The Natural Perfumers Guild is hosting a blogathon esp. for the porr suffering people of the northern hemisphere who are currently dealing with the long, cold and grey miserable months of winter. Aprt from being cold and grey, the long nights and lack of decent sun and daylight also mean long months of misery and depression for many people. S.A. D or "Seasonal Affective Disorder" is the technical term for these winter blues, and affects most people to some degree or another. It is thought to be related to serontonin production, a neurotransmitter which our body produces in conjunction with exposure to sunlight. So obviously, no sun, no serontonin equals SAD. So the Natural Perfumers guild thought it might be a nice idea to tap into the collective knowledge of their perfumers on how this can be combatted with the help of perfume. And this is my post on the subject. We all know that nice smells make us feel batter, but Aromatherapy can help us take this concept a few steps further...and those of use who work exclusively with naturals of course work with the essential oils used in Aromatherapy...and many of us (including yours truly) actually come from an Aromatherapy background......
I used to suffer terribly from what they now call "SAD" or Seasonal Affective Disorder, and the winters in Berlin were particularly long and grey.
Each year, as soon as the days became shorter, my mood would start to darken too, and I would only begin to pick up as the days lengthened and the sun came back out of her hiding place below the equator.
When I discovered aromatherapy, I of course started to research which esential oils were good for depression, and discovered that Patchouli was one the the best and longest used for this in India. It is used in Ayurvedic medicine to treat everything from melancholy to outright mania, and it's deep, earthy scent seems to have the immediate effect of making you feel safe and grounded...
So I started burning it in my little oil burner and to my joy found that I felt much more peaceful and even started to smile again....I experimented all that first aromatic winter with blends of different things, and found my best blend was a simple combination of patchouli with bright clear lemon!
Some years later when I started to make actual perfumes, I took a break from the complex floral formulas I was experiementing with, and started to think: Why shouldn't it be possible to combine Aromatherapy with Perfumery and create Perfumes that actually have therapeutic effects as well as smelling beautiful?
I dug out my notes on my favourite aromatherapy blends and rememberd how happy the patchouli and lemon mix had made me....the combination of the two is somehow so warm and friendlyas a scent, the lemon doing something really remarkable to patchoulis dark duskiness and the patchouli giving the short lived lemon a depth and warmth that is just yummy....but they didn't quite work together as an actual "perfume", so I decided to experieiment a bit more. After delving back into my herb books, I decided that an obvious choice would be Sandalwood, beloved the world over for it's soothing comforting effects, as well as one of the smoothest and most beautiful of all perfumery ingredients! Like Patchouli, it has a long history of being used in traditional Auyuveda for treating depression. It also happens to work seamlessly with both patchouli and lemon, and added an elegance and gentleness to the perfume which was just what was needed! I also added a touch of Tahitian lime to give it an extra twist and a few other ingredients to round off the scent, and "Happiness" was born.
I started taking it with me to the various trade fairs and cosmetics shows had stalls at, and was delighted to find that my customers liked it just as much as I did! It seemed to have an incredible unisex appeal, men and women both liked it and wore it, and you could see from the happy grin after the first sniff just how direct an effect it had on peoples moods!
People bought it, and came back and bought more, telling me they found it to be a great pick me up scent...they wore it to help them get going in the morning, as a pick me up after work, and one guy even told me it was the best cure for a hangover he had ever found, grin!
After nearly 20 years, it is still one of my most popular perfumes. It's simple yet elegant scent is refreshing, uplifting and just incredibly friendly! It's a true inisex scent, and one of those you can wear to the office without ever worrying about offending anyone...
But best of all, it simply works. Wearing it makes you feel better.
And what I am particularly proud of is that for me, "Happiness" proved once and for all what I have been saying for years: You CAN combine Aromatherapy and modern Perfumery. And create Perfumes that have a therapeutic effect, and are also GREAT perfumes!
