"The Belle Epoque" By Luca Turin
While smelling some leather perfumes recently, I looked up quinoline, the molecule that gives them their bitter, distinctive smell: it was discovered by Zdenko von Skraup in 1880. Small wonder they call it the Belle Epoque! The last fifty years of the long nineteenth century (1789-1914) gave us half of physics and mathematics, and a huge slice of chemistry, the latter mostly from Germany and Austria. The perfumery timeline is amazing: between 1868 (coumarin, the smell of fougères) and 1908 (undecalactone, the peach in Mitsouko) chemists discovered all the bones of modern perfumery, about fifty synthetics that defined the Golden Age. Very few of these chemicals were found by fragrance specialists, and almost all by accident. Chemists were just busy making things, and some of them smelled good and made their creators (or their employers) very rich.
In those days, there were no regulatory costs, no safety tests. If you put the thing in a fragrance and nobody dropped dead (no one ever did), you had a product. How things have changed. Today the cost of worldwide certification of a new product, before you find out whether anyone even likes it, is upwards of € 1M. Unless it is a blockbuster, you’ll get your money back fairly slowly. Few completely new molecules are being released. Maybe the industry has entered an age of diminishing returns. The perfumer’s palette is supposedly too large already, at somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 materials, and all the big composition firms are removing the seldom used items from their inventories. Everyone is running for cover; your best-selling product could give six rats a rash and end up on Europe’s least-wanted list next time the suits meet in Brussels.
I should know: I’ve just spent the last four years devising replacements for some of the most popular molecules in fragrance history, now classed as allergens. My job has been great fun, interesting science, clever chemistry and good business, but it’s essentially conservation, not construction. Just when you might think there are no new smells left to be discovered, a perfumer friend points out the existence of a new musk called Musk KS, made by Grau Aromatics in (of course) Germany. I ordered a sample, and it is stunning: hugely powerful, earthy, unlike any other. Then I saw the chemical structure. Never was a more optimistic molecule made: it contains two bromine atoms and a nitro group. These are things that give armchair safety experts night sweats. But Grau KG, god bless them, made it, made sure it was safe, and now sells it. Maybe another Belle Epoque is coming.
July 1, 2006
June 1, 2006
"Battery-powered ice cubes" By Luca Turin
"Battery-powered ice cubes" By Luca Turin
In the last two weeks, seven parcels came full of fragrances and press releases, accompanied by charming hand-written notes recommending the contents to my nose. This being spring, most of the fragrances were “summer flankers”, i.e. famous names flanked with words like été or légère. The summer perfume traces its origin to Kenzo’s 1993 Parfum d’Eté, absurdly released for Christmas in a stroke of marketing genius. What is a summer perfume ? What, if anything, is wrong with simply wearing Bal à Versailles, Vanilia or Diorissimo with sandals ? Does anybody need a purpose-built summer thing? Probably not. But marketing reveals its truest purpose only when no discernible need exists.
The canonical summer perfume should in principle be light, fresh and carefree. In perfumery language, that means topnotes only. But these have to last, otherwise the punters complain. So only the most powerful synthetics are used, to ensure they last the distance. Result: a tinny, hissy, loudhailer timbre that sets your teeth on edge. This chalk-on-blackboard perfumery comes in three varieties. 1- Less is More (example: Kouros Eau d’Eté), where the perfumer takes a perfectly good fragrance, dilutes it by half with 98% alcohol and throws in a citrus top note that says fresh for ten seconds, before going home after a good day’s work. 2- The Big Lie school, e.g. (Guerlain’s Grosellina and Tutti Kiwi) where you put a picture of fruit (redcurrants and kiwis) on the packet and bravely fill the bottle with something that bears no relation to either. Aqua Allegorias, except when Mathilde Laurent composed them (Pamplelune), have always hovered on the edge of crudeness. These two make Champs Elysées look like a classic.
