Smoke is the origin of perfume: an ancient ritual of burning resins to create and purify mental space and exalt one’s soul to connect to the divine. By fire and alchemy physical matter (resins, spices) transform into spirit through smoke.

Burning loose incense is one of my most favourite ways to experience and enjoy fragrance. There’s something magical about the transformation of golden frankincense tears into smoke. Sparks fly when the charcoal is lit on fire, and that’s just the beginning of the excitement. Once the heat takes over the charcoal, a few precious resinous tears are placed on the ember. At first, they just rest quietly with their majestic dusted gold appearance. But soon enough, they can’t stand the heat any longer and begin to sweat their perfect aroma into the air, which turns from invisible vapours in the first few moments into smoldering smoke the next.

Frankincense has a way of affecting the human mind, coaxing it into relaxation and a meditative state of consciousness. The mere act of burning incense connects one to different elements of nature: fire, wood, metal. It gives me a sense of connection to my ancestors, the deserts of the Middle East and ancient rituals that were meant to bring people closer to themselves and closer to the gods. When I burn incense, a fransformation occurs in front of my eyes, taking over my space with its smoky perfume that is at once balsamic, sweet, woody, resinous, fresh and calming. All that remains to do is to let go and devote oneself to the experience this ancient perfume

With Liquid Fume I tried to create a perfume that captures the experience of burning incense, within the liquid medium of grain spirits. Without any matches or charcoal and real smoke, I tried to bring a sensation of warmth, dryness and the rich, resinous balsamaic odour of burning frankincense. I tried to imagine the most dense incense condensed in a bottle, with the warmth of embers and the dripping honey of melted frankincense tears… This is what I hope Liquid Fume will be for you.

Frankincense is of course the core of this perfume. But other notes were added for bringing out different qualities of an incense burning ritual: Virginian cedarwood and guiacwood were chosen for their smokiness, liquidamber for its molden-gold sweetness, helicrysum and labdanum absolutes for their rich, sweet honeyed and resinous qualities, and sweet orange to brighten everything up and remind us of the fresh, almost citrusy aspects of frankincense.

Top notes:
Sweet Orange, Virginian Cedarwood, Copaiba Balsam

Heart notes:
Liquidambar, Guiacwood, Atlas Cedarwood

Base notes:
Golden Frankincense, Labdanum, Helicrysum Absolute

Liquid Fume one-of-a-kind perfume is available on AyalaMoriel.com or via Etsy.

Seaweed, originally uploaded by Ed Wenn.

My brief yet effective encounter with Shaw TV's Urban Rush hosts Mike and Fiona is an example for how different creating custom perfume for different people can be. Among custom-perfume seekers, I think there are two main kinds of people: There is the fragrance connoisseur (knowingly or unknowingly) that indulges in every moment of the process without necessarily knowing what they want the perfume to smell in the end; and than there is the very determined, goal-oriented person who know exactly what they want to achieve by the end of the process.

Fiona knew exactly what she wanted: a perfume to replace her favourite of 11 years, now sadly discontinued. She researched the notes, and came up with top notes of citron, rosewood and cardamom, heart notes of jasmine and lily of the valley, and a base of musk, vanilla and amber. And sure enough, a fan containing these notes (except for the lily of the valley, which does not yield its scent successfully to any form of distillation) brought back some of the spicy floriental characteristics of her signature scent. Sweet yet spicy and bold and delicious.

Mike, on the other hand, always goes au naturelle and seemed to be generally unaware of having any particular interest in fragrance (unless someone else is wearing it). From lack of a better word, he guessed he likes “musky” scents. But we quickly found out that he really “clicked” with my archetypal masculine scents ArbitRary and l’Herbe Rouge, and fell in love instantly with juniper, key lime, Seville and Kashmir lavender and liatrix. Even though there was hay and oakmoss and patchouli in both ArbitRary and l’Herbe Rouge he did not enjoy the notes on their own. Just before we run out of time, I decided to pull out a little unusual note - seaweed essential oil. To everyone’s surprise, this was an immediate love, and added an incredible lightness of sea breeze to the other herbaceous and woody notes.

There is never a right way or a wrong way in making your own custom scent. But each way is different, and walking a different path or following a different approach will definitely create a completely different scent in the end. The result depends on the person's sense of adventure and willingness to take olfactory risks; and ultimately - on the perfumer's listening abilities and attention to detail as well as intuition. I'm very curious to see how these two perfumes might turn out!

Now to the “contest”: Guess Fiona’s lost perfume correctly and you’ll be entered to win a bottle of hand-painted Magnolia Petal 30ml spray bottle.

* Enter the contest simply by adding a comment to this post. Contest closes March 21st.