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Gaucho’s Journey: The Spark of Two Flintstones



The creation of every one of my perfumes is signified by a succession of events that typically evolves as follows: a spark of inspiration lights a fire that feeds itself - an unexplained desire and longing, which in my case grows stronger and stronger the further I am away from reaching it. It is best defined as an obsession. And as most obsessions do, they are followed by a compulsive behaviour that is designed to settle that obsessive thought and bring it to peace and resolution.

Gaucho started with Steely Dan’s album of that name. I will let you on one secret: if there is any band I would seriously consider acting like a groupie around (well, I don’t think I would waste my time considering if I would ever meet them in person…) it’s Steely Dan. And it has very little to do with how the two musicians that form that band look (both are certainly not what you would typically refer to as good looking). There is something oddly powerful and particularly mysterious about their music. And lyrics. Which leave a lot to the imagination and therefore are both seductive and personable.

But let’s get back to Gaucho and why it stirred a perfume inside me. It is not particularly the theme song, but rather the general mood of that album that to me is the epitome of that distant/internally charged mood, and somehow the songs are all connected to each other. Most of the songs in Gaucho create an atmosphere of emotional distance that is disturbingly heart aching, as if you are watching a film, only that this film is about yourself.

The other part of the inspiration was that of smoky woods from South America. Namely Guiacwood, though this is not the only unusual South American wood I had in mind. The smoky, honeyed waxy rosiness made me want to create a perfume that smells different, and will evoke the proud loneliness of a gaucho in the middle of the deserted grasslands, surrounded only by animals and a vast silence not to be disturbed by a word but only the sounds of whispering grass, small explosions of branches caught on fire, the cries of animals...

There an than, between those two flintstones - the urban sound of Steely Dan and the woody essences from South America - flew the spark that started the search for my Gaucho perfume…

What's New for Spring 2008?

Spring 2008 will bring two new perfumes from Ayala Moriel: Gaucho and Gigi.
Gaucho will be accompanied by a matching tea, based on Yerba Mate.
Gigi is a limited-edition gardenia soliflore, the newest addition to The Language of Flowers - Ayala Moriel's Soliflore collection.
The following posts will be dedicated to Gaucho - the perfume and the tea. Gaucho was a particularly difficult to conceive perfume, for various reasons, and I would like to share with you some of my experience of this 6 year journey that took me to create it.
There will also be some guest appearance blog entries by Dawna Ehman, who created the Gaucho Perfumed Tea. So tune in for an exciting series surrounding mate, bitter herbs and the story behind the scenes of creating this perfume...

Dark Angel


hvönn og sólarlag, originally uploaded by saraella.

Angelica root absolute, on the other hand, is a completely different story. The specimen I will be talking about was not only grown in a different soil, it is also a different species: Angelica sinensis. It was grown in China, where Angelica has been used for thousands of years for its medicinal properties and is almost as important as ginseng. The Chinese doctors use as many as 10 different kinds of angelica, mostly to treat women’s fertility issues but also to strengthen the spirit (Julia Lawless, Encyclopedia of Essential Oils).

This particular angelica absolute is dark in colur and semi-viscous in texture. It has an incredibly musky and smoky fragrance and I can see it working beautifully in spicy and warm orientals and leathers. Another use for angelica is in chypre and fougere compositions, but I feel that the root oils might be more fitting for these uses. Strangely, it shares some similarities to immortelle – living on the borderline between herbaceous and bizarrely sweet.

I’ve used it recently in two of my mods for a perfume called Gaucho which I’ve been working on for the past 7 years. Although it seemed to have provided an interesting counter points to the other elements in that perfume (dry-green and coumarin-bittersweet) it did not provide a breakthrough. Plus I made the mistake of also using the angelica root oil with the celery dryout (which is definitely not what I was looking for!). The angelica absolute on its own might just be the answer for an animalic musky note sans the lactones sensitization issues that costus poses. It’s by no menas a substitute for costus, but it may provide the aspects of costus I am wishing for in this composition. After all, being named after a Gaucho just asks for some animalic elements!

So what's the next step? Perhaps pairing some angelica root absolute with my first mod for a champaca soliflore. Or as a base for a peppery-leathery composition. When the fear of a note is lifted many doors are opened…
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