Shining Sunny Scents

Artisanal perfumer Laurie Erickson is the mind and soul behind Sonoma Scent Studio, a small but vibrant brand from Healdsburg, northern California, founded in 2004, which aims to cater for the customer who has become jaded with department store perfumes and is eager to explore a more natural approach. Although not strictly a line of natural perfumes (as she allows a small amount of synthetics, notably musks) Laurie does use a higher percentage of natural essential oils and absolutes than most without veering into the path of aromatherapy blends, but retaining the character of proper “perfume”: a scent that constitutes a whole; not just strings of voices that sound from in and out of a room, but rather a conversation of loving friends over a homemade dinner with good Napa Valley wine.

Laurie’s line is quite extensive comprising scents from different olfactory families, from warm Orientals to musk blends through dry woods and floral compositions. She first got inspired by the paysage of the Sonoma County with its oaks and redwoods, but also by her family’s beloved garden full of jasmine and roses. It was those blossoms that prompted her to source the best essential oils so she could enjoy floral scents year round and not just when the flowers are in bloom. Laurie however didn’t delve into perfume right away: she first earned a Bachelor of Sciences in Environmental Earth Science and a Master of Sciences in Geomechanics in Stanford University pursuing a career of technical writer. It is fortunate that her perfume business proved so successful that she decided to occupy herself with it exclusively.

In the 5 scents I tried I detected a common theme running through them, a resinous base of predominent labdanum and myrrh that gives them a deep resonance and a sensuous, slightly “dirty” character. The overall feel was that of scents that source natural essences; there is that familiar feel of non-perfumey ambience which I have come to recognise and appreciate. The onomastics somehow do not predispose one for a Californian meditative line, which is the only incosistency.

Encens Tranquille (quiet incense) is described as a meditative woody fragrance centered on incense, including notes of labdanum, frankincense, myrrh, cedar, sandalwood, ambergris, patchouli, oakmoss and musk. Deep incense, dense and dark, sobriety incarnate. There is the unusual tone of ocean and fish, if only for a moment as if a temple is situated on the seafront and you enter barefoot, with your hair still wet from a dip. And then a resinous explosion, murky, smoky. For those who are serious about their incense!

Champagne de Bois (forest champagne) is described as an effarvescent scent with aldehydic top notes, a heart of jasmine grandiflorum and carnation and a warm woodsy base of labdanum, sandalwood, cedar and musk. The opening is indeed sparkly, waxy, with a hint of flower which surfaces later. However the base of labdanum and cedar especially overshadow the blossoms rather too soon, suspending them in a mirage. It lasted incredibly long and seemed to grow more deep and dark with every passing moment.

Fireside Intense encompasses woods and resins along with a touch of leather and agarwood, evocing an evening sitting by a campfire. The scent truly captures the aroma of burnt coniferous wood, emanating from the mountains, embers glowing softly in the cool misty morning when the memory of the night has not yet been formed. Very dry and intensely smoky, it is a figurative painting of an American scene out of a Western film. It’s not the easiest to wear if you are working in an office with people who complain about fragrance wearing, but who cares? Fireside Intense has the rare gift of transporting the wearer to a more adventurous, quixotic existence where the men are ruggedly handsome, roasting salted meat and drinking inky black tea from a hip flask, gazing pensively over the horizon for new frontiers. I’m so there!

Ambre Noir (black amber) is the latest addition in the line. A dark amber with notes of labdanum, cardamom, red rose, woody notes, a touch of agarwood, myrrh, vetiver, moss and mitti. My contrapuntal impression of dry and sweet notes that come to the fore and then subside to the background, leaving a smooth impression on the skin after a while and lasting for hours, was unusual for me. I am not an amber person per se, I admit. And yet I love oriental perfumes, in which amber often forms the base! However, amber-centered scents are either too heavy, too thick to my sensibilities or too surupy for their own good. When I put Ambre Noir on the skin I feared that it would fall to the former category, on a sour whiff. But then I was surprised to see that it lightened up and a sweeter note emerged. A slightly powdery note that managed not to become cloying, which is an accomplishment in this category of scents, as previously mentioned. I am not completely certain that I would personally fit this scent, but lovers of ambers will find a balanced composition in Ambre Noir.

Laurie divulged to me that her bases, notably amber, are self-made and purposely drier than commercial perfumers’ supplies. Essences are diluted in pure perfumer’s alcohol for the eau de parfum concentration and natural fractionated coconut oil for the parfum oil base.

Jour ensoileillé (sunny day) is a floral jubilation, rich, warm and golden like a ray of sunshine on a lush countryside garden. Orange blossom, a little ruberose and jasmine marry their white synergy over a soft base of labdanum, sandalwood, ambergris, oakmoss and musk. The joy of the fragrance is contagious, as if a smile could be bottled and opened when the mood is grey and weary. The memento of summer into the heart of winter. A beautiful, feminine and exuberant fragrance with very good sillage and easily the prettiest of the bunch.

