SWEAT AND THE OSMANTHORCHID ACCORD

Written Friday afternoon, 8/17: This afternoon when I ran it was the first time in ages that I’ve really sweat. The temperature was over 90F (32C) and the humidity was relatively high (65% - I looked it up), just pushing over the threshold for really getting soaked in sweat when exercising. The sun was shining and there was heat radiating up from the asphalt. As I sit here writing this, the sweat is running down every part of my body like rivers. My shorts and tank top are soaked. I love it! Of course I’m looking forward to a nice shower at some point, but right now I’m just loving the feel of it being summer. We have so little warm weather here that it’s a novelty, just like fog and rain in the desert.

Before I went running I was working on a new floral accord for a fragrance in progress. It’s going to have a very earthy base with a floral heart, but no roses, carnations, or standard “white flowers”. I wanted the new accord to be a hybrid between a generic orchid base and osmanthus, so I’d been poring over chemical analyses of weird orchid species’ headspaces and osmanthus flowers fresh, picked, in concrete, and in absolute, trying to identify the main players common to all of them. I had a basic orchid-ish accord already, the sort of just-at-the-corner-of-your consciousness scent that would belong to one of those legions of non-showy orchids like the one in the photo. This afternoon I added the first osmanthus framework. When I put a dab of the mix on my skin it was way too strong and “unmelded” at first, but as it dried down, I smelled the possibilities. About an hour into the drydown I went for my run. By that point I was thrilled because I could smell the peachy note that’s in osmanthus, with no peachy stuff having been added. It blew my mind to think that there are so many pathways to the same olfactory experience. After sweating enough to wash away just about anything, the scent is still on my skin. So far so good!  …

Written today, 8/18: Later on that evening when I went up to my “lab”, the room was full of the flowery, peachy sillage of my experiment. I still have a lot of tweaking to do, but I think I have basically what I want. I applied some more this morning, and it's mellower than it was yesterday. It still starts out way too strong, but it's a concentrate, after all. It's back to the usual cool and cloudy weather, so I'll get to experience it in a very different context. 

[Desert dunes photo from Wikimedia. The Dactylorrhiza fuchsii grows in my garden.]

SWEET ALYSSUM: THE PERFUME NOTE

The second step in making Alyssum’s bespoke perfume was to recreate the scent of sweet alyssum flowers. Turns out it was a lot easier than I thought it would be to make an accord that approximates the scent of the actual flowers. As I wrote in a post last fall, sweet alyssum has a strong sweet fragrance that’s best described as a mixture of honey, honeycomb, and pollen. It’s floral, gourmand and edgy all at the same time.

I was surprised to find that I could recreate the basic scent using only a few synthetic materials that provide a mild basic floral scent, a honey scent, and the sharper honeycomb-pollen scent. It really does mimic the fragrance of sweet alyssum! Of course I have to wait a while to see how the materials blend together, then tweak it if necessary, but it’s close.

The big question that remains is whether anyone would want to wear it in a perfume as is, or whether the sweet alyssum accord will need to be embellished and made larger, broader, and deeper than life. This will depend partly on what Alyssum thinks when she samples it, and partly how it meshes with the other parts of the perfume. I think integrating it with the woody, smoky base is going to be the biggest challenge.

The cedar accord I made has mellowed nicely, and smells just like the cedar prototype I was aiming for. Smoke I already have. The main components are just about ready to test.

Since my first post on sweet alyssum, I’ve examined the plants in the neighbor’s garden more thoroughly and learned that it not only comes in white, but in purple, pink, and everything in between. The flowers all smell pretty much the same regardless of color.