more than the stripped down, monolithic simplicity of Calvin Klein’s CK One. The bottle itself was purposefully utilitarian. The frosted glass only gave a slight hint of the pale yellow liquid inside. The cap and replaceable sprayer were brushed aluminum and could be screwed on and switched. Every detail of the bottle was meant to convey ease of use, transportability, sharing, and most importantly, no boundary of gender. The utilitarian design may have been an ode to Bauhaus and Russian Constructivists, but it also added its own emphasis on authenticity.

The 1990s perfume bottles represent an apex of design and merging of creative forces, when art direction was at a peak, and the new-found power of video, internet ad campaigns, and cross-platform sharing merged. Soon utilitarian design pushed further the limits of minimalism. Elegant presentation for perfumes reached new heights of ostentation and exclusivity. The 1990s decade is sometimes called the beginning of the end for the golden age of perfumery, because of the dividing chasm with the heavier, denser compositions of the previous decades and the emergence of aquatics and marines.

One important perfume design milestone is the emergence of niche fragrances, mainly with the stylized bottles of Serge Lutens, oblong or bell-jar shaped, deceptively minimalist but also expressionistic. The flacons may have started as homogeneous in order to cut costs for a new brand, but they set a standard for the concept of individual design in the niche field.

By the mid-1990s, with increasing outsourcing of production, few bottles were still made in the U.S. Because this made labor and packaging cheaper, the prices of perfumes also decreased, and top-end fragrances began to be sold in drugstores alongside cheaper imitations. The inexpensive construction of that time, often involving tin or plastic rather than glass, meant that perfume bottles were truly disposable for the first time since the poor quality glass of the early Middle Ages. Designer packaging began to resemble that of other toiletries, for example Ralph Lauren Polo Sport looking more like a shampoo than a fragrance.

Current Trends

Today, with affordable labor and materials like color-coated glass and lightweight plastics readily available, perfumers once again are testing the limits of bottle design. Abstract glass, metal, plastic, and even wood containers can be found holding every scent imaginable, in many shapes and sizes. There are more celebrity and fashion designer fragrances on the market that ever before, and it has become common for bottles to have complex and bold features, such as Lady Gaga's Fame, with its gold scarab-shaped lid and a liquid that is black inside the bottle but becomes clear once sprayed.

In modern times trends have included both luxurious packaging and simpler, linear designs. Consumers now seem undecided about whether they want their fragrance containers to be reusable or recyclable, or if they want special bottles for each new perfume. Some companies such as Le Labo are offering refill programs for their glass bottles. And perfumers themselves have had mixed approaches, with some seeing it as important to retain a particular idea that carries through its various bottle designs, while others have chosen to show that their bottles can adapt with changing times.

Modern bottle designers, although sometimes conceiving of unique, very creative containers, must keep in mind the fact that the bottles often have to be shipped around the world and thus need to be stable and hardy enough to avoid cracking or breaking in transit. Many weeks of testing are required to make sure a newly designed bottle meets this standard. Depending on the final container, up to nearly 40% of the composition can be recycled glass. Regardless of its exact compositions, glass (composed of silica, sand, soda, and lime) still remains a relatively brittle compound.

 

[GearNoir]

Very cool container examples!

 

[churchilllafemme]

Beeswax, Honeycomb, and Honey

Well it's a darn good life
And it's kinda funny
How the Lord made the bee
And the bee made the honey
And the honeybee lookin' for a home
And they called it honeycomb
- Jimmie Rodgers, 'Honeycomb'

Beeswax

Beeswax (Cera alba) is the wax used by honey bees of the genus Apis in making honeycombs. The wax is used commercially in cosmetics and ointments, principally to thicken essential oils, and is used as a base/carrier for solid colognes. It also appears as a scent ingredient in perfumes, in the form of an absolute (essential oil).

Beeswax absolute (often known by its French name Absolute Cire d'Abeille) is obtained from hives that have been active for 5 years or more, so that raw material retains the scents of honey, propolis, and the pheromones of the bees themselves. (Propolis or 'bee glue' is a resinous balsam mixture that honey bees produce by mixing saliva and beeswax with exudate gathered from tree buds, sap, or other botanical sources. It is used as a sealant for open spaces in the hive.)

When worker bees reach a certain age, they develop glands in the abdomen which produce and exude very fine 'wax scales.' Fresh beeswax is transparent and colorless, developing its eventual golden color through contact with pollen and honey as it is chewed by hive worker bees. The chewed wax scales allow construction of the honeycomb in the hive. The component cerolein is a mixture of fatty acids and is probably responsible for the waxy scent notes found in the absolute. Natural beeswax is brittle and granular when cold; at room temperature it is soft but tenacious, and it softens further at human body temperature.

The honeycomb wax is collected by beekeepers and stripped or formed into cakes, then solvent extracted and filtered to remove leftover impurities. The resulting concrete is a solid, thick mass with a pale yellow to dark golden-amber color and a very mild, green, floral, oily odor with a somewhat hay-like or coumarinic body and a soft, vanillic, waxy undertone. Its raw odor is reminiscent of good (not harsh) linseed oil. The concrete is dissolved in ethanol, and the more volatile molecules are extracted by evaporation, producing the mostly wax-free beeswax absolute.

Beeswax Absolute

The absolute is completely miscible in alcohol and in dipropylene glycol, making it quite easy for perfumers to work with it. The best absolutes, thought to be those from France, are aged for 6 years or longer, which deepens the honey notes, making them darker and more complex.

Beeswax absolute has a deep, warm, balsamic, and intoxicating aromatic fragrance, with a prominent honey nuance, as well as an animalic tone. It is usually a complex composite of sweet floral aspects, grains, dried fruit, vanilla, and a musky ambience of hay and cured tobacco. The absolute is used in perfumery to provide rich golden-amber notes and is most often a heart or base note, although its facets of balsam, tobaccco, and hay can also add to top notes. The sweet honeyed-hay aspect works especially well as a good base for lavender and rose and is excellent when combined with bitter oakmoss. Its naturalness combines well with orange blossom, which already has a honeyed fact in its own absolute. Less frequently, beeswax absolute has notes of chocolate, spices, and nuts. The honey tone of the absolute is sometimes called 'regressive' because it evokes memories of childhood in some people.

As a fixative, beeswax binds much more volatile aromatic perfume notes like citrus, providing greater tenacity. The beeswax note is said to be relatively difficult for perfumers because of its tendency to be too animalic, and it usually is used sparingly; some perfumers prefer to create bases containing several honey raw materials, rather than just using beeswax alone in a composition. Beeswax is most often classified in the modern (post-1945) gourmand fragrance subfamily of the oriental family.

Says perfume expert Steffen Arctander, "Beeswax absolute is useful in perfumes where similar notes occur (as a modifier), or where rough or chemical 'corners' of synthetic materials must be rounded off. It blends well into jasmine, mimosa, cassie, violet, new mown hay, tabac, etc., as well as in in the so-called 'cire d’abeille' perfume bases, in which a meadow-like sweetness and heavy, honey-like floral notes are predominant (coumarin, cassione, phenylethyl phenylacetate, helichrysum oil, flouve oil, liatris extract, chamomile, etc.)."

The absolute can vary in both consistency and aroma. According to Arctander, "You can distinguish one beeswax from another because a characteristic odor is left in the wax (similar to the 'brand' of special flavor imparted to various sorts of honey) according to where it has been harvested, from what kind of flowers the bees have collected their nectar." (However, often when the beeswax is collected by large harvesters, the wax from different hives is all melted together into large blocks for transportation, markedly decreasing any floral variation.) The climate, production methods, season, and age and species of bee are contributing factors to both the smell and the color of the absolute.
[commercial beeswax harvest]

Beeswax is also used in solid colognes to provide a thick consistency. In a high enough proportion, generally at equal parts beeswax to carrier or higher, beeswax takes a mixture's carrier oil state from liquid to solid. Beeswax also acts as a barrier to evaporation, helping an essential oil-based solid perfume last longer on the skin.

Animal-derived materials have been used for centuries to provide depth, naturalism, erotic tones, and fixation to perfumes. Most of them are obtained through methods that cause harm to the animals and so are unethical to use by today's standards. Synthetic equivalents often can do a fairly good job of approximating them but do not elicit the same emotional brain response that real animal products do. The note of beeswax is among the few natural animalic notes in perfumery that are totally cruelty-free, involving no harm to the animal. For this reason, beeswax is prized in natural perfumery, where the absence of synthetics can pose a problem.

Beeswax has been used in many ways for millennia by humans: as one of the first plastics (including Neolithic use as a dental filling), as a lubricant and waterproofing agent, in 'lost wax' casting of metals and glass, as a polish for wood and leather, for making candles, as an artistic medium in encaustic painting ('hot wax' painting, involving heated beeswax to which colored pigments are added), for sculpting figures for religious ceremonies, and as a cosmetic ingredient.

It has been used as a major component of balms for mummification in ancient Egypt, in commerce in the form of wax seals for documents, and in the decorative Southeast Asian cloth dying process known as batik. Beeswax has had culinary uses, both in food flavoring and in food storage. Since beeswax does not spoil or become rancid, it can be reheated and re-used over and over. It is believed that the fragrance of beeswax was first noticed when it was used in the Middle Ages to make candles, which were first introduced in Europe. These candles, unlike those with animal-based tallow, burned purely and cleanly, emitting a pleasant sweet smell rather than the foul, acrid odor of tallow.

The leading current producers of raw beeswax are Angola, Chile, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, and California and Hawaii in the U.S. Anguilla Benguela wax from Angola is highly prized, and perfumers also favor wax from Grasse in France because it is made by bees feeding on the surrounding fields of lavender, rose, and jasmine, and it relatively quite uniform and consistent.

The major beeswax absolute-producing countries are Spain, France, and Morocco; and the industry is growing in California. Significant amounts of absolute also come from China. Beeswax absolutes are mainly marketed by Robertet, Firmenich, Albert Vieille SAS, and IFF.

Beeswax is also used in many skincare and haircare products, for hydrating, conditioning, soothing, and calming the skin. It exfoliates, repairs damage, promotes natural regeneration, decreases signs of aging, and creates a long-lasting protective barrier against pollutants. Beeswax is used in lip balm and gloss, hand creams, salves, and moisturizers, and in cosmetics such as eye shadow and eyeliner. It is also an important ingredient in mustache wax and hair pomades.

There are two main types of beeswax, yellow and white. Yellow wax is the natural, unrefined, raw type derived directly from the honeycomb, used primarily for extracting honey and for making absolute. White wax is the end-result of yellow wax undergoing a filtering/purifying/bleaching process and is the type used most often in cosmetic formulations, food preparation, and pharmaceutical products such as ointments, softgel capsules, and coatings of medicine tablets.
[yellow and white beeswax]

There are many unisex perfumes containing beeswax notes. There are just a few labeled as men's fragrances with beeswax:

Bvlgari Azaran
Chanel Antaeus
Christian Dior Leather Oud
Erika Gualtieri Caarosello '75 No. 7
Fragonard Desert
Ikiryo Orange Sunshine
Lavin Avant Garde
Nadia Z Espiritu Pirata
Penhaligon's Roaring Radcliff, Sartorial
Refan Flor Negra Eau de Attraction
Re Profumo Superuomo
Rose & Co. Manchester Club
Storer Monk Michael


Honeycomb

A honeycomb is a mass of hexagonal wax cells built by honey bees in their hive and containing honey, pollen, and larvae. It has a sweet floral scent of combined beeswax and honey. Beekeepers sometimes remove the entire honeycomb to harvest honey, returning the intact wax structure to the hive, after harvesting the honey or using the wax to produce beeswax absolute.

