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Caléche

Caléche, Hermes' first fragrance, somehow eluded me and I never gave it much thought. Perhaps I was not sophisticated enough to appreciate it till now. I am easily blinded by ornate bottle designs of the Art Deco style, and mesmerized by the decadent stories that often accompanied them. Somewhere down the rabbit hole of exploring vintage floral bouquets, I have decided to give this one a try. The following are my impressions based on a vintage EDT I found in a flea market as a part of a fancy wooden coffrett, comprised of fragrances from several different classics, which based on the lineup, I assume is from the late 80s.  

Caléche is a refined, sophisticated and quite an old-fashioned perfume, in the sense that it is a Chypre with such strong floral leanings and a relatively heavy sprinkle of aldehydes on top, that it may be easily mistaken for an aldehydic floral fragrances. It reveals many layers of richness, and quality of materials that is rarely seen in the current releases makes a world of a difference - a sensation that lingers and is being felt throughout the perfume's performance. 

Caléche has a classic Chypre Floral structure, centred around sensual white florals that are softened and blurred by candied violets, and a generous dose of aged sandalwood which are perhaps the perfumer's Guy Robert's special signature. It gives off a feeling of luscious, smooth and luxurious silk fabric, dyed and printed with rich colours and romantic designs. 

The white flowers - gardenia, orange blossom, jasmine, ylang ylang, are all very tasteful and not at all vulgar. The sandalwood softening and enveloping like a silk wrap, and the sweetness from the flowers and violets balanced by additional, dry and sharp woody notes of vetiver and cypress.  

I think it is a classic case of Chypre Floral - even with its robust old-growth oakmoss, it still smells very floral. And anyone attempting to compose this genre, would find that when adding up so many white florals, they truly shine and take over the composition. Yet unlike other floral creations, there would be a lot of depth once the flowers fade out. Another recurring theme in many retro aldehydic florals (and Chypre) is a smooth and woody vetiver at the base. Here it especially smooth and soft, with all the sandalwood mentioned before. I am very curious to smell how the perfume extrait would play out with this one. 

Top notes: Aldehydes, Neroli, Bergamot, Mandarin

Heart notes: Orris, Ylang Ylang, Gardenia, Jasmine, Rose, Lily of the Valley

Base notes: Oakmoss, Sandalwood, Olibanum, Amber, Musk, Vetiver, Cypress, Tonka Bean, Cedar, Coumarin

Candy Lei

fallen plumeria'
Cuir de Gardenia smells more like a flower candy than leathery gardenia. Surprisingly straightforward for Aftelier, who usually pairs together two contrasting elements. This time around the sweet-floral aspects of gardenia are amplified by isolates that take away from the complexity of the gorgeous tiaré absolute it is built upon. I have smelled the absolute and it is a perfume on its own right - which is why I assume the perfumer tried to add as little as possible to it. The Tiare absolute combines a heady florally with a hint of sharp verdant aspect in the opening, and a buttery-creamy softness that balances it perfectly.

The choice of oil for the base is a bit at odds with the white floral theme - oil does not do justice to many white florals, and tend to hide them in their fat folds instead of allowing their shimmering beauty to shine. Also the intentional lack of top notes does not do this justice either, creating an effect of plunging into a decadent layer cake without any notice. Ethyl maltol (the  same cotton-candy molecule that gave Angel its powerful chocolatey effect), Ethyl Phenylacetate (providing a sweet pea-like fragrance), which further sweetens it and perhaps barely accentuates the naturally occurring green aspects - they still end up completely buried in this sugary floral lei. Thankfully, I'm not smelling an overdose of methyl anthranilate (we've already smelled what that does in Chanel's Gardénia). I'm also surprised to smell no jasmine or vanilla absolute, both "the usual suspects" for a gardenia composition, and could have worked well here without taking away from the tiaré.

The castoreum, which is supposed to give it the "cuir" and interesting balance is barely there, which is a shame. Because gardenia and leather could be beautiful together. Sometimes when we are too careful to lose an essence by adding other elements to it, we end up doing just that.

When all the sugary isolates fade away, there is a return of the tiaré absolute, but only a shadow of it as the oil absorbs much of the scent and creates a different aura to it. I really wish I could smell it in alcohol base. I am certain it would do it more justice.