If you'd like to try "Happiness", I'm giving away samples to the 3 most interesting or enthusiastic Australian and 2 Overseas customers who post a comment here!
(Winners will be chosen and announced on friday!)
(Winners will be chosen and announced on friday!)
Otherwise you can also order samples and full size bottles of "Happiness" directly from my webstore!
Or post a comment below to win a sample!
Other Blogs writing about Joy in January:
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Pan's Midsummer Night Dream
What I find really beautiful about this project, is the artwork the reviewers used to accompany their reviews! So I've reposted not only the reviews themselves, but also the paintings that accompanied them!
You can read more about my offering to this project "Pan" here:
"The Story of Pan"
and you can order samples of it in my webstore
Carol from WAFT wrote: LOVE THIS !
 |
| Sir Joseph Noël Paton - Evening |
An intoxicating patchouli scent that could fit just as easily into the
summer of Patchouli love , but this was created in honor of Puck = a
tamer , gentler version of Pan in our Shakespearean play....PAN the
scent is wildly gorgeous - a green earthy Rosemary and Patchouli scent ,
deepened with oakmoss and embellished with cinnamon , nutmeg and
thyme....lordy lordy this is wonderful . Long have I searched for the
perfect rosemary scent ( that doesn't remind me of lamb stew
)...Dominated by rosemary , PAN is my favorite scent of the summer !
Earthy , resonant , spicy and just outright sexy in the best way .
The Windesphere Witch writes:
"I can't resist a perfume that claims...."If you don't want to get laid, don't wear it". Pan
is a perfume that I think could definitely live up to that challenge.
It's very masculine, the horned God himself and the muskiness mixed
into the delicious blend of rosemary, thyme, marjoram and Indian
Patchouli is delightful and exquisitely sexy in a sort of "roll around
naked and sweaty in the tall grass sort of way" and it smells incredible
on my husband, better than it does on me and I think that this one
takes a man to unleash it's potency. Pan is quite herbaceous but there's
also something in it that reminds me of my horse Henry when we've been
galloping around in the dense woods for a bit and he's fairly sweaty and
so am I. It's that fine line between animal passion and human
playfulness that I think that she's captured here and she's done it very
well. At first sniff Pan seems simple and then suddenly you're enslaved
by his lovely flutes. Follow him anywhere but at your own
risk.....unplanned risky delightful sex in a bottle this one is:)
"I can't resist a perfume that claims...."If you don't want to get laid, don't wear it". Pan
Donna from Perfume Smellin'-Things wrote:
"My next adventure was a frolic with Pan, the very naughty brainchild of
Ambrosia Jones, proprietor of Perfume By Nature near Sydney, Australia.
Pan is a wild fellow indeed, but as with many purportedly “masculine”
fragrances, many women love to wear them too and this one really won me
over. Pan reminded me of the more rustic perfumes from La Via del
Profumo in Italy, which is saying a lot, because those are truly
excellent compositions. It’s not as heavily animalic as my beloved
Tcharas or as green and exhilarating as Hindu Kush, but it has its own
distinctive character. Pan (The character of Puck in A Midsummer Night’s
Dream is a thinly veiled version of the mythical Greek satyr) has a
dry, sun-soaked halo of herbal and piney warmth wrapped around its
chypre base of dark oakmoss and resins. Rosemary and thyme combined with
a spicy (yet not sweet) heart make this redolent of warmer climes, and
it’s not hard to picture this mischievous being frolicking in the rugged
hillsides above the Aegean Sea, chasing buxom women and laughing the
days away. I don’t get too much of a “night” impression from this, but
surely most of the trouble Pan/Puck gets himself into occurs in the
midnight hour! He is up to no good and so is his namesake perfume, a
lusty and rich concoction guaranteed to turn heads. In fact, I received
an unsolicited compliment from a co-worker, who urged me to come closer
so she could smell my perfume. Staying power is excellent, lasting all
day with no problem at all and any confident man should really enjoy
wearing it. However, he will have to pry it out of my hands first!