The axes of honeycomb cells are always nearly horizontal, with the open end higher than the closed back end. The cells slope slightly upwards (9-14°) toward the open ends. Two explanations exist for why a honeycomb is composed of hexagons. First, the hexagonal tiling creates a partition with equal-sized cells while minimizing the toal cell perimeter. Thus, a hexagonal structure uses the least material to create a lattice of cells within a given volume. A second reason is that the shape simply results from the process of individual bees putting cells together, analogous to the boundary shapes created in a field of soap bubbles. Supporting the latter idea is the fact that queen cells, which are built singly, are irregular and lumpy, with no apparent attempt at efficiency. The closed ends of honeycomb cells are also an example of geometric efficiency, with the angles of all adjacent surfaces measuring 120°, the angle that minimizes surface area for a given volume.

Honeycomb is solvent extracted like beeswax is obtained. The aroma of honeycomb oil is similar to that of beeswax absolute, with floral and fruity notes, but with added dominant sweet honey tones. It is frequently somewhat smoky as well as animalic, with touches of mimosa, bergamot, rose, cream, and musk. It is used much more often is cosmetic products than in perfumes.

Unisex fragrances with honeycomb notes include EMES #220 Honey Potion, Strangers Parfumerie Magenta Pop, and Trussardi Limitless Shopping Via della Spiga, and one labeled as masculine is Fragrenza Arabian Timber (in which the note is primarily in the base).


Honey

Honey has been collected by humans for thousands of years. A Mesolithic rock painting in a cave in Valencia, Spain, dating back at least 8,000 years, depicts two foragers collecting honey and honeycomb from a wild beehive. It is thought that early humans learned to find honey by following the greater honeyguide, a bird species in the wooded savannas of southern Africa that is attracted to wild beehives in the cavities of baobab trees. (The bird is one of the few avians that can eat and digest wax.) The modern zoologist Claire Spottiswood has discovered that the Yao people of that region are able to communicate with the honeyguide, rolling their tongues to make a brassy sound that lets the birds know when the people are ready to hunt for honey. The oldest documented honey residue was found on the inner surface of clay burial vessels unearthed in a Georgian tomb dating to between 4,700 and 5,500 years ago. The first written records of beekeeping are from ancient Egypt, where honey was used to sweeten foods and was put in unguents. The dead often were buried with honey in Egypt and Mesopotamia. (Unspoiled honey was found in King Tut's tomb.) Honey was produced and used through the various ancient Greek periods; and the use of honey for spiritual and therapeutic purposes is documented in Ayurvedic texts, in Biblical tomes, and subsequently in many other Middle Eastern and Eastern Asian writings.

The Emperor Napoleon preferred to have his portrait painted wearing a luxurious robe covered with bees, a symbol of the monarchy in France. In 1853, Pierre-Francois Guerlain created the famous Bee Bottle for Eau De Cologne Imperiale (composed in 1830) to be used by Empress Eugenie, who wore the perfume to her wedding to Napoleon III. Because of her appreciation of the Bee Bottle, M. Guerlain was appointed as the official royal perfumer, and the legacy of this design lives on in Guerlain's perfumery, from bee bottle designs to honeycomb-topped flacons.

Although there are over 20,000 species of bees, the world depends primarily on just one group, the honey bees. Within this group, the European honey bee (Apis mellifera) is the familiar domesticated species known throughout the world. Honey bees likely originated in southeastern Asia and spread to Europe, where the modern honey bee species came into being. This is the only species known to take readily to domestication, and it traveled with early Europeans throughout the world, arriving in North America with European settlers in the early 1600s.

Honey is collected from both wild bee colonies and domesticated beehives. To safely collect the honey, beekeepers pacify the bees using a smoker. The smoke triggers a feeding instinct (an attempt to save the hive resources from a possible fire), making them less aggressive, and it obscures the pheromones the bees use to communicate. The honeycomb is removed from the hive, and the honey is extracted either with a honey extractor, which preserves the comb, or by crushing. The honey is then filtered to remove residual wax and other debris.

In 2019, global production of honey was 1.9 million tons, led by China with about a quarter of the total. Other major producers were Turkey, Canada, Argentina, and Iran.

Honey absolute is solvent extracted from crude yellow beeswax. The absolute is pale yellow to deep golden brown in color and is moderately viscous to waxy. It has the mild, sweet, syrupy, natural aroma of pure honey: floral, powdery, and sweet yet with a slight touch of balancing bitterness. It adds a seductive amber touch to perfume compositions, blending especially well with jasmine, mimosa, violet, hay, chamomile, orange blossom, and tobacco. The oil does not have the depth and richness of the propolis and bee pheromones found in beeswax, but it retains some of the animalic nuances. It is quite tenacious and acts in perfumes as a fixative for other notes.

Honey scent comes in a multitude of varieties, each taking its smell from the flowers on which the bees have been active, some of them woody, others flowery or herbal. Honey from eucalyptus or lavender flowers is almost camphoraceous, honey from buckwheat is spicy and raw, that of clover is mild, and heather honey is ambery and dark. Thyme honey is balanced and herbal, pine and fir honeys are a bitter and have resinous nuances, and honeys from acacia and linden blossoms are especially sweet and lightly woody. Honey from tobacco flowers has a smoky aroma.

Says fragrance expert Erica Moore, "Honey is a warm, sweet note (not fruity or sticky), but with an earthy quality that sees it blending well with amber, woods, and vanilla notes. It adds sweetness and intensity to floral oriental fragrances and blends well with spicy florals such as orange blossom, ylang ylang, and carnation, as well as some rose notes. It can also work well with spices such as cinnamon and nutmeg." There are two faces to the smell of honey, the sweetness that brings to mind pancakes and waffles and the illicit temptress side, and perfume creators use these contrasting qualities together. Says perfumer Christine Nagel, "Honey has two facets - half devil, half angel. In oriental structures, it has a sweet, comforting effect, taking you back to childhood." Honey combines especially well with fruits or tobacco. The sweetness of the honey notes makes fragrances containing them work especially well in the colder winter months and for night-time use. In the base notes, honey has a balsamic dry-down that enhances floral and agarwood/oud notes.

Honey absolute generally is lighter and sweeter than that of beeswax. The difference between honey scent and beeswax scent can be seen in a comparison of the Demeter fragrances. Demeter Honey (a mix of natural and synthetic notes) smells exactly like honey, warm, rich, and sweet, more gourmand and less floral, and without any powdery or pollen tones. The Demeter Beeswax, on the other hand, containing natural beeswax absolute, is powdery and has touches of blossoms and pollen.

Ancient Arabic perfumers were the first to capture honey's aroma in perfumery. In modern times, Jean Patou's Que Sais-Je? (1925) was the first perfume to use honey as a note. Subsequently other perfumers used it, but isolating the scented components of honey is difficult, and many manufacturers used other ingredients to approximate the smell of honey (such as mimosa, cassia, privet, jasmine, and honeysuckle), some of them coming from flowers that are often the choice of bees. More recently, synthetic honey notes have been used, frequently in combination with the natural sources to create an overall 'honey' profile.

Masculine fragrances with noted honey tones:

Al-Rehab Dehn Al Oud
Amouage Jubilation XXV Man
Animale Men
Aramis Saffron
Bvlgari Man
By Kilian Back to Black, Gold Knight
Calvin Klein Euphoria Gold Men
Cartier l'Envol
Christian Dior Bois d'Argent
Ermenegildo Zegna Forte
Floris Honey Oud
Francis Kurkdjian Absolue pour le Soir
Heritage Berbere HB Homme 12, HB Homme 14
Givenchy Gentleman
Gucci pour Homme
Hermes Hermessence Ambre Narguile
Hugo Boss Silk & Jasmine, No. 1
Lapidus pour Homme
Maison Anthony Marmin Oud Al Amir
Mansfield Bois Extreme, Tam Tam
Marly Herod, Oajan
Montale Honey Aoud
l'Occitane en Provence Immortelle de Corse
Pacoma Gatsby
Paco Rabanne Tenere
Phaedon Tabac Rouge
Santa Maria Novella Cuba
Serge Dumonten Jean Marais
Serge Lutens Chergui, El Attarine, Fumerie Turque
Thera Cosmeticos Troia
Thierry Mugler A*Men, A*Men Pure Havene
Tom Ford Moss Breches, Tobacco Vanille
Xerjoff Mamluk
Yves St. Laurent Kouros
Zara Tobacco Collection Rich Warm Addictive
Zoologist Perfumes Bee

 

[churchilllafemme]

Non-Shaving Facial Hair Removal

At one time in the past, body hair removal was just a female practice. Then it became popular with male bodybuilders, cyclists, swimmers, and exotic dancers. Says dermatologist Dr. David Goldberg, who performs laser hair removal, "Most men don't necessarily want it all removed, but increasingly they do want it thinned out, on their back and chest, for example."

And more recently, men have become interested in methods of removing facial hair other than shaving, some ways temporary and others permanent. Says waxing specialist Michelle Serniuk, "We get a lot of men who want waxing on their eyebrows - they want to take away that unibrow look and they want a shaping - plus they want other parts, like areas around their ears, on the face, or on the back of the neck, cleaned up as well."

Whichever method is used, if it is done at home, it is very important to follow the directions provided.

Tweezing
Among all the non-shaving methods of hair removal for men, tweezing by hand is the easiest and cheapest. Instead of cutting the hair, tweezing pulls it from the roots. Typically, the results of tweezing last much longer than shaving, sometimes up to 3-8 weeks. Unfortunately, like shaving, tweezing can cause ingrown hairs for some men.

Coil Hair Removers
These gadgets look like a tiny Slinky and work by grabbing hair straight from the root, similar to tweezing but much faster because it is not necessary to grab each hair individually. They are not complicated to use: holding the metal handles, the coils are bent and rolled over the hair. This is an especially good option for people with sensitive skin. Kits such as the Tweezerman's Smooth Finish Facial Hair Remover or the Lindo Twist-n-Roll Tweezer can be found for around $20. Using an exfoliating cream a couple days beforehand helps to soften the skin and reduce the risk of ingrown hairs.

Epilator
Epilation, similar to the coil method, is basically like a really fast mechanical tweezer. The epilator has around a dozen tiny openings that spin and pluck the hairs rapidly, working by taking hold of multiple hairs at the same time and removing them from the roots. Epilators come in different sizes to allow matching to your facial areas. Pre-treatment with an exfoliating cream a day or two before use can increase the effectiveness, after which results can last up to 4 weeks or so.

Electric Trimmer
A beard trimmer can provide a clean-looking close cut of facial hairs, if you prefer not to use a shaver to be completely smooth. This '5 o'clock shadow' appearance is a look that has become much more popular among men the last few years. Most trimmers have a pivoting head to fit the various shapes of your facial skin or a head that is contoured to be adaptable to different areas. They are relatively gentle on the skin, causing little irritation. Many trimmers have different length settings, and a few include a vacuum feature to help with cleaning up. Some come with comb attachments for touching up hair areas such as sideburns and eyebrows, and some are waterproof to allow 'shaving' in the shower. Waterproof trimmers can also be easier to clean. With beard trimmers, you generally get what you pay for, with more or fewer attachments changing the prices. If you only need a few options, a trimmer with a price around $20 can do the job fairly well.

Depilatory
A depilatory is a strong alkaline product (often with sodium, titanium dioxide, and barium sulfite) that breaks down the proteins in hair shafts so that they dissolve and can be washed away or wiped off with a warm damp towel. They are available as creams, lotions, and gels. Some are designed specifically for facial hair, intended to also smooth and exfoliate the skin. They may take a bit longer than shaving and may be more expensive if a trial and error approach is used first; but they are unlikely to cause ingrown hairs.

It is important to be careful when choosing a depilatory product. Hair removal creams often contain harsh chemicals that can cause reactions or burn the skin, especially of people who have sensitive skin or if left too long on the skin. Signs of reaction include redness, bumps, itchiness, and even peeling. If it is your first time using a depilatory, it is recommended that you first do a patch test, applying just a small amount of the cream to an area of skin, and wait at least 24 hours to watch for any reaction before applying the cream to larger sections of your face. It is also suggested that you first try a relatively mild product with added moisturizers, such as Moom for Men Organic Hair Remover or Nad's Facial Hair Removal Cream, advancing to stronger ones as needed and tolerated. Stronger products include Veet for Men Hair Removal Gel Creme or AFY Aivoye Depilatory Cream. Some brands have product lines aimed for men's use; and some are specifically intended for use on the face.

