DISPENSING PERFUME: SPRAY, ROLL, OR DAB?

I did not intend for today’s post to be a rant against malfunctioning perfume sprayers. Unfortunately the little sample sprayer that Xerjoff’s Dhajala came in was broken or malfunctioning, so I struggled with it, finally managing to coax out a few uncontrolled dribbles to test. This is why I hate sprayers, especially the crimped or crammed ones. With a malfunctioning screw-top sprayer, the top can easily be removed to dab the perfume, or the sprayer cap can be replaced altogether. The Xerjoff samples are in the cram-top sprayer vials where the sprayer is pushed tightly down over the vial, making it really difficult to remove. Crimp-top sprayers are even worse because it takes manly tools to get them off if they break. A more civilized way is to remove the spray top and try to get at the perfume through the top of the tiny piece of tubing that feeds into the sprayer, but that’s not very satisfactory. Sprayers almost seem like planned obsolescence. Sprayer breaks, throw away 100 ml bottle with remaining 90 ml of perfume and buy a new one. Surely I’m not the only one who has encountered a faulty spray bottle or vial.

This leads to the whole issue of the best ways to package and apply perfume. Many times I read comments on the forums indicating that people are squeamish about dabbing with their finger because they are afraid of contaminating their perfume with microorganisms, skin cells, or some other unspecified, unspeakable, unsanitary things. Really, folks, how much filth do you have on your hands? How much of it will actually get into your perfume bottle? Do you know that 95% ethanol will kill and sterilize almost anything that might make its way in, including those poor little stray skin cells that are dead to begin with? Is a dipstick or rollerball really any better, since it touches your skin anyway, probably much more vigorously than your finger would, and simply gives the illusion of being dainty and “hands-off”?

I will concede that some things are better sprayed, like eau de Cologne, some eaux de toilette, and anything that’s so weak that you have to saturate yourself with it to get a decent effect. Annick Goutal’s Eau d’Hadrien comes to mind as a perfect example. For those sorts of preparations I would use a sprayer, not caring how much I dispensed or where it landed since it will not have much smell to begin with and will be gone in an hour anyway. Otherwise, I really prefer to dab perfume. Sprayers almost always dispense too much, too erratically, in a shotgun approach. They malfunction and shoot out much more or less than intended - usually more, so I end up reeking or scrubbing. They break. This is why most of my collection is samples or minis - they generally come in open containers that I can dab from in small amounts. I hate rollerballs with a passion, just because they’re a pointless and unnecessary barrier between me and the perfume.

In deciding how to package my perfumes, I’ve come up with a sort of compromise based on my own likes and dislikes and what I know the general public is used to and wants. There will be no rollerballs. The pure perfume will be in small “splash” bottles for controlled dabbing, since it’s strong. The EdP concentration will be available in both splash bottles and spray bottles, so customers can have their choice. The spray bottles are all screw-top, not crammed or crimped so that if a sprayer should malfunction there is still easy access to the perfume, and the sprayer can be replaced (I intend to provide replacement parts, should this happen). The sprayer can even be refilled if the perfume is used up. It will be interesting to see which packaging formats are most popular.

PONDEROSA PINE AND ARIZONA

I first encountered ponderosa pines many years ago when hiking in northern Arizona, in the hills around Prescott. Ponderosa pines are not only beautiful, majestic, awe-inspiring beings, but the mature trees have a special feature. If you put your nose up close to the trunk on a warm, sunny day they give off a fragrance that’s sort of like a mixture of vanilla and tarragon, but has its own special ponderosa pine quality.

Last year I was fortunate enough to find ponderosa pine essential oil for sale. It’s made from the needles, not the trunks of trees in South America, so supposedly “no trees are killed” to make it, although I do have to wonder if it’s a by-product of the lumber industry. The scent is absolutely wonderful, so I was immediately compelled to use it in a perfume, which I have christened Arizona. Ponderosa pine essential oil is fairly volatile, so it acts as a top to mid note in perfumery. I combined it with a base of juniper and resins, added a bouquet of desert plant scents including chaparral and sage, and sweetened it up a tiny bit with mimosa absolute, reminiscent of blooming acacia trees. The result is a wonderfully aromatic blend that is all natural, but strong and long-lasting. I think most people would characterize it as a quintessentially “masculine” scent.

This is going to be one of the initial selection of fragrances that I offer on my website, the beginning of a series that I call “Scents of Place”. After I did a quick and dirty, 5-minutes-in-Photoshop label design for Arizona, I saw that Andy Tauer’s label for L’Air du Desert Marocain is alarmingly similar, so I’ll probably have to modify the Arizona label.