Felicia M Hazard of Fragrance Belles-Lettres
I must confess, I am a fan of chypre. It gives me a deep feeling of completeness and wholeness that is actually indescribable. Thank goodness for a fragrance that speaks for my indescribable feelings. PAN from Perfume by Nature leads you into a journey of a woody citrus forest that is guarded by Pan, God of Nature. You immediately notice patchouli that sings of a deep moment in the wild. Then you are guided into a forest full of oak trees covered in moss. The tall dark trees towering over the forest with a heavy passion for dark and intense moments that arise in PAN.
Quickly PAN
dries on the skin into a sweet passion fruit state of mind. I really
enjoyed this journey with Pan, God of Nature. It showed me that nature
is better when left alone without the use of chemicals and pesticides to
ruin what is really intended for its goodness.
Now, I understand why Pan is so wild
about nature. It is a wonderful place to be and thanks to Pan, Ambrosia
Jones was able to compose a beautiful perfume with a beautiful message
through her knowledge of the God who is passionate and respectful of all
Things Living. Monica Miller from "Perfume Pharmer"
" Earthy, wild and spicy, I would say Pan would make a great men’s fragrance…but hey, PAN can go both ways, and often does. Definitely evergreen forest like, there is a camphor herbal lift and a playful, botanical and animalic, spiced apple cider- musky undertone. I say “try it!….if you dare….”
And this beautiful poem:
"Ah the Oft maligned and scorned God Pan! What has he done to deserve your wrath, O Christians, that you turn him into the Evil One? How strange to take a Pagan God, a nature spirit, and pit your hate against him, why?
Is it his sexuality you fear? His sweet pan pipe music that turns your heart to gold?
Do you fear to feel yourself as part of nature, as natural as the grass and the trees, as natural as life itself?
Fear not
the divine spirit we call PAN. He is NOT the devil as you say. he is not
dressed in red, nor does he live in a fiery abode. Unless the passion
we call desire that drives the human race generation by generation is
evil?
We ride towards our future on the back of PAN
We express joy, laughter, giggles and all things fun and good with PAN
We eat drink and make merry on our holidays with PAN
We revel, we intoxicate like drunken monkeys on fermented fruit, in a natural way..with PAN
We forget our troubles for a moment lifted by the music of PAN"
Carol from Waft is also selling sample collections from "The Midsummer Nights Dream" project through her online store The Niche Place , contact her directly to ask about this!
Friday, July 1, 2011
"Happiness" for the "Summer of Patchouli Love"
Why did I choose it for the patchouli challenge?
Originally I was going to start from scratch and create a totally new patchouli perfume...I was thinking I'd go for a floral patchouli, maybe Rose and patch with a touch of jasmine...something deep and sensual that would evoke the 60's indian headshop oils the way most of us remember them....(and also because previous perfume competitions seem to have shown that most women love floral perfumes over everything else!).
I started working on a few variations and they seemed quite promising...but I got talking to a few friends about the project, and one in particular remarked "I really HATE patchouli!". I almost fell on the floor laughing, as she is also a loyal customer of mine who has been buying and wearing my "Happiness" for a number of years now...and it's really heavy on patchouli!! "No way!" she said when I told her this, "I KNOW patchouli and there is definitley NONE of that nasty heavy moldy stuff in "Happiness", I'd KNOW!
So I dug out the recipe and showed her....but it got me thinking....
"Happiness" is actually one of my oldest perfumes...it started it's journey many years ago when I first discovered essential oils. I was suffering through a dark depressing winter in Berlin and looking for oils to use in my oil burner that would cheer me up a bit...I had just been reading about the anti-depressant effects of Patchouli and decided to try it out. I carefully dripped a few drops of the thick dark brown liquid into the buner and was enveloped by a sense of woody warmth....dark, comforting, woody/sweet...it definitely made me feel safer and less dejected...I then added a few drops of lemon oil, as the same trusty book had just told me that this was a good antiseptic to use to ward off colds...and as the two scents mingled, I sat back in amazement! Suddenly there was a beautiful, cheerful scent that was somehow something totally new in the air! These two completely different oils complemented each other amazingly well, and not only that, I found myself suddenly feeling hopeful, almost joyful and well, Happy!