Similar - but a spray instead of a cream - is Nair Men's Hair Removal Spray, which can cover large areas quickly. And for bald heads, there is SoftSheen-Carson Magic Razorless Cream Shave, created especially for heads. A somewhat longer lasting product is Kuulee Depilatory Cream, designed also to reduce hair regrowth as well as removing the hair. Finally, there is Stop Hair - Hair Reducing Spray. Unlike the other products, it is just intended to inhibit hair growth, so it is applied after hair is removed.

Results with creams tend to last only 2-3 days. Using depilatory creams can be relatively inexpensive.

Dermaplaning
Dermaplaning might actually be considered a version of shaving. It involves removing the top layer of skin, and the hair along with it, using a small exfoliating scalpel. It can be done in a dermatologist's office, or there are kits that can be used at home (such as Dermaflash 2.0). Results last for about 2 weeks. This is relatively expensive option. A hydrating, moisturizing post-shave serum is recommended after the dermaplaning.

Waxing
There are two different types of waxing kits, one with wax strips that are warmed in the hands before application and the other with wax that is melted in a warmer and then applied with a stick. Either way, the wax is smoothed over the skin, allowed to set somewhat, and then 'ripped' off. Strips specifically designed for the face or soft wax formulated for facial use should be used. If a warmer and sticks are employed, each stick should be used only once to avoid introducing bacteria into the wax. Before waxing is done for the first time, a patch test on a small area of skin should be done to see if an allergic reaction develops and to test for the right wax temperature.

Waxing can be a harsh process, with possible side effects such as residual redness, especially for those with sensitive skin. The strips or kits usually come with a post-wax aloe cream or an oil such as chamomile to soothe any inflammation; and some waxes actually contain such oils. Waxing can cause acne and can promote development of ingrown hairs, and the process should be avoided if retinoids are being used. The treatment can be done at a professional waxing service or with a kit at home. The effects of waxing are said to last up to 4 weeks.

Sugaring and Sugar Waxing
Similar to regular waxing but more gentle and less uncomfortable, sugaring is done with either a paste or a gel. Both are made with natural ingredients like lemon juice, sugar, and water, and are applied like a wax. Sugaring can remove hair for 3-4 weeks. Sugar compound recipes are available online.

Sugar waxing consists of application of a sugar wax gel, either with strips or with a stick applicator, letting it sit for a short while, then removing it while holding the skin taut. Although messier to apply than wax, a sugar preparation has the advantage of being easily removed with water if too much has been used.

Threading
Threading is option an option for removing hair in smaller areas, such as the upper lip, the side of the jaws, the chin, or along the edge of a beard. This ancient method uses a thread which pulls and twists the hair until it is lifted from out of the follicle. It does not involve chemicals, so there is no risk of skin reaction, although minor discomfort may be experienced. This procedure is almost always done by a trained technician (usually a cosmetologist or esthetician). It is quick and generally relatively inexpensive. To reduce minor pain, a numbing cream is sometimes applied first, and/or a warm compress can be used afterward. The hair removal results can last up to 4-6 weeks.

Laser Hair Removal
This is expensive (especially if done professionally), but it is the most effective and most popular way to remove hairs semi-permanently. It uses pulsed laser light beams to disable individual hair follicles; it actually kills the hair root rather than the follicle. Sometimes hair returns after a few months, but it gradually become thinner and lighter, and eventually it might not return at all. Usually the process has to be done multiple times to achieve permanent hair loss. It does not cause ingrown hairs. Because laser removal thins hair so effectively, it is excellent for those with mustaches or beards who just want to keep certain areas constantly trimmed, such as the tops of the cheeks and on the neck.

FDA-approved devices for use at home are available and are much less expensive than having it done by a trained technician (which can cost up to $4,000 or more). Those with dark facial hair and light skin tend to see the most success, due to the treatment targeting high-contrast hair pigment. But some kits, such as the Me Sleek Face + Body Hair Removal System, are made to treat all variations of facial hair color with an Nd-YAG (neodymium yttrium aluminum garnet) laser. These kits typically cost $249-299.

Each professional laser session takes around 30 minutes and feels "like a bunch of rubber bands snapping on your face, uncomfortable but brief." A possible side effect is redness much like a slight sunburn afterward. Full-face treatment can take up to a total of 6 hours over the course of a year for more maintained effects. After the initial sessions, once-a-year 'touch-up' treatment sometimes may be required.

Electrolysis
Some facial cosmetologists recommend electrolysis rather than laser treatment for permanent hair removal, especially for those with light blond, grey, or red hair. However, it is more painful, much more time-consuming, and more expensive because it must be done professionally. Electrolysis is the only FDA-approved method for truly permanent hair removal. Using an electric current, a very fine needle-shaped electrode or metal probe destroys individual hair follicles, completely preventing any hair re-growth. Unlike laser hair removal, it works equally well for all hair colors and types.

Treatments usually take between 15 minutes and 1 hour, with up to 15-20 treatments per year, and 18 months to 3 years total - at as much as $200 per treatment. The treatment is described as feeling like a series of tiny shocks, and some report a feeling of heat or tingling across the area. Sometimes a topical numbing agent is applied before the treatment. Most patients experience minor redness and a slight burning discomfort of the skin for 2-3 days afterward.

With electrolysis, there is a potential for side effects, due to the fact that the electric current does not differentiate between hair follicles and other types of local skin cells. This means that there is a slight risk of collateral damage, including scarring (although usually it is quite subtle). There is also a very small risk of infection, although this most often happens when patients neglect to keep treated areas clean.

 

[churchilllafemme]

Juniper

Juniper is a coniferous plant in the genus Juniperus of the cypress (Cupressaceae) family. The plants range in size from small low- spreading shrubs to tall trees (65-130 feet). Some have even been bred to be dwarf (miniature) cultivars, used for bonsai. The plants are evergreen, with blue-green needle-like or scale-like leaves. The plants have small yellow flowers.

The female trees grow seed cones with fleshy, fruit-like 'berries' (galbuli) that are typically dark blue-black in color but can also be red-brown to orange in some species. These berries are quite aromatic on the tree, with a scent that is fresh, spicy, and bittersweet, but peppery and almost fiery. The berries mature over an average of 18 months but can take up to 3 years to ripen; and mature blue-purple and younger green berries can be seen growing alongside each other on the same plant. A juniper plant can live for more than 100 years.

Junipers have the widest distribution of any woody plant in the world, growing nearly worldwide, from the Arctic and cool Northern Hemisphere climates to tropical Central America and hot areas of Africa. The highest known juniper forest grows at an altitude of 16,000 feet in the Himalayas of southeastern Tibet. Juniper is one of Britain's three native conifers; it is sometimes called the 'mountain yew.' It is thought to have spread there as the ice age retreated around 12,000 years ago. It is thought that juniper's abundance decreased as woodlands grew up around it but eventually increased again as Neolithic settlers made clearings in the forest.

Over 60 species are grown commercially, mainly in the European Balkans and in Canada, and usually as small bushes up to 6 feet in height. The berries are harvested in the fall, when the oil content is highest, by striking the plants with sticks to make the berries fall onto sheets. The flavor and odor are strongest immediately after harvest, declining during drying and storage.

Juniper Oil in Perfumery
Commercially grown junipers, primarily J. communis, are used for food and beverage flavoring and in medications, but some provide essential oil. The mature berries, and to a lesser extent the leaves, twigs and wood, of a few Junipers (J. osteosperma and J. scopulorum) are dried and crushed and then steam-distilled to extract the essential oil, which is watery and varies from colorless to light yellow or pale green. Oil from the berries is said to be superior to that from the other plant materials. Distillation takes 3-4 hours and results in a yield of 80-90% of the recoverable oil. Some of the primary chemical components of the oil are terpenoids and aromatics compounds such as cadinene. The largest producers of juniper oil are Bulgaria, Nepal, and France.

In perfumery, juniper is usually classed with the greens, herbs, and fougères. Juniper oil has a fresh sweet aroma with spicy, woody, resinous, and balsamic undertones, quite similar to the aroma of the fresh tree materials. It is slightly sappy and bitter. Used most often in masculine compositions, the oil is said to provide depth and a bracing, exhilarating touch to fragrances. Perfumer Christine Nagel – now working in-house for the Hermès brand – explains that juniper brings ‘freshness and sharpness’ to a creation. It has been described as warm, dry, and elegant. The oil is quite powerful and is usually used in very small concentrations, as a middle note in fragrances. It blends especially well with citrus, spices, cypress, cedarwood, sandalwood, lavender, tea tree, lemongrass, clary sage, and vetiver. Perfumers also like to combine it with orange flower, rose, and lily of the valley.

Smaller amounts of juniper absolute are produced by CO2 extraction. It has a clearer and more airy berry and pine note, less earthy and smooth than the steam-distilled oil, and it is more often employed as a top note in fragrances.

Juniper oil also is used in soaps and other skin care products, including cosmetics to treat acne and oily skin.

Culinary Use
The ancient Romans used the berries as a cheap domestically produced substitute for expensive black pepper imported from India. In many cultures, juniper berries have been used traditionally for giving a sharp, clean flavor to stews, cakes, and other baked goods, as well as sauerkraut and cooked cabbage dishes and especially in dishes with wild game. The berries also have been mixed with wood shavings to give an aroma and taste to smoked salmon. And they are used in regions of Italy to flavor brines and in Finland to flavor beers. They are best known, however, for flavoring gin, whose name has a common origin with juniper: the word 'gin' originates from 'jenever,' the Dutch word for juniper, or 'genièvre,' the French word for it. Gin, a liquor developed in the Netherlands in the 17th century, is flavored with fully grown but immature green berries.

Medicinal Use
The earliest recorded medicinal use of juniper berries occurs in an Egyptian papyrus dating to 1500 BC, in a recipe to cure tapeworm. The Egyptians also used juniper in embalming of the dead, and they burned the plant to cleanse room air. The Greeks recorded the use of the berries for increasing the physical stamina of their athletes in Olympic events. Traditional Chinese medicine used juniper berries for centuries as a stimulant for the kidneys and bladder, to flush out toxins. In natural and Ayurvedic medicine, it has been used widely, including treatments for rheumatism, urinary tract problems, digestive problems, epilepsy, asthma, cholera, and typhoid. In Scandinavia, a juniper sprig sometimes was burned next to the bed of a sick person to aid recovery. Native Americans are said to have used the berries as a contraceptive and to suppress the appetite. The berries have antiseptic properties, and during and Spanish flu epidemic of the early 20th century, it was found that spraying a mist made from the berries around hospital wards helped to limit spread of infection. Juniper is reputed to lower blood sugar, used for that by some indigenous peoples of the Americas, and there has been some research in its use in controlling insulin levels in Type 2 diabetes. The Navajo people ate juniper (especially J. californica) for nutrition and also consumed its burned ash for its calcium content.

Aromatherapy Use
In aromatherapy, juniper is used in both massage and diffusion, for sore muscles, gout, arthritis, and poor circulation. It is thought to cleanse the body of toxins and cellulites and to reduce inflammation. Juniper has been considered an aphrodisiac, probably because of its ability to reduce anxiety, nervous tension, and stress-related symptoms. The smoke of juniper was believed by some cultures to aid clairvoyance.

Other Uses
Juniper has had many other uses. In the U.S., some of the plants are given the common name 'cedar,' including J. virginiana, the 'red cedar' that is widely used in making cedar drawers and closets. Juniper has been used in northern Europe for centuries for cladding of buildings for insulation. Most species of juniper are flexible and have a high compression strength-t-weight ratio, making it a choice of some Native American cultures for making hunting bows. The seeds inside the berries were sometimes used by those same peoples as beads for jewelry and decoration.

