Assembling Your List of Perfume Making Supplies

Okay, you’ve become interested in the art of making perfume and you are ready to start your stash of oils. You are about to enter the exciting world of the collector. I’ll start you out with perfume oils because they are inexpensive and you are learning, so a wrong purchase won’t matter. They are also synthetic and predictable. There’s a good chance that what your mix smells like before you add alcohol will be the same as the finished product.

     Essentials are from living material. They have hundreds of parts and once you get them together in an alcohol solution, they begin to interact. All your formulas will need to age, like fine wine, to get the final result, but you can’t imagine how often, after six weeks, I’ve had to pour my masterpiece down the drain because it smelled like cabbage soup.

     However, soon synthetics will not be enough and you will want to move into essential oils. You think stamp collectors are obsessed? Wait until you are bitten by the “oil collector’s bug,” and will go to any lengths to get a mere dram of one you don’t have.

     We are at my next absolute rule. Write everything down. Every drop. You might think you will remember, but the creative process messes with your mind. If you don’t write it down, and six weeks later you have this to-die-for scent, don’t call me. I can’t tell you how often a distressed beginning perfumer would come into my store and ask, pleading, “What’s in this?” They didn’t write it down and now it is gone forever.

     Sometimes a fascinating thing will happen called an accord. When a combination of oils is mixed, they all disappear and become an entirely new scent. When rose, birch tar (smells like tar), and Castoreum (an oil of animal origin—beaver—which smells like caramel, are mixed the result is tanned leather. Francois Coty, the godfather of perfumery, discovered accords.  Once, by chance, I made one with lavender and patchouli. It was a heavenly floral that I’ve never been able to duplicate, because I didn’t write it down.

     If you search online under “Rare Essential Oils,” or simply Perfume Oils, or Essential Oils, you will find what you need. Some websites will allow a small sample for a price. If you are not familiar with the scent, this is a good way to start. Don’t be afraid to call for advice. Perfumers addicted to the art crave conversation. You will learn that some oils are so scarce they sell for hundreds or thousands of dollars a dram.

     There are three parts to a blended fragrance.

·      Top Notes – These are scents of short duration.  They last about twenty minutes and are what you smell first when you sample a scent.  Orange, lemon, lime, some florals, and violet—which is there, but you won’t smell it after a few minutes. Violet is always a synthetic chemical called ionone. You can’t afford real violet.

·      Middle notes – this is what you will smell for hours.  It will include the bottom notes and, if it is for men, will have woody notes, evergreen, cedar leaf, amber, Frankincense as well as light florals. For women, any flower, vanilla, maybe green tea, or one of the fruits. I’ll include some recipes later on.

·      Bottom Notes – these are the heavier resins and fixatives. They are slow to dissipate—sometimes take days to fade. They are called fixatives because they grab hold of the other molecules in your mix and hold them so they linger longer. There are synthetic fixatives, but the natural work best. The problem is they all have odor, so how much to use without screwing up your formula takes practice. Fixatives are: vetiver, patchouli, sandalwood, and some resins.

     You’ll need some supplies to start: scent strips, eye droppers, a graduated flask that measures milliliters (you can find this at a hobby store, a beaker that holds about two ounces, and some glass bottles to put your fragrance. For perfume one ounce will do, but for cologne three or four ounces. There are about 15 milliliters to a half-ounce; 30 ML to an ounce. You’ll be working with about 7 ml of oil mix to 1 ounce of alcohol to make one ounce of perfume, or about 1-16 to make 4 ounces of cologne. Toilet Water, which is a European formula usually, is 1-8.

This is a long list. You don’t need everything all at once and expect to take time searching the Internet. I suggest starting with two or three oils from each section of the following list.

I’ve highlighted with a * those you might want to start with.

