<
s
c

s
Home / SmellyBlog / Tagged: Custom Scents

SmellyBlog

Happy Birthday to My Smelly Scorpio Brother!

emperor scorpion BP

Today is my oldest brother's birthday, and I'm wearing (and mailing him another bottle) of the custom perfume I've created for him a few years ago, which I named after his nickname Yoyo.

He is a Scorpio, ruled by Mars and therefore the complete opposite of me (Aries, also ruled by Mars). Scorpio's motto is change, death and renewal, and they live their life with such force that they draw much attention with their charisma, yet once you know them better you realize it's really hard to tell what's hidden inside their shell. In their most dangerous incarnations, they will sting themselves with their own poisonous tail. In their more benevolent role, they are ambasadors of change and are not afraid of create it for themselves and for other, destroying and ridding themselves and those close to them of the unnecessary, and making room for new growth.

Like most men on the planet, my brother wanted his perfume to be irresistible to women; yet some of his favourite scents are very arguably quite revolting. My brother's favourite scents include some scents that are not exactly what you'd think pretty or desirable in a perfume (this is how their order of recollection as he described them for me on the phone in 2006):
Banana
Anise
Bakery early in the morning
Pipe smoke
Tomato leaves
Earth after rain
Books - both old and new
Gas station
Turpentine
Paint thinner
Leather in a cobbler's shop, and the smell of new leather sandals
Wood-shavings and the smell of a carpenter's shop
Bonfire
Scorched potatoes in a bonfire
The smell of goat's barn from far away

Quite a diverse list with not even a single flower in sight. Sigh...

How do I not make that smell hideous?
By focusing on the leather and the licorice. I built the perfume around licorice notes (star anise and aniseed, but also the lactonic tarragon absolute, to mellow things out and give a suggestion of banana). I also decided for a very unusual exception, to dip into the sample of castoreum that was sent to me by a manufacturer about 10 years ago. So the leather actually included real animalic leather note from poor Russian beavers, mingled with intensely smoky cade (for the scorched bonfire potatoes), dry tobacco absolute balanced with sweet cocoa absolute. For a hint of paint thinners, I opted for styrax, which has a very chemical-like smell (which I'm very fond of, by the way). There are more notes to it, but this is the gist of what Yoyo's perfume is.

And of course, re-blending it, I'm realizing there were essences that I was too scared to add before (costus, for example) that will certainly be fantastic there, and what was I thinking not putting it there? So the 2011 edition is going to be a little bolder and richer, and with more pronounced animalic notes. And it will finally be in a spray bottle like my brother always wanted it to be.

Oh, and by the way - the 2006 version must have been irresistible enough, because he's happily married and expecting a 2nd baby next year.

Happy birthday, Yoyo!

Lime & Cacao OOAK in EDP Spray Bottle

Lime+Cacao by Ayala Moriel
Lime+Cacao, a photo by Ayala Moriel on Flickr.
Contrasting colours of lime green against deep brown are the centre of this playful fresh gourmand. Inspired by the Mexican way of treating chocolate as a savoury treat, Lime & Cacao is more piquant than decadent, and balances the sweetness of South American balsams with zesty lime, juicy may chang, and mineral and melancholic Blue Cypress from Australia.


Top notes:
Mexican Lime, Fresh Ginger

Heart notes:
Rose Geranium, Litsea Cubeba, Nutmeg Absolute

Base notes:
Cacao, Tolu Balsam, Blue Cypress

Lime & Cacao OOAK by Ayala Moriel
Lime & Cacao OOAK, a photo by Ayala Moriel on Flickr.

Lime & Cacao one-of-a-kind perfume EDP was created in 2009, and now available for adoption via my Etsy shop. It is packaged in my new Eau de Parfum splash/spray bottle (15ml), which is in my opinion the best way to apply this invigorating, summery fragrance. Like all of my EDP bottles, it packaged with both screw-cap (if you prefer to dab/splash) and a spray top so you can pick how you'd like to apply your new custom perfume :-)


This one-of-a-kind custom perfume is now available for adoption!
When you purchase it, you also purchase the rights to exclusivity and I will never make it for anyone else but you. A refill can be re-ordered for $180 as the formula is kept on file.