10 years and a whole continent later, I found myself living on a hippie community in Nimbin, Australia. We were flat broke, and I was making up my first ever batch of annointing oils to try and sell at the local markets. And one of these was a blend I'd made based on my experience with patchouli and citrus in Berlin which I'd named "Happiness" which was meant to cheer people up!
I'd added sandalwood to the blend which is another soothing oil from therapeutic point of view, and it was pretty bloody yummy! (note for non Australians: "bloody" is a word commonly used by us Ozzies to describe everything good bad and otherwise. We do not regard it as a swear word, but as normal everyday language usage to replace the word "very".)
As the years went by and the business grew, I played with the recipe and made "Happiness" into bath and massage oils and eventually into an alcohol based eau de parfum version. And it went on selling. My perfumes became more sophisticated as time went by, as I added more exotic flower absolutes, and clever gourmand notes and Chypres to my designs, but "Happiness" remained one of the most popular scents, wherever I went. Men and women both bought and wore it, and even those that went for the deeper sexy florals would often by a small bottle of "Happiness" to wear to work or as a "pick me up" perfume too.
And I think this is one of the things that makes it special.
"Happiness" was one of the first ever "Aromatherapy" perfumes out there. If you read some of the posts that conventional perfume critics have written on the subject of Natural Perfumery, they will use this term in a derogatory manner, as if somehow, the fact that a perfume designed to have positive effect on the body automatically makes it somehow dilletantish and crude. Personally I think they couldn't be further from the truth. I'm a hippie green revolutionary at heart, and Natural Perfumery to me is in essence a form of Cosmetic Permaculture. The art of making a perfume beautiful, organic, sustainable and healthy makes into an even more beautiful work of art in my books. And if the perfumer is skilled enough to make a scent therapeutic as well as delightful in smell....
After all the 60's were all about changing the world. Bringing back a sense of harmony between Nature and Humans, and also about Love, Peace, caring for one another and well, spreading a little Happiness!
So in the end I decided to submit the very perfume that I had been inspired to make by my own quest for inner Peace.
It's a slightly more sophisticated version of my original annointing oil nowadays... the patchouli is a particularly fine aged one...the sandalwood is a more eco-freindly Australian version from sustainable plantations....the lemon is a soft, fresh green lemon from unripe fruits, with a touch of lime to give it a fresh tang...and theres a tad of spice and a nuance of vetiver to give it body and depth.
But it's still based around Patchouli and Lemon, same as the first drops in my oil burner in Berlin, all those many years ago.
The 60's were all about hope, and humanities adolescant dreams of Peace and Love...
And "Happiness" grew from mine!
I'll be posting what the critics thought of "Happiness" in my next blogpost, and there will also be a number of giveaways you can link to if you'd like to win a bottle of "Happiness" to try for yourself!
Peace Love and Patchouli!
Peace, Love and Patchouli
The Summer of Patchouli Love is finally here...
Some months ago I was invited to take part in a fascinating perfume event.The wonderful Monica Miller from Perfume Pharmer, had come up with a really great idea: To host a double blind perfume challenge based around Patchouli.
The idea was to see what a bunch of Indie Perfumers could come up with, when faced with the following brief: The perfume had to be:
a) completely natural
b) made with at least 25% of patchouli oil
To make it even more interesting, all submissions were re-bottled by Monica herself and given a number, rendering them completely igcognito, and then sent out to a huge cast of reviewers to be sniffed and judged purely on their scent alone.