Juniper has been used traditionally in Gaelic rites, in which the smoke of the burning plant was used to cleanse, bless, and protect a household and its inhabitants. In some cultures, juniper leaves have been presented to deities in religious ceremonies.

Masculine fragrances with a juniper note:

AKParfume Carte Blanche
Al-Rehab Sultan
Alta Moda Conquer
Apple Absinth, Alaska
Aramis Impeccable
Avon Full Speed Supersonic, Refreshing Rain, Uomo, Wilderness
Azzaro Wanted by Night
Biosea Astrolab
Bloke Blake
Bottega Veneta
Bvlgari BLV
Burberry Summer 2013
Calvin Klein Truth
Carolina Herrera Under the Sea
Cartier Declaration
Cerruti 1881
Crabtree & Evelyn Uncharted
Cuba City New York
Davidoff Cool Water Wave
Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue (var.)
Dragon Noir
D.S. & Durga Juniper
Dzintars Fristails (Freestyle), Lucky Number 7, Maestro
Eddie Bauer Adventurer II
Erox Realm
Evterpa Nezavisim
Faberlic Intense
Floris Elite, JF, Turnbull & Asser
Givenchy Casual Chic
Gosh DNA2
Gucci Rush
Guy Laroche Drakkar Noir
Il Profvmo Lysander
Jack Black Signature Black Mark, Blue Mark
Jardin d'Amour Cedre Genievre
Jeanne en Provence Bois d'Olivier & Cade
John Varvatos Dark Rebel
Lalique Equus
Lanvin Avant Garde, Oxygene
Liz Claiborne Curve Wave
Michael Kors Extreme Blue
Moschino Forever Sailing
Nina's Nature Wolf
l'Occitane Eau de Cade
Olivina Bourbon Cedar
Oriflame Leader
Paco Rabanne Black XS (var.)
Parfico Spartacus
Paris Elysees Dollar, Mezzo
Penhaligon's Much Ado About the Duke
Perlier Ginepro della Corsica
Perry Ellis 360 Degrees Red
PM French Cuffs
Porsche Design Essence
Ravenscourt Dorian Gray
Reflexion
La Rive Blue Band
Royal Barber Golden Blade
Stefano Ricci Platinum
Ted Baker Skinwear LE
Thera Ceos, Zante
Thierry Mugler Alien Man Mirage
Tommy Hilfiger Summer Cologne 2009
Tru Sex Panther
Versace Blue Jeans
Victorinox Swiss Army Forest
Yves Rocher Bois de Gaiac et Genievre
Yves St. Laurent Y Live

Masculine fragrances with a distinct juniper berry note (as opposed to juniper that includes leaf and wood tones, although there is overlap):

Adolfo Dominguez
Alfred Dunhill Icon
Amouage Journey
Argos Brivido della Caccia
Avon Full Speed, Life
Ayala Moriel Bois d'Hiver, Rainforest
Azzaro, Azzaro Chrome Extreme, Azzaro Duo
Bon No. 9 Scent of Peace
Bottega Veneta Extreme
Bvlgari Glacial Essence
Burberry Brit Rhythm, Summer 2013
Byredo Baudelaire
Calvin Klein CK Free, Eternity
Carolina Herrera 212 Men H2O, Beasts, VIP Men Party Fever
Carven Paris Prague
Cereus No. 11
Chopard 1000Miglia
Christian Dior Higher Energy
Christian Lacroix Tumulte
Coty Aspen
Davidoff Cool Water Ocean Extreme, Cool Water Summer Dive, Silver Shadow Altitude, The Game
Divine l'Homme de Coeur
Dolce & Gabbana 6 l'Amoureux, K, Le Bateleur, Le Fou 21
D.S. & Durga Juniper
Emper Urban Man
Eon James Bond 007 Quantum
l'Erbolario Ginepro Nero
Erik Kormann Abrakabarber
Ermenegildo Zegna Z Zegna Fresh
Escada Sentiment
Fiorucci Extreme Black
Flou Katana
Frapin l'Humaniste
Galimard Citoyen
Geoffrey Beene Bowling Green
Gucci Guilty, Sport
Guerlain Heritage
Guess Dare
Halston 1-12
Henry Jacques Cuba
House of Sillage No.002
Issey Miyake l'Eau Bleue
John Varvatos Vintage
Kenzo
Krizia Time
Label Juniper Wood
Lacoste Cool Play
Lalique Louxor
Mary Kay Domain, High Intensity Sport
Molinard Double Fraicheur
Monika Klink Art of Venice
Montblanc Individuel
Nautica Competition
l'Occitane Eau des 4 Voleurs
Paco Rabanne XS
Perry Ellis 360 Degrees
Pino Silvestre Original
Porsche Design Essence Summer Ice
Prada Luna Rossa (var.)
Proraso Azur Lime
Ralph Lauren Polo (var.)
Rochas
Roja Dove Elysium
Royal Barber Silver Razor
Royal Copenhagen 1775 Imperial
Sergio Tacchini Active Water
Thierry Mugler A*Men Pure Energy, Pure Shot
Tommy HIlfiger Brights
Tonino Lamborghini Forza
Tru 1879
Van Heusen
Victorinox Swiss Army Altitude
Vince Camuto
Xerjoff Coffee Break Golden Green
Yves Sst. Laurent Y
Zara 2005, N 18 34' 54" - 68 24' 15", Rio de Janeiro

 

[churchilllafemme]

Fragrance and Gender

Masculine fragrances are usually a little less sweet than what you would see with a feminine fragrance. Instead, masculine fragrances focus more on other notes, like woods, greens, spices, herbals, or smoky scents, with an emphasis on the heavier, longer-lasting base notes. These scents usually have more of an outdoor tone, inspired by traditionally ‘masculine’ things, like pipe tobacco, tar, freshly cut wood, saddle leather, metal, whiskey, or ocean spray. Earthy notes like sandalwood, patchouli, and rosewood are commonly associated with masculinity. Sandalwood, in fact, chemically resembles androsterone, which is a hormone chemical that is secreted from the underarms of human males. Scientific studies have found that women subconsciously link the scent of sandalwood with androsterone, thus elevating attraction to men wearing that scent.

Men generally have a body odor that is more musky and sharp, and women have a body odor that is more ambery and soft. If a perfumer tries to capture these into specific notes, the closest notes to a man’s body odor might be sandalwood, costus, cumin, hay, patchouli, vetiver, oakmoss and ambrette. A woman’s body odor can be best described in olfactory terms by notes such as labdanum, vanilla, benzoin and honey absolute.

If thinking of the philosophical terms of what masculine and feminine mean, a distinction might be made between notes that are angular and 'projective' as opposed to notes that are 'receptive,' notes that approach you as opposed to notes that draw you in. Thus notes that reach out, such as citrus, herbs, and spices, are often considered more masculine and are used in abundance in men's fragrances, while other notes that are more rounded and 'receptive,' such as the floral and ambery notes, can be more readily perceived as feminine. Perhaps paradoxically, men's fragrances generally have a more restrained sillage. It has been said that masculine scents have a quality of announcing themselves, an attitude of strength, capability, action and forthrightness, as opposed to demureness, daintiness or coy sexual invitation.

For most of perfume's history, there was no separation of fragrances or notes by gender. During the Middle Ages, for instance, fragrances made with natural ingredients were worn by all, either to mask the unpleasant odors of unwashed bodies or as a form of honor: knights wore the same scent as their favoring lady partners when going into battles. Subsequently, perfumes were worn in the 18th century by both men and women for embellishment, seduction, and display of wealth and social rank. Says perfumer Francis Kurkdjian, "Women and men were sharing the same appeal for fashion and beauty, wearing wigs, laces, ribbons, heels, jewelry, makeup, and fragrances."

In more recent centuries, however, fragrances have become categorized as either male or female in character. Western stereotypes of gendered scents seem to have originated primarily in 19th century Europe, when the economic middle class first arose, with increased leisure time and surplus cash for luxury items like perfumes that previously had been available only to those of wealth and high status. Men and women of that time had very distinct roles, with middle class men having jobs that carried an aura of industry and stern conscientiousness and women spending their time arranging flowers, playing music, and cooking. According to cultural historian Constance Classen, women were seen then as frivolous, sweet, and innocent - characteristics easily associated with floral and sweet fragrances. Says Kurkdjian, "The male figure got rid of ornaments from past centuries that were considered excessive and decadent. Sartorial sobriety and a form of austerity were required and became the norm." These qualities of masculinity were reflected in the woody, earthy fragrances men chose to wear to represent themselves, while women selected floral scents and those with sweet ingredients such as vanilla and fruits.

At the same time, lighter and more delicate scents became accessible to middle class women due to the discovery of synthetic fragrance compounds (e.g. vanillin in 1874 and artificial musk in 1888) and the rise of large-scale stores and packaging. Commercial advertisers realized that they could sell much more if they convinced buyers that there were significant differences between smelling like a lady and smelling like a man, and scent consumers became hesitant to trust and follow their own instincts. When a men's 'perfume comeback' occurred in the early 20th century, the male/female dichotomy persisted as a major factor for fragrance manufacturers, as in most other industries. This was reinforced further in the 1940s, when fragrance brands began to collaborate more with Hollywood film studios and actors, having masculine figures like Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable touting their men's products.

It is also possible that some of the association of floral smells with women has to do with the cultural use of flowers as metaphors for feminine fertility since antiquity. And the link between men and musks may come partly from the fact that men's body odors generally are more musky or animalic than women's; and men's more acidic skin chemistry reacts differently with musk and certain other essential oils. For centuries, certain floral notes such as tuberose have been associated for women with physical pleasure and seduction. (During the Renaissance, young girls were forbidden to walk through gardens at night because the scent of tuberose was thought to be a powerful aphrodisiac; and the Victorians attributed 'dangerous pleasure' to it.)

Another factor in the association of particular scents with gender has been the creation of neural memory pathways in childhood, based upon what fragrances a boy smelled every day on his father and saw him use, learning to identify them as masculine; and which ones a girl smelled on her mother and learned were feminine smells. Reinforcing these ideas were exposures to products arranged by gender at department store fragrance counters and to perfume marketing, which increased greatly in the 1950s and influenced expectations of fragrance gender through targeted packaging and presentation. However, according to perfumer Sue Phillips, "The trend toward different fragrances for men and women really increased in the U.S. in the early 1970s. In the 1960s, the flower children wore musk and patchouli oils in an effort to 'commune' with nature, but once the 1970s rolled around, men wanted to smell 'like men.'" This resulted in the rise of bracing, refreshing, sporty men's scents. Says Phillips, "Interestingly, this took particular hold in the U.S., while European men remained comfortable wearing a range of fragrances, including florals." By the end of the 20th century, women's fragrances were delicately and innocently feminine, floral, and fruity, and were pink or pastel colored; or they were flirty, fiercely independent, and sexy, with purple colors. Their bottles were curved rather than angular, and their product names were playfully 'feminine,' like Belle or Daisy. Men's fragrances built on the image of the fearless alpha male, having scents that were musky and spicy, with smoky, woody, leathery accords, and darker blue and green colors. They were given strong and virile product names like Sauvage.

Some of the association seems to be a natural role played by sex and attraction. Helen Keller once said, "Masculine exhalations are, as a rule, stronger, more vivid, more widely differentiated than those of women. In the odor of young men there is something elemental, as of fire, storm and sea salt. It pulsates with buoyancy and desire. It suggests all the things strong and beautiful and joyous..." And men sometimes seem to have chosen masculine fragrances not because of marketing, but instead because the scents seemed to interact especially well with their perceptions of their own natural body odors. Scientists observe that "sniffing out gender is something that animals are built to do," as noted by a piece in Time magazine. The article referenced a study in which participants, men and women of various sexual orientations, were exposed to male, female, or neutral hormonal smells while viewing a computer image of human walking. Straight men believed the image showed a more feminine gait when they were being exposed to the female hormone estratetraenol. The obverse was true of straight women, who found the gait to look masculine while smelling the male hormone androstadienone. Gay men responded more like straight women to the hormones, while bisexual or gay women showed varied responses somewhere between those of heterosexual men and women. Says Belgian perfumer Guy Delforge, "A person is born liking one specific scent family, and that preference rarely changes."