Immortal Rose


Immortelle, originally uploaded by Églantine.

Immortal Rose is a new one of a kind perfume that I've just added to the website yesterday afternoon. It's a beautiful and unusual combination between two very bold notes: immortelle absolute and rose geranium absolute.
How this perfume came about is interesting: when I was working on my Immortelle l'Amour back in 2007, I asked for feedback from one of my long time customers, and a fellow perfumista who's known to many of you as FiveoaksBouquet on Perfume of Life forum.
The reason why FiveoaksBouquet was the perfect person to ask opinion about was because she loves immortelle so much, and is a huge fan of Annick Goutal's Sables, which she kindly sent me a sample of, since it is no available in Vancouver. She even sent me a handful of beautiful immortelle potpourri made over 20 years ago by Caswell-Massey.
One of her suggestions was to add rose to my 1st mod, and so I did. Neither of us was too smitted with the result, and 4 mods later, the Immortelle l'Amour that you all learned to known and love is non other than the very first mod that I created...
However, the idea of immortelle and rose note appeals to me, and 3 years later, when I have at my disposal a bold and beautiful geranium absolute, I decided to play with this perfume again. I feel that the rose geranium (both oil and absolute), in addition to some rose absolute creates the desired effect that I was hoping to find originally. Gernaium has the "rosier than rose" quality, and although it's not as fine and complex as rose absolute, it is exactly that quality that makes it so suitable for the dark, dusky and earthy maple tonalities of immortelle absolute.
I have decided to offer this perfume as a one of a kind perfume because I think it takes a very unique personality to pull such a perfume off. It is very sweet, with an overdose of vanilla like my original formula; yet earthy and rosy as well, with fresh notes from the geranium and orange that balance it well. And 3 years in it is also beautifully matured into a very smooth elixir.

Project VL


Dr Zhivago, originally uploaded by RobH3.

Strange project I've been mulling over for quite some time... Admittedly, at first the concept kinda weirded me out a bit and I almost turned it down. Than I got sucked into it, probably just in the same way that most virtual love affairs take their victims by surprise.

At one of my events, I'm approached by a young gal, probably in her 20's. She's uber enthusiastic about scents and the conversation, like at times happens with perfume lovers (who seem to often have a passionate personality), turns into love and relationships.

As it turns out, she is tortured by an unfulfilled love. She's had this virtual lover for 3 years now. They have never met in person. She wants to meet him, but he's very far away and she'd broken her heart enough times to know better than travel the globe for a fickle virtual love affair and the empty promises it might deliver. And of course, the few friends she confided in to tell her tormenting tale urge her to run for the hills and forget all about it.

But logic aside - she is also scared of ruining the fantasy. A fantasy that at first seemed very real, supported by whatever gestures of love made possible by emoticons and webcam conversations. And the fantasy only seemed to grow out of proportion the more vague and ambiguous his gestures are. Come to think of it, now he is acting all mysterious and only gives of himself about tenth of what she puts into this virtual relationship.

Like many modern lovers, they communicate through the internet. They have never spoken on the phone. She has never even heard his voice. But she can hear it in her head. Sometimes she'll wake up in the middle of a dream after she's heard him call her name...

In short - these two love birds have been communicating with webcam and texting (or - is it now called sexting?!) on and off for the past 3 years and she's equally tormented and pleasured by this distant intimacy, also giving her a semi-legitimate excuse to not date any "real" men in her vicinity.

So what does all this have to do with scent, than? The woman has never smelled her lover and that is the most painful thing for her about this mostly un-fulfilled love. When she asked him to send her a sweaty t-shirt of his he conveniently ignored her request and just kept going about his merry visual and text methods of communications.

So I promised this young lady to help her create a scent that will make her think of her virtual lover. He may not be generous enough to send her sweaty t-shirts, but that does not mean that she can't have a connection between him and a scent (besides that uber-erotic scent of a laptop keyboard, of course, and the exciting tone she assigned to his text messages, that always make her heart race).

On return for this olfactory favour, I will be telling the tales of this tremulous love story. A tale that many people might be able to relate to, but are too shy to talk about...

Handpicking Essences


Life is a waving feather., originally uploaded by Olivia Bee.