Finally, there is the High-Concept school, the sort of desperate stuff that comes out of a meeting of eight overpaid people around a tasteful oval table. Carolina Herrera’s 212 On Ice is a good example: the bottles (two small things) are inserted into something that looks like a large pill, itself inserted between the two halves of a large and heavy plastic ice cube. The fragrances are dismal, indeed set new standards in that direction.. But, and this is where others fear to tread, the press pack comes with a tray of plastic ice cubes, each containing a watch battery. If you press the little button, LEDs turn on that allow you to see a backlit 212 floating inside your drink. I pressed the button. The battery was as dead as the perfume.
In the last two weeks, seven parcels came full of fragrances and press releases, accompanied by charming hand-written notes recommending the contents to my nose. This being spring, most of the fragrances were “summer flankers”, i.e. famous names flanked with words like été or légère. The summer perfume traces its origin to Kenzo’s 1993 Parfum d’Eté, absurdly released for Christmas in a stroke of marketing genius. What is a summer perfume ? What, if anything, is wrong with simply wearing Bal à Versailles, Vanilia or Diorissimo with sandals ? Does anybody need a purpose-built summer thing? Probably not. But marketing reveals its truest purpose only when no discernible need exists.
The canonical summer perfume should in principle be light, fresh and carefree. In perfumery language, that means topnotes only. But these have to last, otherwise the punters complain. So only the most powerful synthetics are used, to ensure they last the distance. Result: a tinny, hissy, loudhailer timbre that sets your teeth on edge. This chalk-on-blackboard perfumery comes in three varieties. 1- Less is More (example: Kouros Eau d’Eté), where the perfumer takes a perfectly good fragrance, dilutes it by half with 98% alcohol and throws in a citrus top note that says fresh for ten seconds, before going home after a good day’s work. 2- The Big Lie school, e.g. (Guerlain’s Grosellina and Tutti Kiwi) where you put a picture of fruit (redcurrants and kiwis) on the packet and bravely fill the bottle with something that bears no relation to either. Aqua Allegorias, except when Mathilde Laurent composed them (Pamplelune), have always hovered on the edge of crudeness. These two make Champs Elysées look like a classic.
Finally, there is the High-Concept school, the sort of desperate stuff that comes out of a meeting of eight overpaid people around a tasteful oval table. Carolina Herrera’s 212 On Ice is a good example: the bottles (two small things) are inserted into something that looks like a large pill, itself inserted between the two halves of a large and heavy plastic ice cube. The fragrances are dismal, indeed set new standards in that direction.. But, and this is where others fear to tread, the press pack comes with a tray of plastic ice cubes, each containing a watch battery. If you press the little button, LEDs turn on that allow you to see a backlit 212 floating inside your drink. I pressed the button. The battery was as dead as the perfume.
May 1, 2006
"Simplexity" By Luca Turin
"Simplexity" By Luca Turin
Blue at one end and red at the other like a carpenter’s pencil, the word simplexity was coined by artist Laura Duke to denote the combination of cool blue elegance and teeming red intricacy that science uncovers everywhere. It also applies to art: the best creations consistently combine clear structure with rich detail. In perfumery, simplexity is present even at the level of the most basic building blocks: Two different grades of lavender oil, though identical at the blue end, will nevertheless feel different, because each red end writes its own signature. Put the two substances in your analytical equipment, turn up the magnification to the maximum, and you will see, nestled against the Everest peak of linalool, a range of foothills. These are the impurities whose presence or absence determines whether the view looks like Kashmir or the Moon. Perfumes are now made by aromachemical companies, by chemists striving for purity: blue. Flowers, by contrast, are living things striving to attract bees, and bees like complex: red. For chemists and accountants, natural materials are a complicated red scribble: they have good years and bad years, quality control is a constant worry, prices fluctuate. This has been the driving force towards all-blue perfumes that are either bare or fake.