This phenomenon of gender specificity in fragrances has been primarily a Western one. In other parts of the world, especially the Middle East and India, both men and women traditionally have worn strong and opulent scents (sandalwood, jasmine, vetiver henna, and attars), and the smell of rose is very popular with men. In areas of South America, particularly Brazil, women use more fresh, green fragrances and lavender rather than the fruity-floral ones popular with North American women.

In 1994, the launch of CK One revolutionized the fragrance industry, blurring gender lines with a clean but sexy citrus scent that was in sharp contrast to the ostentatious, heavy fragrances that were ubiquitous at the time. Says CK One co-creator Alberto Morillas, "With CK One, it is this feeling of freshness that everyone has grabbed without thinking about the distinction between men and women. It is this emotional freshness that prevails." Since around 2000, with increasing cultural focus on individual identity and gender definition, an 'anything goes' approach has been making headway in perfumery. Says James Craven of boutique perfumery Les Senteurs, "Our philosophy is that one wears the scent one loves. Gender does not enter the equation." Byredo's Ben Gorham agrees, noting that there is increasing understanding that notions of what is gender specific mainly have come from marketing.

More recently, the concept of 'a woman's perfume' has been disappearing even further from marketing. To some extent, perfume marketing strategists still use the familiar constructs of masculine and feminine to maintain profits, using traditional and subliminal messages. Says writer Alok Vaid-Menon, "Marketing products through the gender binary is an effective strategy because men and women have been told they are supposed to look, dress, act, and smell a certain way. This creates a feedback loop whereby the supply engenders the demand and the demand engenders the supply." However, there is a gradually increasing trend to overturn the stereotypes, led primarily by niche brands such as Byredo, Diptyque, Escentric Molecules, and Frédéric Malle. According to the perfume market research firm Mintel, gender neutral fragrance launches accounted for only 17% of the market in 2010, increasing markedly to 51% by 2018. Says Gorham, "To me, gender specific fragrance is as absurd as gender specific food."

Linda Pilkington, founder of perfumery Ormonde Jayne, removed gender tagging from her brand's products 20 years ago. "A man took me by surprise when he chose a very floral jasmine and freesia scent," she says. "Then another man bought our rose-scented Ta'if from a department store. I knew then that I had to change our philosophy of categorizing by gender." Escentric Molecules products, designed to respond differently to each wearer's natural individual skin scent, were established by Geza Schoen in 2006. "Socialization and cultural education influence where our borders are," he says. "Women tend to be taught by their mother, and most men still wear what is popular. People were bored. It was time to break with the traditional view." Says Le Labo perfumer Fabrice Penot, "Wearing the right scent is choosing who you want to be, feel, be perceived as on that particular day. And that is all about emotions."

Niche brands have released conceptual fragrances that blur traditional gender lines. Says Emmanuelle Moeglin, founder of the Experimental Perfume Club, "When perfume is stripped of marketing and visual cues, men who visit my lab do not censor themselves from using traditionally female ingredients such as rose and jasmine. The rise of niche perfumery has helped to break gendered olfactory codes." And says Penot, "Perfumery has to be sexual to me, it has to create an attraction, an addiction. But it doesn't need to be gender specific. In fact, our Santal and Rose scents are worn by men and women equally. We don't approach gender in a traditional way at Le Labo - that's not how we see the world, that's not how we see perfumery." Fragrance is a form of communication, and just as people are demanding more inclusive language, scents that are for everyone, regardless of gender identity, are becoming more common.

Gradually, marketing itself seems to be changing, as demonstrated by the launch of CK Everyone, and with fragrances without traditional gender labels increasing in both marketing and purchasing percentages. In August 2019, Gucci launched the brand's first gender neutral fragrance, Mémoire d'une Odeur, and its advertising campaign featured Harris Reed, a young designer who identifies as gender fluid. Says Reed, "My own interpretation of the campaign was all about a complete and utter sense of inclusivity. Pushing what it means to be an individual and be different in 2019. It never felt like we were cast for this, it felt like we were really hand-picked to support the message." According to Gucci, the scent was its first "universal fragrance, a perfume not assigned to a gender or time."

More and more companies are offering designated gender neutral fragrances. Fendi introduced its Fendifrenesia, packaged along with a gender-fluid-scented carry bag, mixing together perfume, art, and fashion. And gender neutral scents have also been offered by Louis Vuitton and Bon Parfume. According to Melissa Hago of style forecaster Fashion Snoops, this trend is because "people no longer want to be labeled, whether it's gender, age, or ethnicities, and instead want to be recognized for their individual wants and tastes. We are seeing this in all categories, fashion, beauty, and now fragrance." Carlos Huber, founder of perfumery Arquiste, agrees and says, "Things are changing. We're seeing women who are more ambiguous about their tastes and men who aren't embarrassed to embrace fashion, the arts, and now grooming."

Independent brands that sell only gender neutral fragrances, such as PHLUR, Laboratory Perfumes, and Henry Rose, have emerged and become popular. Their products are not just unisex, created to appeal to both genders; instead they consciously discard the binary gender concept entirely. Says PHLUR founder Eric Korman, "We were trying to depart from the tired messaging of the fragrance category for the past 70 years, which was entirely laced in sex, the objectification of both genders, and an almost carnal misogyny." The non-binary fragrances often have clean, minimalistic branding and packaging, inviting the consumer to project onto them their own understanding of gender. Says perfumery Snif co-founder Phil Riportella, "It's less about 'de-gendering' the actual ingredients that make up a fragrance and more about throwing away the rules of conventional fragrance that tell us what we should and should not be wearing."

Millennials seem to be a major driving force behind these trends reshaping perfumery. Industry magazine Cosmetics Business says that the generation wants more transparency, as well as more gender neutral scents. According to perfumer Charna Ethier, "Millennials don't want to wear their mom's perfume. They want to smell different, like leather, crushed velvet, and smoke. I get a lot of women saying they don't want to smell like flowers." And she says that they want more natural botanical smells, which had been neglected, rather than the synthetics. Says Hago, "The fragrance industry is definitely having a revamp, from being pushed to be more transparent with their ingredients to creating more non-binary scents that speak to everyone." At Coty, the world's largest fragrance company, trends toward more gender fluid and sustainable products are being promoted. Says Laurence Lienhard, Coty's VP of consumer marketing, "The companies who are winning are the industry leaders that have refreshed their proposition with new brands, because millennials are brand agnostics."

Meloney Moore, Savannah College professor of beauty and marketing, says that consumers now are looking beyond the old stereotypical use of scent for attracting someone and are investigating other factors. "They want to understand the ingredients, the provenance, and the craftmanship behind the products they buy," she says. In addition, consumers are becoming more independent, wanting to co-create with the product brand their own scent experience, and a neutral fragrance that puts smell first offers that opportunity. However, at the same time, she also believes that our subjective association of scents with female or male gender is still present, emotionally tied to memory: "Throughout history, florals have operated on both sides of the gender line. A person's association with various fragrance notes can change based on when and where they were born, while life experiences can influence one's categorization of certain notes."

Kurkdjian says that it is important to distinguish between gender neutrality and gender fluidity. "Unisex perfume existed already. It's nothing new. But fluidity doesn't mean genderless. We have to be very specific in our vocabulary. Gender fluidity means one to another, to be able to transition in a fluid manner. This is very, very different." Using this flexible, non-binary approach, he created Gentle Fluidity Gold and Silver, a set of two perfumes drawing on the same notes (juniper, nutmeg, coriander, musk, ambery wood, and vanilla) but with two completely different olfactory profiles. "The two scents have the exact same ingredients, meaning they have the same DNA," he says. "But what changes from one to another is the balance within the ingredients. Silver has more aromatic fresh-spicy notes, while Gold has more of the musky vanillin accord. With Gentle Fluidity, I go beyond the concept of perfumery for women, men, or mixed. There is a personality, a sensitivity, a 'gentle fluidity' between all gender identities." Says actress L Morgan Lee, "All trans people are not inherently seeking gender neutrality. I'm a pretty binary trans woman; I have no problem with items saying they're for women. Just changing a label does not change the process of how the scent was made or who was being thought of in the meetings and labs. Instead of trying to take away what's already in place, it'd be more productive to do the work of building new scents with different genders in mind as they're being developed."

However, Kurkdjian also believes strongly that some scent notes are more suited overall to women's energies, and likewise to men's. Recently he introduced l'Homme a la Rose, a unique rose fragrance designed for men, formulated with the intent to define modern masculinity and empower men, "expressing my freedom to create a rose scent fragrance for men with a strong signature. I wanted to demonstrate that rose can be masculine as well." Even for fragrances that still reside more clearly within male and female categories, there are many subtle nuances that go beyond the stereotypical floral vs. woody and can lend themselves to wider use. "There are always feminine notes masquerading in male scents," says Kurkdjian. "One example that not many people are aware of is orange blossom, which is so common in men's perfume - the way the cologne accords are mixed creates a freshness that works for men. Another is lily of the valley; many men's perfumes feature this note, but brands don't often claim it up front."

Women often lean toward wearing men's scents, such as Terre d'Hermes, Acqua di Parma, or Dior Fahrenheit, Eau Sauvage, or Homme. It is less common for men to wear traditionally female fragrances, but it is seen. Perfumer Tom Daxon recalls having a male friend who used to douse himself in Chanel No. 5. Says Daxon, "I always move to a clothing analogy - women wearing an old cologne is like wearing a vintage Burberry trench coat that might be oversized because it's a guy's one. Guys rarely do the opposite, it would be an avantgarde thing. Men's fashion moves at a glacial pace by comparison to women's. Yet some women, including perfume experts, still find that they become uncomfortable wearing scents that seem too masculine, especially the fougère-style fragrances. While there is nothing intrinsically masculine about fougère's lavender, citrus, and geranium, their presence in compositions sometimes seems to set a boundary that only a few Western women are willing to cross. It comes down to very small details. A shirt is a shirt to a large extent, whereas female fashion is far more adventurous. A woman might think nothing of wearing her dad's cologne, but the same doesn't apply to men." Perfumer Huber admits that creating a floral scent that men will like is not easy. "How do you make a skirt masculine? That's difficult. How do you make pants feminine? That's not so difficult. It's harder for a man to wear floral notes without feeling feminine - it speaks to our insecurities." Some experts have recommended that men might try certain women's scents that have more masculine notes of earthiness, woods, and leather, such as Christian Dior Diorella and Hermes Eau des Merveilles. Other perfumes suggested include Hermes Hiris, Chanel No. 19, Frédéric Malle Portrait of a Lady, Serge Lutens Femininite du Bois, Caron Tabac Blone, and Alexander McQueen Kingdom.

So what do the trends mean commercially? There has been a gradual decline in designated women's fragrance launches worldwide. According to Mintel's database, between 2014 and 2018, unisex fragrance launches in Europe increased from 15% to almost 20% of the overall market, while the launch of women's fragrances decreased 5%. Globally, unisex fragrances increased from 12% to 14%, while women's fragrances dropped from 66% to 62% of overall launches. Says Gorham, "People are still being programmed by the advertising of large beauty conglomerates, so we still see a number of people approaching fragrance in a conventional way. At the same time, I think now more than ever, the lines are becoming blurred and people are buying and wearing fragrances that they feel speak to them in a personal way. What we notice now is that younger customers don't place as much importance on perfume as earlier generations. This will force brands to rewrite their narratives and evolve their products substantially if they hope to stay relevant."