It was a wonderful surprise to find that this all-natural scent’s sillage and longevity are comparable to those of many synthetic fragrances, and that the perfume essence works beautifully to scent soap. Many natural oils have a way of evaporating out of soap even before it’s used, so have to be supplemented with synthetics. The ponderosa pine oil, combined with the other oils that are in Arizona, seems very stable. At my house we’re currently using Arizona soap made months ago, and it not only scents the air while showering, it leaves a light scent on the skin afterwards.

[The ponderosa pine photo is from Wikimedia and shows an oddly shaped specimen]

LIVING IN A PARANOID SOCIETY

Today is rant day. A weekend’s worth of shows went without any horrible screw-ups. I’m through teaching for a little while. Yesterday I actually had time to water the greenhouse before all the plants died, and I was able to get a couple of nights sleep. I suddenly have the energy to get on my soapbox and rant!

Paranoia, as we all know, is an irrational fear. It seems humans have a deep-seated need to fear something, and that need is not going to go away any time soon. If our lives are so safe and comfortable that we don’t need to fear plagues, famines, attacks from wild animals, or war on our very doorstep, we find other things to fear. If the things we should fear are too big to be comprehensible, like an undersea oil leak spilling so much for so long that it, together with the garbage we have dumped, kills all of the oceans on the planet, or humans continuing to reproduce exponentially so that we eventually wipe out every other form of life and starve to death while wallowing in our own garbage and excrement, we find small things to fear - things over which we feel that we, personally, can have some control. Things like razor blades in apples at Halloween. “Germs”. Being sued. “Chemicals” in perfume.

Every product comes with a warning label lest someone should misuse it and sue the manufacturer. “Do not put the plastic bag over your head and keep it there for so long that you suffocate. Do not drink the drain cleaner or wash your hands with it. Do not put your fingers in the food grinder while it is running. Do not touch the heating element when the space heater is on. …”, and so on. Everyone is assumed to be an imbecile with no common sense just waiting to sue the manufacturer of a product that they have misused.

People have become so paranoid about “germs” that they continually wash or “sanitize” their hands in a way that could only be characterized as obsessive-compulsive. The medical profession has been so eager to prescribe antibiotics “just in case” that a whole host of mutated microorganisms have arisen, ones that are resistant to all of the commonly used antibiotics. That is far more scary than any of the “germs” that our immune systems evolved to deal with.

There are entire websites devoted to bashing “chemicals” in perfumes. If not chemicals, what, pray tell, are we supposed to put in perfumes? What are we supposed to wear, eat, or drink? Everything in this world, including the very people who fear chemicals in perfumes, is made up of chemical building blocks. Our own bodies contain things that would make us shudder in horror if we saw the whole unpronounceable list of ingredients written out on a label. The same people who claim to be allergic to perfumes blithely go about inhaling air fresheners, fabric softeners, deodorants, shampoos, and hand sanitizer gels that contain more cheap “chemicals” than any of the perfumes they object to. Ah … but they are using these products out of fear that their garbage will stink, their laundry will be less than fresh and fluffy, their armpits will smell like sweat, their hair will be oily, or their hands might have “germs” crawling on them. Using a scented product for pleasure does not fit with the puritan ethic of using things only out of necessity or fear.

Maybe we should concentrate more on big fears and not worry about the small stuff. Wear good perfume while we think about how to stop war, overpopulation, and global warming. If we can't stop Rome from burning, at least enjoy a tasty meal, a glass of good wine, a fine perfume, and some lively violin music on the way out.

SEAWEED TINCTURE

For a while now I have been fascinated by the possibility of making a perfume that truly reflects the scents of the ocean and the beach (no calone!). One of the components that I’ve been investigating is seaweed - the fresh, green, salty sort that is exposed at low tide. The first stage of my exploration was to buy a small quantity of seaweed absolute, made from Fucus vesiculosus, manufactured in France. The absolute smells wonderful, but it’s prohibitively expensive to buy retail and the company that sells it wholesale apparently does not respond to e-mail.

The other day when I was taking the ferry, I decided to go down to the beach and explore the seaweed situation, since there’s always plenty washed up, drying in the sun and emitting various kinds of odors. I gathered a big bag of seaweed from the beach, and then noticed that there was a lot of live, blackish-green seaweed growing on the rocks. I gathered some of that too, and when I got home, looked it up to see what it was. Bingo - Fucus vesiculosus, the same stuff that’s in the imported absolute, growing practically in my own backyard. It’s possible that some of it may be a hybrid with Fucus spiralis, but both are closely related species commonly known as bladderwrack. The exact ID doesn’t matter as long as it has a pleasant, ocean-like odor.