But as always, just when one is about to give up, proof emerges that chemical poetry has not run out of words. Two wonderful fragrances have come my way, significantly both composed by relative beginners. Both exhibit the telltale shimmer of simplexity, and never smell the same two days in a row. One is Andy Tauer’s Air du Désert Marocain. He is a Zurich-based self-taught perfumer. L’Air du Désert is his second fragrance, an austere, woody-balsamic accord sweetened with just enough amber and vanilla to wrap a smile on its noble bone structure. It is probably the best fragrance to come out of amateur hands since Coty quit his day job at Antoine Chiris et Compagnie and composed La Rose Jacqueminot in 1904. The other is Chinatown, from the brash, humorous and very successful New York firm Bond No.9. It was composed by Aurélien Guichard, son of Jean, Givaudan’s great perfumer. Aurélien is, I am told, in his twenties, and Chinatown is his first masterpiece. It has been described as gourmand, i.e. foody-sweet, but that is missing the point. What Chinatown does is put a new shine on the Clausewitzian notion that what lovers enjoy doing at 3 AM is the continuation of dessert by other means.
Blue at one end and red at the other like a carpenter’s pencil, the word simplexity was coined by artist Laura Duke to denote the combination of cool blue elegance and teeming red intricacy that science uncovers everywhere. It also applies to art: the best creations consistently combine clear structure with rich detail. In perfumery, simplexity is present even at the level of the most basic building blocks: Two different grades of lavender oil, though identical at the blue end, will nevertheless feel different, because each red end writes its own signature. Put the two substances in your analytical equipment, turn up the magnification to the maximum, and you will see, nestled against the Everest peak of linalool, a range of foothills. These are the impurities whose presence or absence determines whether the view looks like Kashmir or the Moon. Perfumes are now made by aromachemical companies, by chemists striving for purity: blue. Flowers, by contrast, are living things striving to attract bees, and bees like complex: red. For chemists and accountants, natural materials are a complicated red scribble: they have good years and bad years, quality control is a constant worry, prices fluctuate. This has been the driving force towards all-blue perfumes that are either bare or fake.
But as always, just when one is about to give up, proof emerges that chemical poetry has not run out of words. Two wonderful fragrances have come my way, significantly both composed by relative beginners. Both exhibit the telltale shimmer of simplexity, and never smell the same two days in a row. One is Andy Tauer’s Air du Désert Marocain. He is a Zurich-based self-taught perfumer. L’Air du Désert is his second fragrance, an austere, woody-balsamic accord sweetened with just enough amber and vanilla to wrap a smile on its noble bone structure. It is probably the best fragrance to come out of amateur hands since Coty quit his day job at Antoine Chiris et Compagnie and composed La Rose Jacqueminot in 1904. The other is Chinatown, from the brash, humorous and very successful New York firm Bond No.9. It was composed by Aurélien Guichard, son of Jean, Givaudan’s great perfumer. Aurélien is, I am told, in his twenties, and Chinatown is his first masterpiece. It has been described as gourmand, i.e. foody-sweet, but that is missing the point. What Chinatown does is put a new shine on the Clausewitzian notion that what lovers enjoy doing at 3 AM is the continuation of dessert by other means.
April 1, 2006
"Natural Perfumery" By Luca Turin
"Natural Perfumery" By Luca Turin
There are now officially four kinds of perfumery: normal, niche, vintage and natural. Normal is what you find everywhere; niche is what you hope others won’t find; vintage is what you find only if you know what to look for. Where’s the natural stuff ? In health stores, next to the rock-salt lamps. They carry aromatherapy oils, so people have had access to a wide range of plant extracts previously accessible only to perfumers. This happened at a time when this wonderful-smelling stuff has almost disappeared from the mainstream. The big six perfumery firms are aromachemicals manufacturers, and it is in their interest to keep naturals, with their attendant problems of price and quality fluctuations, to a bare minimum. Just how bare that minimum can be has become clear in the last five years, during which the cost of a “fine fragrance” formulation has gone down by half and the quality by nine tenths. Good perfumes have almost disappeared: there are 500 launches each year, but only a dozen are worth smelling twice.
Capitalism hates a vacuum: by popular request, aromatherapists have started composing fragrances. Unsurprisingly, their creations are supposed to be Good For You. This marketing strategy is no worse than the usual “Wear this and every man/woman will lust after you”, and just as easy to disprove empirically. But never mind the therapy, how’s the aroma? I recently received a sampler of the work of several US-based natural perfumers. Some were inept. Some were imitations of well-worn themes, i.e. recipes lifted from a book, competently executed with natural materials. Some were not natural at all, either knowingly (crooks are uniformly distributed among the population) or unknowingly (including among fragrance suppliers).