Gender Neutral Fragrances

Acqua di Parma Blue Mediterraneo Mirto di Panarea
Aesop Marrakech Intense, Tacit
AllSaints Incense City
A.N Other
l'Artisan Parfumeur Histoire d'Orangers
Bella Freud Psychoanalysis
Bon Parfumeur 001
Byredo Bal d'Afrique, Black Saffron, Eleventh Hour, Super Cedar, Velvet Haze
Calvin Klein CK All, CK One, CK 2
Chanel Paris Deauville
Christian Dior Spice Blend
Clarins Eau Dynamisante
Clean Reserve Rain, Smoked Vetiver, Warm Cotton
Comme des Garcons 2, Amazingreen, Blackpepper, Blue Encens, Concrete
Commodity Book, Nectar
Creed Royal Water, Tabarome Millesime
Diptyque Eau des Sens, Oud Palao
Dolce & Gabbana Velvet Bergamot, Velvet Cypress, Velvet Exotic Leather
D.S. & Durga Debaser, Mississippi Medicine, Radio Bombay, Vio-Volta
Edward Bess Genre
Ellis Brooklyn Rives
Escentric Molecules Molecule 01
Ex Nihilo Bois d'Hiver
Gucci Mémoire d'Une Odeur, Oud
Heretic Dirty Grass
Hermès Eau de Gentiane Blanche
Hermetica Source
Jo Malone English Oak & Hazelnut, Lime Basil & Mandarin, Pomegranate Noir, Wood Sage & Sea Salt
Kiehl's Original Musk
Laboratory Perfumes Amber
Le Labo Another 13, Baie 19, Rose 31, Santal 33, Tabac 28
Louis Vuitton Afternoon Swim, Cactus Garden
Lush Devil's Nightcap
Maison Margiela Replica Across Sand, At the Barber's, Jazz Club
Malin + Goetz Cannabis, Dark Rum, Leather
Mancera Silver Blue
Mugler Come Together
Penhaligon's Oud de Nil
Sana Jardin Sandalwood Temple
Sarah Jessica Parker Stash
Tom Daxon Midnight Saffron
Tom Ford Black Orchid, Neroli Portofino, Ombré Leather, Tobacco Vanille
Valentino Uomo
Vilhelm 125th & Bloom
Yves St. Laurent Mon Paris, Tuxedo

 

[churchilllafemme]

Cedarwood

Cedar or cedarwood (also known as Cedrus) is a genus of evergreen coniferous trees in the Pinaceae (silver fir) family. The name is thought to derive from the Arabic word 'kedron' for power, because of cedar's strength and resilience. The tree is native to the Himalaya mountains, North Africa, and the Mediterranean region, where it grows wild at altitudes of 3000 meters above sea level. It has been most commonly found in the northern and western mountains of the Middle East. Apparently due mainly to overuse, the original vast natural forests of true cedar species have diminished greatly.

The tree grows to an average height of 30-40 meters and can have a lifespan of over 1,000 years. It has reddish to brown bark and silvery blue or green needle-shaped leaves. There are four species, differing in height, color, bark texture, and needle appearance. Lebanon cedar (Cedrus libani) is distinguished by its smooth-scaled cones and dark green leaves; Deodar or Himalaya cedar (C. deodara) has bright green to pale green cones; and Atlas cedar (C. atlantica) has a silvery-gray bark and blue-green needled leaves. Cyprus cedar (C. libani var. brevifolia) is a subspecies of Lebanese cedar. It is thought that the Atlas and Himalaya cedar trees are descended from the original Lebanon cedar, and some botanists consider them to be subspecies of it. At one time Lebanon cedar covered vast regions; but because it is now so scarce, with only around 400 trees remaining in the world, it is no longer used commercially. Live cedar trees have a light, intoxicating, woody smell, with hints of resin.

Cedar oils mainly come from France, Algeria, Morocco, and the state of Virginia. The essential oils are obtained primarily by steam distillation of foliage or by-products of the north African furniture and handicraft industries, and to a lesser degree from chips, stumps, roots, and bark left over after logging of the trees for timber. Cedar oil can also be obtained in small quantities by mechanical pressing or chemical extraction. The trees require 20 years to reach maturity, and their cultivation now is managed and maintained by government bodies to ensure sustainability. Wood collection is done throughout the year except for the bitterly cold winter months, when the woodchips are diverted to local residents for heating use. About 40kg of processed wood material yields 1kg of essential oil.

Although termed cedarwood, most of the oils used now in perfumery are actually obtained from 'false cedars' (junipers and cypresses) rather than true cedar trees. The main oil sources are Virginia cedar (Juniperus virginiana), Texas cedar (J. mexicana), and Chinese cedar (Chamaecyparis funebris). A less prominent source is the East African cedar (J. procera). The Virginia and Texas juniper varieties are related to J. communis, which produces the berry used for flavoring gin.

Similar but somewhat different essential oils are extracted from the northern white cedar (Thuja occidentalis, in the Cypress family), the western red cedar (T. plicata), and the Alaska cedar (C. nootkatensis, also known as yellow cedar or Nootka cypress); sometimes they are co-distilled with needles of the Virginia cedar. These oils are most often used in smaller artisan and niche products. Essential oils from varieties of Japanese cedars are also extracted for perfumery and have some similarities to true cedar oil.

The ingredients providing the smell of true cedar oils (from Atlas and Himalaya cedars) are sesquiterpene derivatives, terpenes of the himachalene family. Chemicals giving odors to the Virginia and Texas cedar oils are tricyclic sequiterpenes, including cedrene and thujopsene, which vary in proportion depending upon the species. Cedrene oxidizes to cedrol (sesquiterpene alcohol, also called cedar camphor), which is the source of the characteristic 'pencil shavings' smell of some cedar oils.

The Atlas cedar (C. atlantica) is native to the Atlas Mountains of Morocco and looks just like the Lebanon cedar. Atlas cedar oil is the true cedar oil used most often in perfumery and is thought by some to provide the most authentic scent. Huge Atlas cedar forests have now declined dramatically due to unregulated cutting, especially in Algeria, but some growth now is sustained for lumber and distillation of the wood residue. Most of the oil currently comes from Morocco and Tunisia. It is a viscous fluid with a clear yellow to dark cinnamon-orange color. Its undiluted smell initially is camphorous/urinous and not pleasant; but when processed to remove the undesirable chemical components and then diluted, it becomes balsamic, honey-sweet, woody, and floral, with hints of mimosa and yarrow. It is delicate but diffusive, and it functions both as a brief top note and as a light base with tenacity, similar to frankincense, making it especially suitable as a fixative for woody and floral compositions.

Virginia cedar (J. virginiana, sometimes called eastern red cedar) is also used commonly for oil. The tree is native to eastern North American but has been cultivated widely in Europe since the 17th century. The heartwood of the tree can be distilled to produce a dark amber-brown oil, or it can be fractionated further to give an almost transparent white oil. The oil is semi-viscous and has a soft, gentle, buttery, less balsamic scent, with a faint undertone of sandalwood; it is not as thick as Atlas or Himalaya oil. According to perfume 'nose' Christine Nagel, Virginia cedar oil sometimes has a dry, dusty, almost sharp effect in a fragrance, while Atlas cedar is much warmer. The Virginia cedar scent eventually becomes sweeter, more woody, and creamy. Although its aroma evolution is relatively short, lasting only a day on a scent strip, the oil has excellent fixative properties for other notes, especially when combined with vetiver, sandalwood, or patchouli. Virginia cedar is most commonly found in men's woody fragrances such as Givenchy Gentleman, Roberto Cavalli Black, Paco Rabanne Black XS, DKNY Men, Versace Eau Fraiche, and Thierry Mugler B*Men. Virginia cedar oil is relatively inexpensive and is commonly used also in soap manufacturing.

Texas cedar (J. mexicana, also known as Mountain cedar or Mexican juniper), a close relative of Virginia cedar, is the most commonly used 'false cedar' oil in perfumery. It is obtained from a small, shrub-like evergreen tree native to southwestern Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Mexico, and Central America. Its wood tends to be crooked and cracks easily, making it unsuitable for building; so the discarded trees from land clearing are used for distillation of essential oil. The unrectified oil is slightly thick, with a dark amber-orange color. Cedrol crystal frequently settled out of the oil, and the oil can harden completely at low temperatures. Its fragrance is intense and has a dry, woody-sweet, smoky, slightly spicy, and somewhat tar-like tone. With time, its note becomes sweeter and more balsamic than that of Virginia cedar. It lasts longer than Virginia cedar oil in fragrances, but it is still relatively fleeting. The oil has been used primarily in woody masculine fragrances such as Cartier Declaration, Acqua di Parma Cipresso di Toscana, Ralph Lauren Polo Explorer, Diptyque Tam Dao, and Nasomatto Black Afgano, but it is also quite popular in women's perfumes. The inexpensive oil is frequently used in soaps, cleaning products, floor polishes, and household sprays.

Himalaya or Deodar cedar (C. deodara) is a close relative of Atlas cedar. The name evolved from the Sanskrit word devadāru, which translates to 'timber of the gods.' Its lumber is usually not of very good quality, so most of its production is used for essential oil extraction. The oil is thick and viscous, with a yellow to cinnamon brown color and an initial somewhat camphorous/medicinal nuance. This evolves quickly to its characteristic woody-sweet, green, almost balsamic scent. Some experts consider Himalaya cedar oil to be nearly identical to Atlas cedar oil, but possibly slightly greener, lighter, and cooler, a bit more pine-like in character.

Cedarwood Essential Oil
Cedar oil is one of the oldest ingredients used in perfumery (popular with the Sumerians and Egyptians) and one of the most commonly used notes in modern perfumery. Overall, regardless of tree source, in perfume compositions it generally has a dry, deep, soft, balsamic, woody smell with dark, earthy, smoky, resinous, and cinnamon undertones. It is primarily used as a grounding base note in compositions. Cedar rounds off the sharpness of cardamom, coriander, spice, and incense notes and adds interest to more transparent accords without compromising their clarity. It has been used most often in fragrances for men, but it is very popular in all perfumery.

Cedar scent goes well with many notes and accords. It combines especially well with citrus (especially neroli and lime) and with jasmine, lavender, and rose floral notes, as well as with vetiver, sandalwood, and patchouli. Compositions blending it with musk and amber have a green, clean aroma with a retro/vintage tone. It also complements benzoin, bergamot, cinnamon, cypress, frankincense, and juniper.

Synthetic Cedar
There are now quite a few cedar-like synthetic notes that are sometimes used in place of cedar oil and that are also used in combination with it to give added depth. These synthetic cedars are almost all derived chemically from components of juniper essential oils, such as cedrene and thujopsene. The first and one of the most important of these 'half-synthetic' products, acquired by processing of Texas cedar oil, first appeared in the early 1960s under the names methyl cedryl ketone and acetyl cedrene and became one of the most popular woody perfume materials by the 1970s. It has an intense cedar smell with a deep amber tone, and vetiver, leather, and musk nuances. Also important in perfumery are cedrol methyl ether, often known as cedramber, which has an essential cedar tone and a dry and dusty ambergris note; and ambrocenide, derived from cedrene modification, with a strong amber-woody smell and agarwood aspects. Completely synthetic versions of cedar created in the laboratory are much less commonly used in perfumes.

Medical Uses
Cedarwood oil has been used in many cultures as a skin cleanser and purifier and for treatment of acne, eczema, psoriasis, and alopecia (hair loss). It has astringent and antimicrobial properties that make it effective as an antiseptic. For insect bites and itching, the oil mixed with alcohol or vegetable oil can be applied directly to the skin. Cedar oil is reputed to clear up dandruff, promote menstruation, cure urinary tract infections, relieve spasms, decrease the pain of arthritis and rheumatism, stimulate circulation, and help to loosen and clear mucus in respiratory infections.