Carnal Flower

Pink orchid 011

Carnal Flower opens with a slightly fresh fruity note and hints of green (melon and eucalyptus). Than it’s mostly tuberose with a full-bodied, sweetened orange blossom, much in the same vein as that note in Lys Mediteranee. Even the base is the same to my nose – supposed to be musk, but I smell a balsamic-woody sweetness similar to peru balsam essential oil (which smells very different than the crude balsam). There isn’t much coconut in it, but it does help improve the initial impression and add creaminess to the tuberose.

I like this a lot and it’s easy to wear (I worn it on a very warm day and it was never cloying at all). However, this is not my favourite tuberose, and in the light of Lys Mediteranee being so similar, I do feel a tad disappointed from this installation in the Editions de Parfums

Top notes: Melon, Eucaliptus, Ylang Ylang, Salycilates
Heart notes: Tuberose, Orange Blossom, Jasmine
Base notes: Coconut, Musks

Enfleurage Experiments

Enfleurage Fat
This spring, I have been experimenting with vegan enfleurage (the traditional enfleurage uses animal fats - ideally a combination of lard and tallow; which as a vegetarian I'm not interested in using). I tried different vegan fats (oils that are solid at room temperature), which I slabbed on a stainless steel pan with a lid (the kind you'd use, steeped in a hot batch, in catering carts to keep the food warm). I smeared both the lid and the tray with fat, so that the flowers get encapsulated by the scent-absorbging fats, an you can truly capture some of the "headspace" of the perfume. After all, this is what enfleurage is all about!

I tried different fats - such as palm, shea butter, coconut oil, etc. with varying results and also different challenges in the process, which I feel compelled to share here in case you want to experiment with your own enfleurage with your flowers.

I tried many different flowers - whatever was in bloom. My first fantasy was to use the Calicotome villosa flowers (they look very similar to gorse flowers), but they bloomed very early and I didn't have my tray then yet. Then I was hoping to get the broom; but I could not figure out yet what is the best time of the day to pick them. This was a crucial detail, because I don't have them growing close by, and didn't want them to spoil on the way to the tray. A technical difficulty that I could not anticipate was that the fats melt very fast if you take the tray out with you to harvest. And then you end up with some serious problems (such as the fats on the lid drip off to the bottom).  And that is defeating the whole purpose...
First Enfleurage Experiment
So, in the end, I created mixed trays of flowers, whatever I had on hand that was blooming, and paid close attention to the time of the day when it's best to capture them. Some are best early in the morning (not too many, actually), others you'll need to wait till the sun is shining (late morning). The Trachelospermum jasminoides flowers give their very best incensed-ambery-jasmine in the afternoon. And some, like the gardenias and Brunflesia, truly are best at night. The sweetpeas and Buddleijas davidii are most forgiving. But all are also favoured by tiny, minuscule bugs, which I found some ways to reduce, but very few ways to completely avoid completely.

First Enfleurage Experiment

After changing the flowers for several batches, of the course of a week or more I got what is technically called "Pommade". This is the fats saturated with the flowers' perfume. But to get to this phase you got to be utterly careful not to let the flowers overstay their welcome. You must change them every two days. Also, you must pay close attention to not allow any mould to form. The problem is, there is not a lot of ways to know when the mould will form - until it actually started. The literature I found about enfleurage talks about only week-long processing of the flowers, changing them every two days. But the fats did not have that much fragrance after a week. Also, mould could form within that week, depending not he amount of moisture in the atmosphere - and in the flowers.

Pommade from Enfleruage

The pommade is then washed with alcohol, or to be more exact: it is melted over low heat bain-marie with alcohol. Allowed to macerate for additional ten weeks. Then chilled and filtered. What you see in the image below is the warmed fats in the alcohol (on the left) and the spent flowers (the beaker on the right). The spent flowers can be composted, or extracted with absolute to create an "absolute from chassis".
Making Extrait from Enfleurage

The resulting alcohol  is really a perfume - alcohol with the plants essences in them. This is what you'll find in many old formula book labeled as "extrait of tuberose", "extrait of jasmine", and so on and so forth. This is not the complete process, but this is probably where a home enfleurageur should stop, to avoid unnecessary loss of material. And especially, if you're intending to use this in alcoholic perfumes anyway. Serious (read: commercial) enfleurage manufacturers would go on to evaporate the alcohol (preferably with a still, and in such way that they can re-use it), and will be left with an uber concentrated absolute from enfleurage.




Happy Summer Solstice!