But a tiny number smelled good in a surprisingly new way. I’ve always believed perfumery is virtual cuisine, not pornography for the nostril, and these fragrances confirmed this. Natural perfumery may be waiting for another Guerlain, armed not with vanilla, but this time with a spice no-one outside Szechuan Province has yet heard of. But hasn’t all this all been done already before the invention of chemistry ? Surprisingly, no. Serious natural perfumery was indigenous to only a handful of countries, each using a small number of traditional ingredients. New extraction methods and global trade now conspire to provide an unprecedented palette. Natural perfumers claim not to be bound by the aesthetic criteria of classical perfumery: if it survives EU regulations and New Age nonsense, their art may yet deliver on this promise.
There are now officially four kinds of perfumery: normal, niche, vintage and natural. Normal is what you find everywhere; niche is what you hope others won’t find; vintage is what you find only if you know what to look for. Where’s the natural stuff ? In health stores, next to the rock-salt lamps. They carry aromatherapy oils, so people have had access to a wide range of plant extracts previously accessible only to perfumers. This happened at a time when this wonderful-smelling stuff has almost disappeared from the mainstream. The big six perfumery firms are aromachemicals manufacturers, and it is in their interest to keep naturals, with their attendant problems of price and quality fluctuations, to a bare minimum. Just how bare that minimum can be has become clear in the last five years, during which the cost of a “fine fragrance” formulation has gone down by half and the quality by nine tenths. Good perfumes have almost disappeared: there are 500 launches each year, but only a dozen are worth smelling twice.
Capitalism hates a vacuum: by popular request, aromatherapists have started composing fragrances. Unsurprisingly, their creations are supposed to be Good For You. This marketing strategy is no worse than the usual “Wear this and every man/woman will lust after you”, and just as easy to disprove empirically. But never mind the therapy, how’s the aroma? I recently received a sampler of the work of several US-based natural perfumers. Some were inept. Some were imitations of well-worn themes, i.e. recipes lifted from a book, competently executed with natural materials. Some were not natural at all, either knowingly (crooks are uniformly distributed among the population) or unknowingly (including among fragrance suppliers).
But a tiny number smelled good in a surprisingly new way. I’ve always believed perfumery is virtual cuisine, not pornography for the nostril, and these fragrances confirmed this. Natural perfumery may be waiting for another Guerlain, armed not with vanilla, but this time with a spice no-one outside Szechuan Province has yet heard of. But hasn’t all this all been done already before the invention of chemistry ? Surprisingly, no. Serious natural perfumery was indigenous to only a handful of countries, each using a small number of traditional ingredients. New extraction methods and global trade now conspire to provide an unprecedented palette. Natural perfumers claim not to be bound by the aesthetic criteria of classical perfumery: if it survives EU regulations and New Age nonsense, their art may yet deliver on this promise.