This was a first in perfume challenge history. It was a double blind event, neither the judges, not he perfumers themselves had any idea who's perfume was who's, and the reviewers had to go by their own personal tastes, as they were not given a list of notes, or in fact anything at all about the individual perfumes to work from!
Monica also managed to orchestrate an amazingly diverse cast of judges, with two totally different groups: Firstly a more traditional group of perfume reviewers who regularly write reviews for various blogs.
And a second group of celebreties, ranging from International political activist and Witch, Starhawk, over eco clothes designer Deborah Lindquist , Cirque de Soleil members and musicians and actors the likes of Jodie Foster and Mary J. Blige!
With such a wide and stellar cast, us perfumers have been sitting there chewing our nails, wondering how our babies were going to be recieved.....I was a bit sceptical at first, as I know how a perfumes story is a huge part of it's appeal...and I wasn't sure how people would relate to a perfume without this, esp. as many of the judges were unfamiliar with natural perfumes.....
I am now a great believer! The "double blind" nature of this contest has made it far more fascinating...the judges perceptions and the descriptions they have found for the individual perfumes are absolutely wonderful! It has made the event absolutely fascinating to watch for me as a perfumer too!
And it is giving us all true feedback on the scents themselves, unbiased by stories, packaging or the perfumers reputation!
(I'm now eagerly awaiting my own!)
Later today I'll introduce you all to the perfume I submitted for the event myself too!
Monday, May 30, 2011
The Creation of Pan
And the story of the birth of this perfume is a particularly interesting one.
The perfume I am submitting is called "Pan " I chose to submit it to the competition, as one of the main character's in Shakespeare's play is "Puck", who is actually an anglicised and slightly tamer version of the great Greek God Pan...so it seemed only fitting.
"Pan" the perfume was actually one of my first creative collaberation projects.
I wanted to create a perfume as a male counterbalance to the overtly female "Goddess" I had made, a sweet, enticingly sensual rose and jasmine concoction..."Pan", for those of you who haven't come accross him before, is the Wild Greek God of Nature. Untamed, Free, he is said to wander through the Greek countryside palying his pan pipes followed by a dancing group of delighful and sensuous nymphs...he loves good wine and sex and the word "panic" comes from his habit of creating mayhem wherever he goes.....At the same time Pan is the protector of all wild animals, and a great Lover and also protector of Women....
But I was having problems with it. So I recruited the help of my sisters then boyfriend, who's nickname, fittingly, was "Puck". We sat down in my workshop and started sorting through the various potions and extracts to see what we both thought could make a scent that could call up a perfumed image of this wild make nature spirit...
We started with patchouli, which Tom Robbins married to the lad in his book. Deep, sensual, dark and with an interesting combination of sweet, woody, rooty and earthy...but it just wasn't wild or male enough by itself.
I had just bought my first tin of oakmoss resinoid some time ago. I had bought it blind, having no idea what it was, when looking for incense ingredients, and had been overwhelmed by the intensity of the scent of this dark brown sticky goo...and on sudden inspiration, brought down this tin of sticky stuff to show to Puck...it was perfect! So wild and earthy and downright rutting with natural muskiness! A tiny dab went into the patchouli, and then we started adding herbs and spices, from the fresh rosemary and thyme that grow wild in the Greek hillsides when Pan comes from to oriental cinnamon and nutmeg, which gave the wild thing a touch of exotic warmth and pizazz..... | ||
| "Pan is born" by Thorsten |
The final test and Pan's first true debut was at a halloween party that happened a few months later. A friend of mine actually decided to dress up as Pan. Mike actually looked the part to start with, being dark hair and eyes, a furry chest and even a little goatee beard...but he was also a pretty gentle soul generally and usually fairly quiet and mild mannered.
 |
| "Pan is alive"by Thorsten Jones |
I've been selling the stuff as a perfume ever since. And it has grown to have a bit of a reputation, esp. amongst the pagan community...What really amazed me as I began to offer it to my more mainstream customers, is how many women love and wear the scent! It seems "Pan" speaks to an inner wild women that needs to be set free in many of us too! It's heavy Oakmoss base makes it a dry herbal Chypre with an exciting edge in modern perfume terms and is in some ways remeniscent of the older perfumes of the 1930's and 40's...