   A beginning list for your collection in usually 15 ml amounts or half-ounce, ES means essential oil, would be:

            Top notes:

            Bay Leaf ES*

            Orange or Bergamot ES*

            Grapefruit ES*

            Lemon ES

            Cinnamon*

            Clove*

            Middle Notes or the body of the fragrance:

            Amber*

            Freesia

            Honeysuckle*

            Iris

            Hyacinth*

            Jasmine

            Lavender ES French

            Lily of the Valley

            Migonette or Reseda (the same thing)*

            Musk

            Rosemary

            Rose*

            Tea Rose (greener than rose)

            Vanilla

            Bottom Notes or fixatives

            Frankincense

            Patchouli ES*

            Sandalwood (very expensive might wait on this)

            Vetiver ES*

The next essay will be on how to go about building a fragrance. In my new book, to be released in October, titled, Love in a Small Town, Lindsay, the perfumer, guides Sarah, her young pupil through the process. I’ll quote from the book and suggest some possible formulas for you to try.

           

Making Your Own Signature Fragrance

I'm writing this five-part series on perfume making because perfume making will be  part of the plot of my new novel, "Love In a Small Town," to be released by Rogue-Phoenix Press this October. In the book, my teenage protagonist, Sarah, is taught to make perfume by Lindsay, the love interest of Sarah's step-father. The fragrance is called "Shakespeare's Flowers," and I sold it in my store until I retired.

Think of perfume making as like cooking. First you have to have an idea of the finished product. Cooks have a whole mental library of tastes stored in their brain. When they’re seasoning something, they taste it, then decide if it needs to be saltier, sweeter, spicy, or perhaps tart. They search their memory, remembering the tartness of lemon, the bite of turmeric, and add accordingly.

 Fragrance compounding is the same, except that you’ve memorized the odors of scent ingredients. You still combine them mentally, then go on to compounding starting with one, and adding carefully, until it smells the way you want it. You start with the oils. When you're satisfied, add pure, 90 proof alcohol--the kind you buy at the liquor store. 16 parts alcohol to one part oil mix. Perfume is four to one.

Think about what you like. Don’t worry about the odor being masculine or feminine. Many women wear men’s fragrances because they are not so sweet, and men often like a little lilac or lavender added to what they wear. Amber is good on anyone. Add a little orange and maybe a snitch of cinnamon and it’s fabulous. Essential oil of Jamaican Bay Leaf is very hard to find, but it adds freshness to almost anything. I suggest you find stores that sell oils—probably a health food store, or Whole Foods Grocers, and start smelling to get familiar. The first thing you’ll notice is a difference in quality. Every brand has a few clunkers, especially the lavenders. This oil is in short supply. Lavender officianalis is the French one we all like, but Norfolk Lavender is good. You will probably have to buy most of your oils online, so start small, and look for quality. In my experience, I have always been satisfied with the quality and purity of Kiehls, and Eden, sold through Amazon.com, and Sunrose Oils. Buy the smallest possible amount to start. ¼ ounce, or 15 milliliters is plenty.

When I was compounding a fragrance in my store for a client, the formulas were very simple—at the most, five oils, because the olfactory nerve in the human nose gets tired quickly and loses its ability to smell. We call it ‘olfactory fatigue.’ This comes in handy if you are in a room with a noxious odor, like something dead, or fermented. In a few minutes you won’t smell it anymore. Inhaling camphor will speed things along. One perfume oil, violet, contains a chemical, ionone, which will kill your nose quickly. If you use it, be sure it is the last thing you add.

I mentioned before the difference between perfume oils, which are synthetic, and essential oils, which are distilled from living plant material. You will be using perfume oils. They are cheaper, and your body will not absorb them, sometimes with unexpected results. Leave them for the aromatherapists. There are only a few essential oils that you will have in your collection: sandalwood, patchouli, vetiver, and possibly benzoin, because they are fixatives, which I will explain later, and the citrus oils.

Your first assignment is to go looking for odors. Shop for oils, but also smell what is around you. Notice the difference between grass, moss, dirt, the difference between the leaf of a flower and the petals. Leaf oils are called “petigrain.” What is orange oil? The odor of orange peels. What is Orange Petigrain? The leaf odor, which is green with a suggestion of orange. Cherry bark smells like almond. With practice you will be able to tell the difference between juniper, pine, and cedar blindfolded. Check out the Internet and make a list. The next paper will be on starting your collection and what supplies you need.