March 1, 2006
"Sublime" By Luca Turin
"Sublime" By Luca Turin
Thirty years ago, most fine fragrance perfumers were Frenchmen, steeped in that enduring mixture of lust, fascination and scorn towards women locally celebrated as galanterie. I once wrote a letter to the great Edmond Roudnitska asking him to come give a talk on perfumery. He mistook the handwritten final a of my first name for an e and wrote back a letter informing me (Luce is a feminine name in France) that “though a scientist, I was nonetheless a woman”, etc. Embarrassed, I dropped the invitation. Yet his generation, for all its fossil ideas, seldom stooped to the sort of mawkish Barbie-pink trash that is now the staple of emancipated sexiness. Instead, they designed their greatest creations to adorn chessboard queens, dashing in all directions chewing up pawns, chased by panting, step-at-a-time kings. Bernard Chant’s Cabochard, Guy Robert’s Dioressence, Roudnitska’s Diorama were offerings to goddesses, not presents to women. How did this Pantheon die out ? Demeter went first: the last opulent florals Fidji, First, and Chloé show signs of overripe decadence, and are variations on earlier agrestic glories (Joy, Fleurs de Rocaille). Then came the obese Junos of the eighties: Giorgio, Poison and Opium, painted harlots that soon collapsed under their own weight. By the nineties a new race of synthetic Titans (Angel, Boucheron) was in the ascendant, and among the old divinities only the martial and the fleet of foot were left standing. Saint Laurent’s Rive Gauche (Diana) remained true to its sleek, magnificent form until it was defaced by the Taliban of EU regulations two years ago. The last intact monumental sculpture seems to be Patou’s Sublime, and its survival is no accident. Patou was always an anomaly: an in-house perfumer (then Jean Kerléo), slow to create and slow to trash, no fashion collections to speed up the pace of life, a launch every few years. Sublime, probably Kerléo’s greatest creation, is a wonderful case of mistaken identity: the luminous buttercup color of the packaging, the exotic-fruit bottle, everything screams éternel féminin. But the fragrance tells a different story: arrestingly handsome rather than pretty, completely abstract despite being made largely of natural materials (jasmine and vetiver), this Minerva of fragrances in full armour and helmet passes the hardest test for any feminine fragrance: it makes a sensational masculine. Roudnitska would probably have hated the notion, but Sublime illustrates the admission of defeat voiced by the public womanizer and closet homosexual Louis Aragon: “La femme est l’avenir de l’homme”.
Thirty years ago, most fine fragrance perfumers were Frenchmen, steeped in that enduring mixture of lust, fascination and scorn towards women locally celebrated as galanterie. I once wrote a letter to the great Edmond Roudnitska asking him to come give a talk on perfumery. He mistook the handwritten final a of my first name for an e and wrote back a letter informing me (Luce is a feminine name in France) that “though a scientist, I was nonetheless a woman”, etc. Embarrassed, I dropped the invitation. Yet his generation, for all its fossil ideas, seldom stooped to the sort of mawkish Barbie-pink trash that is now the staple of emancipated sexiness. Instead, they designed their greatest creations to adorn chessboard queens, dashing in all directions chewing up pawns, chased by panting, step-at-a-time kings. Bernard Chant’s Cabochard, Guy Robert’s Dioressence, Roudnitska’s Diorama were offerings to goddesses, not presents to women. How did this Pantheon die out ? Demeter went first: the last opulent florals Fidji, First, and Chloé show signs of overripe decadence, and are variations on earlier agrestic glories (Joy, Fleurs de Rocaille). Then came the obese Junos of the eighties: Giorgio, Poison and Opium, painted harlots that soon collapsed under their own weight. By the nineties a new race of synthetic Titans (Angel, Boucheron) was in the ascendant, and among the old divinities only the martial and the fleet of foot were left standing. Saint Laurent’s Rive Gauche (Diana) remained true to its sleek, magnificent form until it was defaced by the Taliban of EU regulations two years ago. The last intact monumental sculpture seems to be Patou’s Sublime, and its survival is no accident. Patou was always an anomaly: an in-house perfumer (then Jean Kerléo), slow to create and slow to trash, no fashion collections to speed up the pace of life, a launch every few years. Sublime, probably Kerléo’s greatest creation, is a wonderful case of mistaken identity: the luminous buttercup color of the packaging, the exotic-fruit bottle, everything screams éternel féminin. But the fragrance tells a different story: arrestingly handsome rather than pretty, completely abstract despite being made largely of natural materials (jasmine and vetiver), this Minerva of fragrances in full armour and helmet passes the hardest test for any feminine fragrance: it makes a sensational masculine. Roudnitska would probably have hated the notion, but Sublime illustrates the admission of defeat voiced by the public womanizer and closet homosexual Louis Aragon: “La femme est l’avenir de l’homme”.