Whether or not you like it is of course entirely personal....I'm usually to chicken to wear it my self, but my husband, my ex husband and many of my loyal customers love it....
It's definitely not for the faint hearted though....
As the bottle says: "Wear it if you Dare!"
The photos were taken by Thorsten Jones whiteantstudios@gmail.com
Mike's wife Bev, who graciously convinced him to let me use the photos, is a great Astrologer who publishes regular "Astral Meanders"
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Aphrodisiacs and Perfume
I've been making perfumes and incense for over 20 years. And I have found that one of the most mysterieous, sought after and debated topics in perfumery is aphrodisiacs.
You still see adds all over the place for perfumes and colognes containing "pheromones guaranteed to attract the opposite sex", and let's face it, one of the main reasons we even started splashing ourselves with scented ingredients was in the hope that we'd smell pretty to potential mates!
Most of the surviving ancient perfume recipes are about Love or at least Sex. Cleopatra's famed unguents were part of her weapon arsenal in bedroom politics...Napoleon and Josephine each had favoured potions that they used to perfume their bodies before they met up after each of his bouts conquering other countries...
And then of course we have the famed "Love Potion No 9" from the 60's song that has inspired so many perfumers (including me) to atempt their own olfactory version...
The historical perfume recipes of the 1800's all have bases of various musk components, musk deer glands, civet, hyraceum, ambergris....all of these an attempt to copy the musky component of our own sweat, in the hope of amplifying our own attractiveness....
Scent actually drives the mating rituals of most species, from mammals to flowers and insects even!
Male deer in rut actually drip thick gooey stuff from various glads and leave trails of intensly musky smelly goop on the trees they rub up against...the smell carries for miles through the forest...dogs leave similar scent trails, both maile and female, and it never ceases to amaze me from how far away a male dog can sniff my locked insie the house bitch when she is on heat!
And think about this for a moment: Why do flowers smell pretty? To attract insects and birds to come and dip in their nectar, and carry the pollen containing genes to other flowers!
Flowers are in fact a plants sex organs.
In fact a vast number of the ingredients of perfumery are based on the various aphrodisiacs of the natural world.
So let's have a closer look at a few of them:
The whole birth of modern chemical perfumery was actually triggered by the attempt to create a cheaper and more readily available form of Ambergris, Deer musk and Civet.
And the number of different musks available to the modern chemist perfumer is quite astounding.
The Natural world offers a number of wonderfully musky ingredients too, even without useing the animal based deer musks that bring with them questions about animal cruelty and sustainability: Hyraceum and Ambergris are both animal musks that are actually left behind by the animals.
Hyraceum is a fossilized form of excreta left by generations of small African mammals who pee over and over again on the same place.
It's not easy to get, but it's an amazing substance, animaly and musky and woody, and throughly wild!
Ambergris is a substance spat out by whales that then spends years to decades floating around on the sea purifying, until one day it washes up on the beach to be found by some lucky person who then sells it on for thousands of dollars to avid perumers. Personally, I don't get much off it...it's just dry and faintly resonant of orrisroot and some sort of musky scent...but it does have a fixative effect in perfumes.
Then there's the spices:
All spices have the effective of getting the juices flowing. They are biological stimulants, designed to heighten our bodies functioning and awaken our appetites...
Of these the ones with the most aphrodisiac effect are Cardamon, Coriander and Cinnamon, Ginger and Pepper. All of them are warming and yummy in food, but in perfumes they add life and warmth and literally "spice things up".