I dried the bladderwrack in the sun for a few days and then crumbled some of it into alcohol to make a tincture. Wow! It’s better than I had ever hoped. Not only does it smell as good as or better than the absolute, it is just as strong and the alcohol turns a beautiful, clear, emerald green. My plan is to make the perfume and use the seaweed tincture as the alcohol carrier. This way I’ll have a bright green perfume with a hint of sweet and salty seaweed. Now I have to figure out what the other beachy components will be, but I think that now that I have the seaweed tincture, with a reliable supply barring any undersea oil leaks, the biggest obstacle has been overcome.

CATTLEYA LUTEOLA

This cute little orchid is blooming in my sunroom this week. It’s an amazingly tough plant that breaks out into clusters of frilly light yellow flowers every spring no matter how much I abuse it by failing to water it when I should and exposing it to light levels that would kill many other orchids. The most astounding thing about it is not its hardiness or its reliability in blooming, but its fragrance. These flowers start out smelling like the original Fendi for the first few days but end up smelling just like Chanel Egoiste for the rest of their life. No kidding. Egoiste, teak and all. There’s no way I could make a perfume to duplicate the scent of these flowers because Fendi and Chanel have already done it by accident, and done it almost perfectly. Now I have to wonder just what sorts of insects are attracted to Fendi and Egoiste.

OPENING NIGHT

This week has been stressful, to say the least. Not only is it the last week of the academic year, but the play that I’m directing (A Gulag Mouse by Arthur Jolly) opens tonight in Seattle. The week leading up to opening is stressful enough when it proceeds without incident, but we lost an actress during the middle of rehearsals and replaced her with another one who was doing a fabulous job getting up to speed. On Wednesday she called me saying that she was in the hospital having major surgery! As director, I was familiar enough with the play, but watching and doing are two very different things. I did a blitz-through on the lines, blocking, and fight choreography, put together a substitute costume, and hope that I can stumble my way through the run.

As I try to de-stress after dress rehearsal last night while I dis-tress my now slightly torn costume with oil and bleach and a run through the washing machine before taking it out to the driveway, I can take a few minutes to reflect on scents and the theatre. Theatres themselves often do not smell very good because they’re old and dusty and filled with set pieces, props and costumes in various stages of decomposition. Overlaid on that there may be new (or recycled) wood and paint from the sets. Dressing rooms smell like make-up, hairspray, and whatever food or drink is being consumed. Sometimes sweaty bodies and clothes are added to the mix if the performance involves much physical activity.

I generally take these odors for granted until the show is over for the night and I leave the theatre, going from the noisy, bright, warm, emotionally charged atmosphere of the stage into the silent, dark void of the late-night streets with pieces of trash blowing in the cold salt wind and a light mist hitting my face. No matter how many times I make this transition it’s always a moving experience. It feels almost like birth, going from the close embrace of a warm womb out into the cold, indifferent world. Or maybe it’s more like death, going from the sensation-rich hustle and bustle of life into black nothingness. Maybe they’re one and the same. Two sides of the same coin. The top and bottom, right and left of the circle.

MASCULINE AND FEMININE FRAGRANCES

I’ve always been puzzled by the concept of “men’s” and “women’s” perfumes. Today I’m wearing the men’s version of Guerlain Vetiver and loving it. I haven’t tried the women’s version, but I can’t imagine it would be better than this. Guerlain Vetiver is similar to another “men’s” vetiver fragrance that I like to wear, The Different Company’s Sel de Vetiver, but richer. I also prefer the “men’s” version of Amouage Jubilation XXV, which, to me, is like blackberries, incense and amber. What’s masculine about that? Other “men’s” scents that I’ve recently tried and loved are By Kilian Straight to Heaven, with its strong retsina note, and Knize Ten, with its leather notes.

So what is it that makes a scent masculine, other than marketing? I suppose it’s the absence of in-your-face florals, but I see no reason why men shouldn’t wear flowery scents if they like them. They would be far preferable to the typical drugstore “men’s cologne” scent composed of synthetic lavender, cedar, and all too often my olfactory nemesis, “teak”. I used to work with someone who would come and sit in my office reeking of these things, contaminating the air for hours afterward. I really wish he had switched to roses or jasmine or orange blossoms or gardenias.

I’m not overly fond of true floral scents except on actual flowers. They have their place in creating perfume accords, especially the orchid flower scents that I’ve been experimenting with, but for my own enjoyment I like herbal notes, resins, incense, amber, woods, musks, leather, and the occasional odd and unexpected note. Does this sound like masculine scents? Sometimes I like fruity notes, especially black currant and fig, or gourmand notes like vanilla, coconut and spices. Now we’re getting into “unisex” territory.

In formulating my own fragrances, I really don’t think about whether they’re masculine or feminine, just about the concept and how to realize it. I do not plan to market them as being for men or women, but rather let people smell them and judge for themselves whether they’d wear them.