February 1, 2006
"Guerlain revisited" By Luca Turin
"Guerlain revisited" By Luca Turin
Faithful readers will recall a Duftnote a year ago expressing alarm at the impending “modernization” of the Guerlain classics to bring them in line with EU regulations. Things have moved on since then: instead of a callow youth to oversee the job, Guerlain relented and hired the great Edouard Fléchier. Fléchier, a wonderfully inventive perfumer (Poison, Une Rose, etc. ) and Grasse veteran with more experience of naturals than just about anyone alive, has been at it for a year. To date, there is no sign of any planned release of new-and-improved fragrances. Guerlain’s attitude also seems to have changed, from secretive to openly defensive. I recently gave a lecture in Paris to an audience of perfumers and, during the questions, made an offhand remark about Guerlain’s Chamade and Chant d’Arômes having been changed long ago. Days later I got a phone call from Fléchier himself asking me to account for my words. I explained what I meant (Chamade less powdery, Chant d’Aromes less peachy, nothing to do with his work) and the conversation took an unexpected turn.
Guerlain, it seems, feels unfairly singled out for criticism, at a time when everyone is messing with their old formulae to either cheapen them or bring them in line with regulations. True, Guerlain are getting a lot of flak, but only in proportion to the importance of the masterpieces in their safekeeping. Which would you most worry about: the Uffizi hosing down its Botticellis, or the Hirshhorn Museum scrubbing its Julian Schnabels down to the bare velvet? Fléchier insisted that they were working very hard at making sure no damage would be done, and I believe him.
But can they do it ? I’ll bet oakmoss, birch tar etc. simply cannot be replaced. What then ? Plenty, as a matter of fact. For a start, be more open about the whole process. I suggested to Fléchier, and later to Guerlain’s head of PR that they (at long last) explain to their customers what the problem is, and humbly let them decide: Mitsouko with a health warning, or Mitsouko after plastic surgery ? For that matter, why not both ? For example, the Parfum in each line could be the original, with the EdT and EdP revised and “safe”. I think the best course of action would be for Guerlain to invite every perfume journalist on earth to visit the works, let Fléchier explain the problem, have the regulatory people explain the options, and see what King Customer decrees. Welcome to the modern world.
Faithful readers will recall a Duftnote a year ago expressing alarm at the impending “modernization” of the Guerlain classics to bring them in line with EU regulations. Things have moved on since then: instead of a callow youth to oversee the job, Guerlain relented and hired the great Edouard Fléchier. Fléchier, a wonderfully inventive perfumer (Poison, Une Rose, etc. ) and Grasse veteran with more experience of naturals than just about anyone alive, has been at it for a year. To date, there is no sign of any planned release of new-and-improved fragrances. Guerlain’s attitude also seems to have changed, from secretive to openly defensive. I recently gave a lecture in Paris to an audience of perfumers and, during the questions, made an offhand remark about Guerlain’s Chamade and Chant d’Arômes having been changed long ago. Days later I got a phone call from Fléchier himself asking me to account for my words. I explained what I meant (Chamade less powdery, Chant d’Aromes less peachy, nothing to do with his work) and the conversation took an unexpected turn.
Guerlain, it seems, feels unfairly singled out for criticism, at a time when everyone is messing with their old formulae to either cheapen them or bring them in line with regulations. True, Guerlain are getting a lot of flak, but only in proportion to the importance of the masterpieces in their safekeeping. Which would you most worry about: the Uffizi hosing down its Botticellis, or the Hirshhorn Museum scrubbing its Julian Schnabels down to the bare velvet? Fléchier insisted that they were working very hard at making sure no damage would be done, and I believe him.
But can they do it ? I’ll bet oakmoss, birch tar etc. simply cannot be replaced. What then ? Plenty, as a matter of fact. For a start, be more open about the whole process. I suggested to Fléchier, and later to Guerlain’s head of PR that they (at long last) explain to their customers what the problem is, and humbly let them decide: Mitsouko with a health warning, or Mitsouko after plastic surgery ? For that matter, why not both ? For example, the Parfum in each line could be the original, with the EdT and EdP revised and “safe”. I think the best course of action would be for Guerlain to invite every perfume journalist on earth to visit the works, let Fléchier explain the problem, have the regulatory people explain the options, and see what King Customer decrees. Welcome to the modern world.
