Oak Alley, originally uploaded by Lake Fred.

A little distraction from the Autumn Aromas theme that's been running here in the past few days... But still connected since this is about a perfume that combines both Meyer lemons and moss!

Based on Paula Stratton's description of the aromas New Orleans I have created yesterday the 4th and what may be the final version of what I call for now "New Orleans". After 2 first gloomy mods, I've created a 3rd one that was more of a cheerful twist on the same olfactory themes - magnolia, cypress, moss, vetiver, tea olive, citrus and a dash of herbs. Paula has told me in that "each of the 3 has successfully captured the magic, the mystery of New orleans before Katrina. Each is gorgeous".

But I felt that the last mod was the most hopeful and refined... I also thought that Meyer lemon element was important, even if subtle, in order to bring this perfume into completion. And I had to make Meyer lemon tincture, which I finally did and filtered.

This perfume is bright, mossy, delightful. It has the dryness of woods from the cedarmoss and vetiver and amyris and salty notes of seaweed and ambergris as a balancing backdrop for the floral notes are classically the Southern Belle's favourites (magnolia and tea olive - aka osmanthus). However, Paula's husband liked it a lot and even thought it to be the most masculine of the bunch... I think that if you love New Orleans, even if you haven't been there, you would appreciate this perfume. And gender has very little to do with it.

Heart notes: Tea Olive, Tea Rose, Magnolia, Neroli, Orange Blossom

Base notes: Haitian & Sri Lankan Vetiver, Cypress, Seaweed, Amyris, Cedarmoss, Ambergris

I was toying with different names, and decided finally to keep it very simple - not NOLA, but New Orleans. After all, this is what it's all about... I would love to hear any of your thoughts though - especially among my readers from New Orleans.

Bride of the Swamp: White Waterlily in Dark Water, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.

Paula Stratton olfactory description of New Orleans before Katrina has inspired me to do something more for New Orleans: create a new perfume especially for New Orleans. A perfume that will represent these beautiful fragrant moments of the city, and also help the city raise more funds for re-building it.

I read Paula’s description of the aroma of New Orleans, feeling all along the scent of the city surrounding me. A city which I haven’t visited yet, yet have affected my life without my notice. The music, the books, the food and finally –the perfumes of this city – have made their way to me on their own accord.

And now it’s time for me to do something in return. I don’t know when this perfume will be ready. I feel I do need to visit the city before I can truly create something in its name. But for now I am letting my imagination loose and just start pairing notes and building accords… And sniffing in between.

Paula’s letter to me about the aromas of New Orleans have provided me with excellent details, enough to start working and developing some ideas. And so I have been pairing magnolia with cypress, osmanthus with vetiver…

Some of the accords seem to be working beautifully:
Seaweed-Orange Blossom-Lemon
Vetiver-Vanilla-Cypress
Spikenard-Brown Oakmoss-Vetiver
Cassie-Osmnathus-Magnolia
Magnolia-Rose-Orris
Cypress-Osmanthus-Basil
Vanilla-Rose-Lemon
Lemon-Rosemary-Basil

Others are more problematic. Particularly using basil and rosemary with the florals. They balance the sweetness but also add complexity that takes away from the clarity of my olfactory vision for this perfume.

What do I want it to be? I want it to be beautiful. I want it to remind people of New Orleans. It has to have floral intensity that is uplifting and beautiful and at the same time the dirty depth of the swamps and the primordial ocean with its salty breath and the overall compliexity of something that gives life and consumes it at the same time. Fertile, rich soil that can grow these intense blossoms. Just like the waterlily in this image. That’s how I want it to be. The soil for the perfume has to be so dark as to create a backdrop upon which the florals will be strikingly bright and beautiful.

Oak Alley, originally uploaded by Lake Fred.

The following is an excerpt from a letter sent to me by Ms. Paula Stratton, a fine lady who describes herself as a "NOLA Magnolia which was transplanted to Atlanta, Georgia". I am very grateful to my friendship with her, not only because she is a fascinating perfume-friend, but also because it opened for me a window to an endangered culture I am intrigued by and at the same time unfamiliar with. And one aspect of culture is it's scent and the aromas of its surroundings. Paula writes about The Aroma of NOLA:

I hope you get to visit that dear city someday. It has a continuing tradition of French perfumery. I hope it's Creole /Southern European/ Caribbean black ambiance will remain as DH and I had known it. There art, music and perfumes were essential and incorporated into life, not considered extras. And the subtropical smells were intoxicating. On one side of the metro area was the muddy overflowing Mississippi, on the other salty Lake Pontchartrain. Bayous and canals snaked through the soft sinking land. The live oaks spread low and wide, hung with moss as chandeliers are with garlands of crystal. The tallest trees were often elegant cypresses and magnolias and they contributed their sublime odours to the heavy misty atmosphere. The scent of cypress in a warmish winter is something one experiences nowhere else except the coastal American South. The humidity traps the smells and intensifies them. I do miss the smell of cypress.

I miss the gorgeous water birds such as herons, both blue and white which one saw everywhere by the canals. Hearing their wings beat the air as they flew over my garden on their way back to the nearby park where they roosted at night marked the ends of our afternoons. We had a rose garden with many roses. I grew rosemary, mint, basil and thyme. We also had a Meyer lemon tree and in late spring the smells of citrus blossoms gave forth a sharp rich smell which blended with that of the roses, the herbs, the cypress trees next yard over and the magnolias in bloom down the street. In late spring too, we were getting the last piquant but sweet (sort of apricot like) scents from my two big healthy Tea Olive trees. You know that tea olives are actually chinese osmanthus. Vetiver grass grew along marshes and along roadsides. At least 40 varieties of palms both tall and small were everywhere. What they contributed to the overall smell environment I don't know. The live oaks and their moss, cypresses and tea olives contributed more.

The winds blowing mildly off the Gulf of Mexico (which was far down from the river contributed the most subtle kind of saltiness to the air. The lowhanging humidity made all these smells misty and kept them close to all our noses. And we seemed closer to the earth there. The ground is silty and has no rocks in it. It has a combination of a peaty, musty old dirt, and seashell smell to it. It is at the base of the smells I listed above.

Thank you for asking me to describe how New Orleans and the surrounding area smelled. I'm going to copy this and store it, because I know for me the smell of New Orleans was a major part of her beauty. Most tourists wouldn't 'get that' as many shortchange themselves by confining their explorations to Bourbon Street, which has a smell of stale beer and booze and foods in garbage bags behind the restaurants.

Oh, how I hope you can re-create New Orleans in a bottle! I will be sending you some samples of fragrances from Hove and Bourbon French soon. If certain qualities of Hove's Spanish Moss were combined with Bourbon French's Dark Gift, the result might approach the smell I've described. I think you might be able to do it!

Sincerely,

Paula