Cardamom is probably one of my favourites. It has a sweetness and depth to it that makes it very sensual...it features strongly in my own offering to the Gods of Erotica: "Love Potion" which was my first spicy Oriental designed to live up exactly to it's name...the idea being that if you felt sexy and passionate, that was the energy you'd give out to the world and attract to you....Kind of my own Aromatherapy version of the infamous "pheromone attractant" perfumes I mentioned above, grin!
Pepper is a really interesting one. It adds bite and Life to florals and fruity blends if you manage to dilute it far enough down....
The roots and woods:
Sandalwood is the sweet gentle one amongst the Aphrodisiac ingredients. It has soothing anti depressant properties as well as being sensual and loving. It is elegantly unisex too and blends harmoniously with almost everything
Patchouli is a bit more of a wild child. It's deep, sweet and woody depth is something you either love or hate. For many people it's strong association with the Hippie Era of the 60's makes it either wildly attractive or tacky and "too earthy!". Like Sandalwood, it has been used in Indian Auruveda medicine for centuries to cure depression and other mental imbalances, (as well as repelling moths!) It's one of my personal favourites but it does take some skill to incorporate it harmoniously into a blend without allowing it to dominate.
Another group of sensual scent elements are the Gourmand notes such as Cocoa, Vanilla, Honey, Caramel and Coffee...all of these make our mouths water...and create feelings of increased appetite, Craving and of course eventually, Satisfaction.
The Adult novelty industry sells a number of body butters with both Chocolate and Honey flavouring, and Vanilla is one of THE most popular fragrance notes amongst women.
For me, Gourmand smells are some of the most erotic of all (OK, I'm a serious food head too), but a lot of people seem to feel this way. I had made a perfume called "Death by Chocolate" some years earlier and it never ceased to amaze me how many men found the scent seriously erotic on their girlfriends.
So it was an obvious step for me to take it that one step further and combine these wonderful Gourmand notes with some seriously hard kicking Animalic musk notes in "Craving"....
I'm working on a body oil version of it at present after one of the critics from the MoM project actually specifically requested this for her boyfriend!
Fragrant Jasmine of the Arabian Nights, what could be more magical and sensual? Of all the scents associated with Lov3e and Passion, Jasmine has to be the most well known of them all!
Not many people get to smell actual jasmine though, unless they happen to be into aromatherapy or natural perfumes! As with most of the ancient perfume ingredients, the jasmine in modern day perfumes is made up of chemical compounds made to immitate the original, and many of the perfumes that list jasmine as one of the prominent notes within it, bear only a passing resemblance to the real thing.
There are 3 types of jasmine commonly available, and of the three, jasmine sambac is by the far the most erotic. Real jasmine Sambac has a deep musky quality underneath the sultry intoxicating flower topnotes that grabs you by the gonads. It is one of the sexiest scents that Mama nature ever gave a flower, and the scent of the tiny white flowerswafting around you on a starry summers night is truly intoxicating. Here in Australia the lovely dark green vine grows abundantly up and over verandahs everywhere, so for me it is one of the smells of summer...
Rose is the true Queen of perfumes of course. One of my first true olfactory loves, some of my earliest memories involve crushing the rose petals of my mothers delicate "Peace" roses in our English garden...the combination of sweet, lemony softness with it's fresh green magic had me sniffing and sniffing as I tried to follow each tantilising magical layer as it appeard adn then faded....I have a number of different roses in my own garden now, and the difference amongst them ranges from delicately peachy fresh to musky deep and warm....no two roses smell alike, yet each has that undeniably recognizabe "Rose" note to it.
The deepest of all is one I am yet to find in extract form: "Papa Mailand", a deep crimson rose with huge velvet petals and the most intoxicatingly sexy rose smell I have ever encountered.....
I've come close to recreating it with Rose Marroc and a few of the deeper root oils...but I dream of one day distilling this one myself...
So you can see there are many incredibly sensual ingredients a natural perfumer can play with...I hope this has inspired you!
Have a Wonderful Valentine's Day!
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