January 1, 2006
"Mozart in the Bottle" By Luca Turin
"Mozart in the Bottle" By Luca Turin
It may be that beauty, like energy, follows a conservation law: once created, it gets endlessly recycled but never destroyed and eventually ends up as diffuse aesthetic warmth. The conductor Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961), upon receiving get-well cards, once apparently asked from his sick-bed “Anything from Mozart?” Had he lived longer, say into the 1980s, the answer might have been “No Sir, but his low-temperature heirs Abba and Elton John send their regards”. What survives of the boy genius ? Among other things, a reliance on the fifth, the handspan interval at the core of what we call Classical music.
Suppose now that the fifth is a preexisting, mathematically satisfying proportion. Then those who believe, as I do, that we smell the vibrations of molecules are faced with an interesting question: are there similar rules of molecular harmony, i.e. chords that sound good to our nose ? The consonant octave can be ruled out: smells do not repeat themselves when the frequency is doubled. But the fifth is another matter. I recently had a brain scan that revealed no major anomalies, yet it has always seemed self-evident to me that Mozart’s lighter music was fruity, and conversely that fruit, especially fruit salads, had a Mozartian character.
Remarkably, there may be a good reason for this: the two characteristic vibrations of esters and lactones, the molecular structures that are responsible for 90% of fruity smells, are placed almost exactly a fifth apart. This idea will remain at the border between speculation and fantasy until we figure out how smell works. In the meantime, it is possible to at least enjoy liquid fifths in a variety of styles. Perfumers generally shy away from overtly fruity perfumes, because most are commercial flops: women do not generally want to smell like tinned fruit. Instead, they add discreet touches of various esters to their compositions. Salicylates, for example, give the original Je Reviens (forget the modern one, buy some vintage on ebay) its mysterious green glow. Octin carbonates, are responsible for the peppery edge of such fragrances as Dior’s Fahrenheit. The greatest of all is Firmenich’s Hedione, a molecule without which modern perfumery would be impossible. First used in Eau Sauvage in small amounts, it now constitutes as much as half of modern florals. There is one fragrance, however, which throws all caution to the wind and uses every fifth in the perfumer’s orchestra: my favorite fruity, Jacomo’s Paradox for women, is the closest you can get to Mozart without using your ears. It can be found on their website.
It may be that beauty, like energy, follows a conservation law: once created, it gets endlessly recycled but never destroyed and eventually ends up as diffuse aesthetic warmth. The conductor Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961), upon receiving get-well cards, once apparently asked from his sick-bed “Anything from Mozart?” Had he lived longer, say into the 1980s, the answer might have been “No Sir, but his low-temperature heirs Abba and Elton John send their regards”. What survives of the boy genius ? Among other things, a reliance on the fifth, the handspan interval at the core of what we call Classical music.
Suppose now that the fifth is a preexisting, mathematically satisfying proportion. Then those who believe, as I do, that we smell the vibrations of molecules are faced with an interesting question: are there similar rules of molecular harmony, i.e. chords that sound good to our nose ? The consonant octave can be ruled out: smells do not repeat themselves when the frequency is doubled. But the fifth is another matter. I recently had a brain scan that revealed no major anomalies, yet it has always seemed self-evident to me that Mozart’s lighter music was fruity, and conversely that fruit, especially fruit salads, had a Mozartian character.
Remarkably, there may be a good reason for this: the two characteristic vibrations of esters and lactones, the molecular structures that are responsible for 90% of fruity smells, are placed almost exactly a fifth apart. This idea will remain at the border between speculation and fantasy until we figure out how smell works. In the meantime, it is possible to at least enjoy liquid fifths in a variety of styles. Perfumers generally shy away from overtly fruity perfumes, because most are commercial flops: women do not generally want to smell like tinned fruit. Instead, they add discreet touches of various esters to their compositions. Salicylates, for example, give the original Je Reviens (forget the modern one, buy some vintage on ebay) its mysterious green glow. Octin carbonates, are responsible for the peppery edge of such fragrances as Dior’s Fahrenheit. The greatest of all is Firmenich’s Hedione, a molecule without which modern perfumery would be impossible. First used in Eau Sauvage in small amounts, it now constitutes as much as half of modern florals. There is one fragrance, however, which throws all caution to the wind and uses every fifth in the perfumer’s orchestra: my favorite fruity, Jacomo’s Paradox for women, is the closest you can get to Mozart without using your ears. It can be found on their website.
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