Aromatherapy
In aromatherapy, cedar is used to encourage confidence and self-esteem, produce vitality, calm and balance the energies, and promote spirituality. These effects, produced either by diffuser or topically (including via massage), are thought to be due primarily to the component cedrol. True cedar oils are recommended for aromatherapy rather than the juniper-derived oils because they are thought to be somewhat safer to use. When used topically, the oils are most often combined with carriers such as jojoba, sweet almond, or avocado oil. Because of the calming effect of its aroma, cedar wood has been used traditionally to line Japanese baths, where it combines with steam for added relaxation effect.

Cultural Significance
In ancient Egypt, Lebanon cedar was a sacred symbol of heaven, earth, and the underworld, and their priests chewed cedar sap during worship ceremonies in order to create a closer connection with the deity Osiris. The Native American Cherokee people believed that the human spirit was hidden in the core of cedar, and they used cedar in ceremonies to clear and calm the mind. Tibetans have used cedarwood in their spiritual ceremonies for centuries. And Lebanon cedar oil was used in ancient Christian religious rites for cleansing participants of spiritual impurities.

Other Uses

Cedar oil was used by ancient Sumerians as a base for paints and in Egypt for embalming processes, incense, insect repellants, and cosmetics. Lebanon cedar has been a very important Christian symbol, and it is mentioned in biblical records as the primary building material for King Solomon's temple. Because of its extreme resistance to rot, Phoenicians, Assyrians, and Romans used cedar tree trunks for ship construction. Himalaya cedar was revered in Hinduism as a sacred tree, with shrines built with its wood. Native Americans on the country's west coast used cedar to make waterproof hats and clothing, baskets, masks, baskets, longhouses, and dugout canoes.

Because of the natural insect repellant properties of cedrol, cedar wood is often used to make chests, and blocks of cedar are placed into other wood chests for storing clothing and blankets. It is used to make shoe trees that absorb moisture and deodorize shoes. The wood is also frequently used to make cigar boxes and closet panels. The oil is employed in candles for outdoor insect-repellant use. Gardeners sometimes use cedar oil on their mulch or topsoil to repel insect pests, and a repellant for the skin can be made by combining the oil with coconut oil. It is often found among the ingredients of products for preventing fleas and ticks on cats and dogs. Studies in India have shown the oil to be effective for controlling fungal deterioration of spices during storage.

There are many 'unisex' cedar fragrances. Fragrances with significant cedar that are labeled as masculine include:

Agua de Cheiro Symbolus
Antonio Puig Quorum Silver
Arabian Oud Ehsas, Yadis
Armani Privé Cedre Olympe
Arno Sorel Craps, Cursus
Asgharali Oud Mubakhar
Aurora Chrome Sport
Avon Destination Grand Canyon, Musk Wood, V for Victory
Axe Black Chill
Azzaro Visit
Banana Republic Black Walnut
Bentley
Berdoues 1902 Cedre Blanc
Blackbird Tinderbox
By Killian Straight to Heaven
Byredo Super Cedar
Calvin Klein Obsession Summer
Cartier Declaration, Prestige Acier
Cathy Guetta Ibiza for Men
Chopard Noble Cedar
Christian Lacroix Tumulte
Christopher Colvmbvs
Comme des Garcons Sequoia, Wonderwood
Creed Royal Oud, Spice & Wood
Cyzone Forze
Decotto di Neve Umananamente
Diptyque Tam Dao
Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue
D.R. Harris Marlborough
D.S. & Durga Beartrapper
Durance enProvence Cedre Bleu
Fragonard Papa Cheri
Fulton & Roark Tybee
Genty Alto Mare Marengo
George F. Trumper Marlborough
Givenchy Gentlemen Only Casual Chic
Gruhme
Gucci pour Homme, Guilty, Rush
Henry Jacques Oudh Supreme
Hermes Terre d'Hermes, Voyage
Hugo Boss Deep Red
Jacques Battini Rave
Jardin d'Amour Cedre Genievre
Jeanne Arthes Joe Sorrento Sport
Jequiti Royal Madeira Blanc, Stame
Joaquin Cortes Yekipe Pura Pasion
Jo Malone London Whisky & Cedarwood
Karl Lagerfeld
Korres Neos
Lalique Equus
Lange Glorius Day
Le Labo Chant de Bois
Lothantique
Marc O'Polo Pure Green Man
Massimo Dutti Kashbah Sunset
l'Occitane Notre Flore Cedar
Pacoma Racer
Parle Moi de Parfum Cedar Woodpecker 10
Penhaligon's Opus 1870
Sergio Nero Admiral Patriot
Sergio Tacchini Your Match
Shanghai Tang l'Orient
Sunny Leone Lust
Swiss Arabian Nice & Spice
Teufels Kuche Patachouli Whisper
Tru Western Leather
Theodoros Kalotinis Sea God
Votre Parfum Man in Black
Yves Rocher Altika
Yves St. Laurent La Nuit de l'Homme, Splendid Wood
Zara Actin' Out, Black Pepper & Cedarwood, Brass Dream, Calm Lake, Thunder Feel, Unbreakable

 

[churchilllafemme]

Lemongrass

The term 'lemongrass' refers to the grass varieties Cymbopogon citratus (West Indian lemongrass, also called Madagascar lemongrass) and C. flexuosus (East Indian lemongrass, known also as Cochin grass, Malabar grass, or Indian verbena). The species name 'Cymbopogon' derives from the Greek words kymbe (κύμβη, 'boat') and pogon (πώγων, 'beard'), which together mean 'hairy spikelets that project from a boat-shaped spathe.' Lemongrass has also been known as barbed wire grass, silky heads, oily heads, citronella grass, and fever grass. It should not be confused with lemon balm, an entirely different herb.

Cymbopogons are tall, fast-growing perennial grasses. C. citratus has distinct bluish-green leaves, while C. flexuosus has dark green foliage. Both grasses, resembling giant weeds, produce many bulbous stems that increase the clump diameter as the plant matures. It grows little during its first year but increases markedly in the second and third years, with peak production by the fourth year of growth. By the sixth year, growth slows again and farmers replace the plant with a new one.

Distribution
West Indian lemongrass is native to Asia, Africa, Australia, and Oceania, and is still found growing wild in many tropical and subtropical areas of Southeast Asia and Africa. It has been cultivated in Southeast Asia for over 2000 years. Commercial distillation for oil production reportedly began in the Philippines in the 17th century, with the process kept a closely guarded secret. Lemongrass farming was introduced to Jamaica in 1799 and the U.S. in 1917. Since the late 1940s, lemongrass has been commercially cultivated primarily in India and Sri Lanka, with production also in China, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Guatemala, Haiti, and Florida.

Harvesting of lemongrass and extraction of the essential oil is a time-consuming and labor-intensive process. Most crops are gathered by hand using a sickle, and the harvest is made even more demanding by the fact that the plant grows mainly in upland areas, to which farmers often must hike for miles.

Essential Oil
Lemongrass essential oil is extracted from fresh or partially dried stems and leaves by typical steam distillation. Its main aromatic component is citral (65-85%). Other significant constituents include geranial, neral, geraniol, limonene, and β-myrcene. The crude oil is distributed to local manufacturers, who filter it to obtain the refined essential oil. C. citratus essential oil is mainly used for food and alcoholic beverage purposes, while C. flexuosus is used for perfumery and in personal care and household products. The local processors sometimes combine the lemongrass oil with other herbal ingredients, such as peppermint, basil, and cardamom, to create commercial aroma blends for the various industries.

The essential oil is pale to vivid yellow or amber-brown in color and has a watery viscosity. Generally, lemongrass has an intense, sharp, fresh, sweet, herbaceous grassy-lemon scent with spicy aromatic undertones and a hint of ginger. The smell is balanced, light, crisp, and invigorating, making it very popular for summer fragrances. East Indian (C. flexuousus) lemongrass oil has more citral and is sweeter, while the West Indian (C. citratus) species has a higher β-myrcene content, giving it more of a fresh, lemony, earthy aroma.

Lemongrass in Perfumery
Use of lemongrass oil in fragrances became common after the introduction of citronella oil at the Great Exhibition in London in 1951. Lemongrass is extremely popular in perfumery, where it adds a bright, rich, exciting tone, reminiscent of sunny spring and summer days. Mixes containing the grass are usually intense and refreshing yet elegant and sensual. It blends especially well with rose, rose geranium, lavender, coconut, and citruses. Lemongrass usually provides a top or middle (heart) note for a composition.

Other Uses
Fresh lemongrass stems and leaves are used in Oriental cooking, especially that of Thailand, and dried leaves are used to make tea, usually blended with other teas. Historically it has been a tangy ingredient in Asia for soups, curries, and a drink called 'fever tea' that was used to treat infections and other disorders and to lower fevers. In the Caribbean the grass is known as 'sweet rush' and has been used for treating fever and colds and to boost immunity. In folk practices of Africa and the Caribbean, lemongrass is a primary ingredient in an oil mix used for conjuration, spiritual cleansing, and protection against evil. And in Central America and the Amazon, it has been used in a sedative tea. Interest in and scientific knowledge of the therapeutic uses of lemongrass increased markedly after 1905, when a Sri Lankan botanist named J.F. Jovit acquired and planted several 'Kochin Sera' (C. citratus) plants from India and began to conduct systematic research on the potential uses of their oil.

Lemongrass oil also provides scent for candles and potpourri, cosmetics, deodorants, waxes and polishes, soaps and detergents, and insecticides. (It gives Ivory soap its distinctive scent.) The oil itself is able to repel insects, including mosquitos, fleas, ticks, and lice. Some museums in Indian even use the lemongrass oil to protect ancient palm-leaf manuscripts from insect damage and to keep the brittle pages supple. Interestingly, the oil is also used in beekeeping, where it simulates a pheromone emitted by honeybees, attracting other bees to a hive or to swarm.

Lemongrass is antiseptic and astringent. In a foot bath it is said to refresh sweaty feet and prevent fungal infections. It is used frequently in aromatherapy, where it is believed to improve circulation, tone tissues, and promote muscle development. In oils, gels, and lotions, it is thought to tone and purify the skin, and it frequently is used in massage products. Steam scented with the grass is used in spas and therapy centers because of its calming and antidepressant properties. Somewhat paradoxically, the pure essential oil also increases alertness and energy. In Ayurvedic medicine, lemongrass has been considered a powerful remedy for a variety of disorders of the digestive, nervous, respiratory, and muscular systems.

The citral component of the oil has been shown in studies to have antimicrobial effects, eliminating and inhibiting the growth of bacteria; and research with mice suggests that the oil's limonene fraction reduces inflammation and relieves pain. Recent research also indicates that lemongrass may have antimutagenic properties.

Masculine Fragrances with Significant Lemongrass Notes
Adam Levine for Men
Anthony Marmin Oud Sumatra
Arabian Oud Signature
Bvlgari Opalon
Carolina Herrera 212 Men NYC
Carven Vetiver
Chatillon Lux Parfums Admiral
Diesel Only the Brave Wild
Fiorucci Extreme Sport
Issey Miyake l'Eau Bleue d'Issey pour Homme
John Varvatos Artisan Acqua
Jovan Grass Oil
Kamila Robinson Foresta nella Metropoli
Kelsey Berwin Trudie Sport
Mary Kay Upbeat for Him
O Boticário Verbena
O'Driu Londa 1005
Oriflame Glacier Ice
Penhaligon's Bayolea
Pierre Balmain Monsieur Balmain
Pinaud Clubman Citrus Musk
Playboy My VIP Story
Ricardo Ramos Perfumes de Autor ZamBra
Rituals No. 10 Lemongrass & Neroli
Royal Crown Rain
Saigon Cosmetics DeAndre Extreme No. 15
TRNP Siddartha
Womo Samoa
Xerjoff Casamorati Fiero

 

[churchilllafemme]

Animalic

The perfumery term 'animalic' refers both to raw materials of animal origin and to fantasy notes synthesized in the laboratory that are directly reminiscent of animal qualities - either real ones or ones that evoke our animal instinct, "bringing out the beast and making us growl." It often is used broadly to describe musky, dirty, or 'skanky' smells. (The word skanky can be interpreted in a variety of ways, although dictionaries generally say it is a derogatory term for trashy-style, promiscuous young women. In perfume language, however, it is used subjectively to mean scents that are not polite and clean-smelling, ones that exhibit a devil-may-care attitude.) Real animal scents have been derived from natural isolates, primarily from civet (warm, musky, and slightly fecal, from civet weasel), castoreum (warm, phenolic, sweet, and leather-like, from beaver), musk (sweet, warm, indolic, and heavy, from Himalayan musk deer), and ambergris (warm, dry, and balsamic, from sperm whale). Others used less often include goat hair (warm and musky) and hyraceum (warm, phenolic, fecal, and urinal, from dried rodent hyrax feces called 'African stone'). Beeswax-honey absolute also is sometimes included in this group, as are more rare substance such as choya nak (essence from toasted sea shells). It is claimed that derivatives that still are derived from animals are now obtained through 'ethical' farming or collection.