Happy Summer Solstice!

Scents that mean summer to me: Splitting watermelons and slicing fresh rhubarb; tomato plants and heirloom tomatoes carrying that tomato-leaf scent in their still-green parts; suntan lotion mingled with poolside chlorine, vanilla and banana flavoured ice cream bars (the cheaper the better), night blooming flowers (Cestrum nocturnum, honeysuckle and jasmine), cut flowers with intoxicating aroma filling the house - white and pink peonies, peppery white and yellow freesias, but tuberose after dark being the queen of them all.  Dewy gardenias and frangipannis, reminiscent of happy days by the beach - and of course, endless amounts of salty sea breeze.


When summer start hinting about getting serious at all, I bring out some of the bottles that are waiting patiently 10 months out of the year, making their debut with much needed TLC:

Cooling off with hydrating fruits: 
Citrus are famous for their cooling, refreshing qualities in the summertime. But they are not the only fruit-based scents that I reach for in the summer. Figs, cantaloupes and mango seem to be making an appearance in my olfactory fruit-bowl.

Philosykos
There is nothing like green figs, and when you can't have them - the longing for them makes the heart even fonder. Philosykos makes me feel as if I'm sitting under a fig tree by a cool brook in the Galilee, and picking ripe green figs, their milky sap dripping off their stems (and that's the part you want to avoid, but is represented by a green coconutty note).

Un Jardin Apres la Mousson
This singular perfume is simultaneously cool and refreshing yet at the same time juicey and sweet. I love the contrast between cantaloupe and the cool vetiver, fresh ginger and coriander.

Eau d'Orange Verte
To a classic eau de cologne frehsness, there is a hint of green mango added (in the new formulation, which isn't as bad as I feared). I still stick to my

Orcas
There is no scent that screams "West Coast" more than Orcas. I dreamed it while vacationing in Tofino and fine tuned it when spending an entire summer at SunsetBeach. Its main citrus component is lime - a surprisingly coconutty citrus note. Paired with seaweed and rosemary and smoothed out by violets

Tropical Island Vacation: 
Unless you count my dreams (and daydreaming) - I never did go on a tropical island vacation. But this fantasy is an inevitable part of my summer enjoyment, which includes spending as much time at the beach as possible. 
 Terra Cotta Eau de Sous le Vent
Supposedly a tan enhancer, I wear this for the scent alone. It's like a beach vacation in a bottle. And even if mine usually happen 10 minutes away at the beach down the hill, and go for only a few hours at a time - it creates an illusion that I actually went away somewhere exotic.

Azuree de Soleil Body Oil 
Who said you can't be sophisticated at the beach? This European suntan lotion inspired scent is much more than that. It's very light yet has depth. The white florals are toned down, and unusual resinous notes and subtle musk are what make it so charming.

Vanille Banane 
Just like the banana ice cream bars we'd have at the beach as kids. The flavour is fake, but oh so charming. Banana esters rule! 

Tamya
Plumeria tucked behind the ear, yellow sarong, flip flops and a spritz of this subtle beach scent - frangipanni, ylang ylang, cedar and soft musk and hint of vanilla make it a feel like an authentic tropical getaway. Cassis and yuzu add a fruity lift, reminiscent of ripe mango.

Midsummer Night: It is not surprising that on summer evenings I tend to reach to white florals. Tuberose, gardenia and jasmine perfumes are at forefront of my evening summer wardrobe.

Opium Fleur de Shanghai is a more subdued, easy to wear spicy-oriental with magnolia as an added twist to the original rich formula. There is still plenty of spice and resinous goodness (myrrh especially), but it can be worn with dignity even in heat and humidity.

Songes
Ylang ylang, frangipani and jasmine over a soft ambery base. Songes is the roundest, most pampering of all the Annick Goutal perfumes, with no sharp edges or heady floralcy which prevents me to be able to fully connect to the rest.

Moon Breath
Soft, smooth yet meditative, I love wearing this incensey white-floral in an evening while enjoying the potted star jasmine and burning a good incense on my balcony on those rare balmy summer nights we get here maybe twice a year if we're lucky...

GiGi
Luscious gardenia soliflore, that makes me feel like I have the real flower pinned to my hair. It's heady and rounded, distinctively gardenia and makes me feel happy.

What about you? What scents do you crack open when the summer arrives?

Read my previous years Summer Lists: 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013.

And now - off to the beach! 
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