We start from the top notes, which are easy and accessible, as they are very fleeting and familiar– citrus notes such as grapefruit and blood orange. Spices like star anise and fresh ginger root. Eliza surprises me with picking up lavender and telling me how much she loves it. Most people finds it calming and relaxing and associate it with the feeling of well-being. Here’s a twist and a turn to what I thought would be an herb-free perfume… She also likes rosewood, which shares some similarities with lavender, but is more light and floral and “perfumey”.

I was sure Eliza will love all the heart notes, but she ended up being more a base note gal. I knew she’s going to love rose and jasmine (and she did), but I was surprised she did not like tuberose and orange blossom, even though she was extremely smitten with the Neroli! Another two surprises where her immediate connection and ease with more quirky essences, namely geranium and boronia… Both essences which I would have not thought of to begin with, and haven’t put them in my initial “sketch” for the perfume.

Moving to the base notes, we complied quite an overwhelming collection of notes. All the woodsy notes drew Eliza in like magic – sandalwood, agarwood, amyris, hinoki, frankincense… Everything woody seems to invoke a dreamy expression on her face as if she just found a vintage fabric she forgot she had and now she can finally find a use for it. But locally growing trees like fir and cedarwood made her even more excited.

This is why it’s so important to do the olfactory journey session, even though it takes a long time, through this process the client unlocks memories and discovers essences that played a big part of their lives but are long forgotten, or discovers new loves. And from the perfumer’s point of view, the seemingly random array of notes that the client picks poses a challenge. How can they work together? And will they work together? Which fragrance family could they belong to, if at all? These strange combinations, the imperfections so to speak, the most challenging pairings, are what make a perfume interesting and can make the whole difference between just another pretty smelling thing to a work of art.

Tomorrow I will be bringing all the essences we hand-picked in the 1st round last week, and we will sniff through them again to pick the ones that resonate most with Eliza and the spirit of Gentille Alouette. We have no more and no less than 30 essences that were chosen in the 1st round, so there is a lot of wonderful smells to go through. And this time I’m even more curious to see what stories and expressions they will bring out this session, because it will be a lot more focused.

We start from the top notes, which are easy and accessible, as they are very fleeting and familiar– citrus notes such as grapefruit and blood orange. Spices like star anise and fresh ginger root. Eliza surprises me with picking up lavender and telling me how much she loves it. Most people finds it calming and relaxing and associate it with the feeling of well-being. Here’s a twist and a turn to what I thought would be an herb-free perfume… She also likes rosewood, which shares some similarities with lavender, but is more light and floral and “perfumey”.

I was sure Eliza will love all the heart notes, but she ended up being more a base note gal. I knew she’s going to love rose and jasmine (and she did), but I was surprised she did not like tuberose and orange blossom, even though she was extremely smitten with the Neroli! Another two surprises where her immediate connection and ease with more quirky essences, namely geranium and boronia… Both essences which I would have not thought of to begin with, and haven’t put them in my initial “sketch” for the perfume.

Moving to the base notes, we complied quite an overwhelming collection of notes. All the woodsy notes drew Eliza in like magic – sandalwood, agarwood, amyris, hinoki, frankincense… Everything woody seems to invoke a dreamy expression on her face as if she just found a vintage fabric she forgot she had and now she can finally find a use for it. But locally growing trees like fir and cedarwood made her even more excited.

This is why it’s so important to do the olfactory journey session, even though it takes a long time, through this process the client unlocks memories and discovers essences that played a big part of their lives but are long forgotten, or discovers new loves. And from the perfumer’s point of view, the seemingly random array of notes that the client picks poses a challenge. How can they work together? And will they work together? Which fragrance family could they belong to, if at all? These strange combinations, the imperfections so to speak, the most challenging pairings, are what make a perfume interesting and can make the whole difference between just another pretty smelling thing to a work of art.

Tomorrow I will be bringing all the essences we hand-picked in the 1st round last week, and we will sniff through them again to pick the ones that resonate most with Eliza and the spirit of Gentille Alouette. We have no more and no less than 30 essences that were chosen in the 1st round, so there is a lot of wonderful smells to go through. And this time I’m even more curious to see what stories and expressions they will bring out this session, because it will be a lot more focused.
Back to the top