The modern etymology of 'animalic' in perfumery is thought to come from two 'perfumer's bases' from the company Synarome, both called Animalis, thick, feral mixtures with prominent civet and castoreum, one very deer-musky and the other woody and more sensuous.

Synthetic animalic scents mimic the natural ones or create similar fantasy aroma images such as leather. A few classic vintage perfumes that are still available contain the true natural animalic substances. But because most of the animals are now endangered, and due to issues of cost and animal rights, the natural materials have been replaced for the most part by synthetics in modern perfumery. One synthetic used very commonly is galaxolide, often called white musk, which gives a clean but musky floral-woody odor with a sweet, powdery nuance. There is controversy about the environmental safety of galaxolide. Others include chemicals producing scent tones of amber, meats, caviar, cheese, milk, oysters, starfish, and suede.

Synthetics are used especially by newer 'indie' brands that attempt to simulate but re-invigorate classic fragrances, inspired by the vintage days of fur stoles. It has been speculated that these perfumers are trying to recreate the dark, twisted facets of the past to offset a modern market that has been saturated with sickly sweet and desexualized clean odors, one in which the oud trend also has been exhausted and has become a cliché. Writers have said that the aquatic trend of the 1990s obliterated animalic perfumes, leaving but a few exceptions at the back of store shelves until their very recent re-emergence, led initially by increased interest in leathery fragrances.

The tame and homogeneous perfume market first was disrupted in 2006 with the release of État Libre d'Orange's Sécretions Magnifiques, an extreme combination of tones of blood, milk, semen and sweat, sometimes called a work of conceptual art. The presence of somewhat similar animalic compositions increased markedly in 2015 at the perfume exhibitions of Milan, Florence, and Cannes. Says Italian perfumer Antonio Alessandria, "It's not vintage revival. Not at all. It's a different way of formulating animalic notes. In the past a lot of animalic notes were used just to give a sort of elegance to the perfume. What we see not is not elegance, it is brutal." Says perfumer Ulrich Lang, "We want to smell our skin again. And it can be very erotic to smell something dirty on your skin."

Some natural plant constituents also have animalic character that can be used in perfumes, such as the root oil of Saussuria costus (which smells like dirty hair and mutton grease) and cumin seed oil (which has a warm and sweaty scent). Others include ambrette (musky) from musk mallow, amine (ammonia-like, fishy) from ornamental pear trees, and indoles (heavy, naphthalenic, garbage-like, fecal, bad breath-like) from plants such as skunk cabbage.

Animalic notes generally impart warmth and natural richness, depth, and fullness to compositions, and they create allure and seductiveness. Usually they are base note materials, providing a deep, sensual dry-down effect and fixing and prolonging the duration of top and heart notes. They are especially useful in enhancing spicy and woody notes and enabling floral essences to 'bloom' on the skin. And they often are balanced by bright, citrusy, vivacious tones such as neroli and petitgrain. Animalic notes are present most often in masculine products. It has been said that animalic fragrances are the most subjective of all, usually either loved or hated and frequently an 'acquired taste.' Animalic compositions can vary widely in some of their characters, some being pungent and strong and even offensive and others more subtle and intriguing (such as Calvin Klein Obsession or Ralph Lauren Polo); but most of them share one common quality, that of being bold and provocative. It has been said that animalic scents are for men who are confident and daring and not afraid to stand out from the crowd.

It is not clear why scents that both captivate and repulse are so attractive and popular. There are psychological theories, derived from the ideas of Carl Jung about the negative and mostly repressed 'Shadow' aspect of our personality, that perfumes that exhibit depth, vulnerability and oddity represent the integration of our different parts. They appeal to the ancient 'reptilian' side of our psyche. In addition, there is the significant fact that these qualities have an effect on our actual or potential sexual partners. A study at UC Berkeley showed that women who smelled a chemical typically found in male sweat experienced sexual arousal, a faster heart rate, and elevated levels of cortisol (responsible for maintaining sex drive). Coco Chanel said, "A woman must smell like a woman and not a rose," and the same can be said of men. And Jean Paul Guerlain was described as "elegantly tiptoeing between dirty and classy-clean." And Portuguese philosopher Maria João Ceitil noted, "What's curious is that it would be much easier to 'do magic' if we didn't fragrance and deodorized ourselves, if we were not so frantic, so obsessed with hiding our own natural smells."

One scientific speculation is that the conquest of verticality by human evolution and the increasing dominance of vision over smell, along with social civilization, has led to a depreciation of intimate body smells and finally to their censorship and repression in the perfume market. Said blogger and writer Barbara Herman, "Civet. Musk. Rotten fruit. Women's underpants. Dirty ashtrays. Blood. This catalog of smells might seem out of place in a positive discussion of perfume, but all of these scents became metaphors for everything my modern, sterile office life lacked. In the virtual, deodorized, homogenized, and antiseptic world I felt myself dissolving into, these Things That Stink felt alive. I began to see that even though perfume is thought of in the popular imagination as something to cover up our bad smells, in many ways, it can also be a meditation on the human body, if not an outright celebration of our riotous odors."

Dilution and combination balance are very important in their use, in order to prevent unpleasant or repulsive tones, which can be described as fecal. For example, civet absolute at full strength is definitely fecal, while at 0.1% strength it gives a Lily of the Valley note.

Because of their soapy-clean but comfortably musky character, synthetic animalic scents, especially white musk, are also used in laundry products, including detergents, fabric softeners, and dryer sheets.

Masculine animalic fragrances:

Abdul Karim Al Faransi Wild Oud Cambodi
Abercrombie & Fitch Batch No. 46 (ambergris)
Acqua di Genova 1853 (ambergris)
Acqua di Parma Colonia Ambra (ambergris)
AK France VL.P No. 1
Al Aneeq Oud Malaki
Amouage Epic Man (castoreum), Figment Man, Gold (civet), Overture Man
Amway Reasons
Antonio Puig Quorum
Aramis 900 (civet)
Armani Prive Musc Shamal
l'Artisan Al Oudh, Dzing!
Axe Provocation (ambergris)
Balenciaga Portos (castoreum)
Beverly Hills Polo Club Sport 9 (ambergris)
Brocard Anti-Stress
Bvlgari Aqva pour Homme Atlantique (ambergris), Opalon (ambergris)
Burberry Mr. Burberry Element (ambergris)
Calvin Klein Obsession
Carolina Herrera 212 VIP (caviar)
Caron Yatagan (castoreum)
Chanel Antaeus (castoreum), Bois Noir (ambrette)
Christian Dior Leather Oud (civet), Homme (ambrette), Homme Intense 2011 (ambrette)
Creed Acier Aluminium (ambergris), Aventus (ambergris), Green Irish Tweed (ambergris)
Davidoff (castoreum)
Diesel Bad (caviar)
Diptyque Fleur de Peau
Dirk Bikkembergs Dirk
Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue Swimming in Lipari (ambergris), Velvet Bergamot (ambrette), Velvet Oriental Musk
D.S. & Durga Italian Citrus (ambrette)
Dzintars Lucky No. 12 (civet), Taifuns (civet)
Ermenegildo Zegna Peruvian Ambrette
Esencia Loewe
Etat Libre d'Orange Archives 69, Secretions Magnifique
Frederic Malle Musc Ravageur
Givenchy Gentleman (civet)
Guerlain Les Absolus d'Orient Musc Noble, Vetiver (civet)
Heritage Berbere HB Homme 13
Hermes Eau d'Hermes, Hermessence Cardamusc
Histoires de Parfum Ambrarem, Tuberose Animale
House of Sillage The Classic, The Contemporary
Jacques Bogart Furyo (civet), One Man Show, Witness
Jean Desprez 40 Love pour Homme
Jean Patou pour Homme (civet)
Jean Paul Gaultier Fleur du Male
Jil Sander Man (castoreum)
John Varvatos (castoreum)
Jo Malone London Rose & White Musk
Jovan Musk for Men
Kiehl Musk
Kilian Cruel Intentions
Kinski (castoreum)
Knize 10 (castoreum)
Lancetti Uomo
Lanvin For Men (civet), Monsieur Lanvin (civet)
Le Labo Oud 27
Louis Armand Alter Ego Espirit (ambergris)
Maison Francis Kurkdjian Absolue pour le Soir
Maison Incense Chypre Isli
Marbert Gentleman (civet)
Masque Milano Montecristo (hyraceum)
Mercedes Benz Man (ambrette)
Molton Brown Milk Musk
Mona di Orio Les Nombres d'Or Cuir, Musc
Mouchoir de Monsieur
Nabeel Liyali Al Hilmiya
Nadia Z Celestial Violet Man (hyraceum), Japanese Spring (hyraceum)
Odoratika Irisium for Men
Oriflame Giordani Man Incontro (caviar)
Parfumerie Generale l'Ombre Fauve
Pascal Morabito Monsieur Morabito
Peter Jacobs Imperial Black pour Homme (ambergris)
Prada Luna Rossa (ambrette)
Profumi di Firenze l'Uomo di Pitti (ambergris)
Ralph Lauren Polo Green
Rammstein Zwinger
Roberto Capucci Corps Fou (civet)
Robert Piguet Bandit
Roja Dove Fetish (castoreum)
Santa Maria Novella Peau d'Espagne (civet)
Serge Lutens Cuir Mauresque, Miel de Bois, Muscs Koublaï Khan
Swiss Arabian Mukhalat Malaki
Ted Lapidus (castoreum)
Thera Cosmeticos Baruch (ambrette), Hiero, Kayro (castoreum), Serifos (ambergris)
Thierry Mugler A*Men (milk)
Tom Ford Noir (civet)
Trussardi Uomo
Ungaro II
Valhom Gladio
Van Cleef & Arpels Midnight in Paris
Vermeil for Men
XPEC Original
Yanbal Arom Absolute (ambergris)
Yves St. Laurent l'Homme Parfum Intense (ambergris), Kouros (civet)
Zara Aromatic Future (ambergris), Vibrant Leather Warm, White Soho (ambrette)
Zoologist Beaver, Civet

 

[Scuttlesoap]

Fantastic write up!
Though, as a fragrance collector myself, I have often wondered how some of these “ingredients“ were first introduced into fragrances in the first place. How did someone walking along the beach come across some ambergris and then think - this would really balance out my parfum. That and civet - I;m sure I am over simplifying

 

[churchilllafemme]

Fantastic write up!
Though, as a fragrance collector myself, I have often wondered how some of these “ingredients“ were first introduced into fragrances in the first place. How did someone walking along the beach come across some ambergris and then think - this would really balance out my parfum. That and civet - I;m sure I am over simplifying

Thanks, Brian. I've wondered the same thing. Perhaps it happened like finding new foods might have: "Hey, I think I'll eat that and see what happens."