The rest of the line includes Voile de Violette (a violet and iris accord over a woody bottom), Rose Musc (a feminine blend of rose and musk on an ambergris base), Opal (a soft, vanillic clean skin musc I am personally very curious to try), Bois Epicés and Bois Epicés Legère (warm and cosy scents) and Cameo (a powdery feminine floral with rose and violet).

All the scents I tried reviewed above came in Eau de Parfum concentration, which is incredibly dense and lasting; much closer to parfum actually than most lines I have tried and therefore excellent value for money. A parfum version is available as well for people who want a closer to the skin experience that projects less. Additionally, body creams made with 20% moisturising shea butter and all natural oils (scented to the fragrance of your choice or unscented) are available.
Sonoma Scent Studio also takes requests for custom scents or all natural scents with prices varying according to ingredients used.
See details and contact on Sonoma Scent Studio site.


Leather Series will continue next week with iconic representations! Stay tuned.

Pic from film "Sideways" courtesy of athinorama.gr and Ambre Noir ad from Sonoma Scent Studio site

Leather Series 6: Kinky whiffs

By guest writer Denyse Beaulieu

“The glove (…) had retained a strong odour, this distinctive musky odour which the girl’s favourite perfume, heliotrope, sweetened with a touch of vanilla; (…) violently aroused by this blend of flower and flesh, he was overcome, with the glove on his mouth, drinking in the voluptuous pleasure of his memories. (….) When he was alone, he would pick up the glove, breathe it in, kiss it, thinking he still held her in his arms, his mouth on the nape of her neck.”

In Émile Zola’s 1884 La Joie de vivre (« The Joy of Living »), the sweetly-scented glove that sheathed the hands of aristocrats has ceased to be a prophylactic adornment to become a fragment of the desired body; indeed, it seems to be desired in itself… J.K. Huysmans’ A Rebours, which dedicates a whole chapter to the art of perfumery as olfactory fetishism practiced by his decadent anti-hero Des Esseintes, would be published the same year. Within its visionary pages, perfumery wrenches itself free from the representation of nature to evoke man-made environments in unheard-of blends…

The leather note, of course, is one such artificial scent, a hybrid of “flower and flesh” created by industry. It is strangely redolent of the human skin which leather approaches, both by its texture and by its proximity to the body of the wearer whose shape it retains…
Can it possibly be a coincidence, then, that leather scents and leather fetishism are strictly contemporary, born in the same decade of the late 19th century?
Check the dates: quinolines, which lend their characteristic smoky-tarry notes to most leather perfumes, were synthesized around 1880. The first recorded Cuir de Russie was composed by Aimé Guerlain in 1875; Eugène Rimmel launched his the following year.

Now, it was precisely in 1876 that French psychiatrist Alfred Binet coined the term “fetishism”; the leather fetish itself is studied in Austrian sexologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis (1886).
Fetishism in general and leather fetishism in particular had of course existed before they were identified as such: the prolific French libertine author Restif de la Bretonne (1734-1806), for instance, was a famous shoe sniffer. But it was only when the study of sexuality became the province of psychiatrists that an attempt to understand “perversions” gave rise to their classification. Up to then, people had sexual tastes; henceforth, they would have sexual identities.

Of course, scientists only reflected the changing perceptions and practices of Western societies. In a world where commodities were becoming increasingly available and diversified, the sex industry had followed suit by catering to “niche markets”. From 1867 to 1864, the first kinky magazine, the sedately entitled The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, devoted its pages to the charms of corsets and high heels. Brothels offered specialized services, costumes and scenarios. In Sexual Selection in Man, British sexologist Havelock Ellis reports the case, in 1894, of a prostitute saying that “several of her clients desired the odor of new shoes in the room, and that she was accustomed to obtain the desired perfume by holding her shoes for a moment over the flame of a spirit lamp.”

Thus, leather entered the vocabulary of perfumery as a dominant note, rather than as a material to be treated by perfume, at the precise period in history in which “trickle-down perversions” – to reprise the term coined by French historian Alain Corbin – pervaded the very bourgeoisie to whom Messieurs Guerlain and Rimmel sold their Cuir de Russie. The name may have referred to the Cossacks who rubbed their boots with birch, and certainly bore a virile, military or equestrian connation. But the scents themselves alluded to more private passions.




Pic: by Félicien Rops, "Pornokratès" (1878), itself a scent-inspired painting:

“I did this in four days in a small blue satin room, in an overheated apartment, full of smells, where opoponax and cyclamen gave me a fever salutary for production and even reproduction.”

Courtesy Agoravox.fr

Denyse is the author of "Sex Game Book: a Cultural Dictionary of Sexuality" (Assouline, 2007)



Leather Series will continue, along with a couple of other exciting things besides...Stay tuned!

Leather Series 5: Cuir de Russie vs Peau d'Espagne

Among leather fragrances in the past there were two major schools of thought. Both sealed their era with their characteristic flair: the Russian leather types and the Spanish leather types. The two present their own idiosyncrasies, like spirited people who enjoy disagreeing from time to time and cut out their own decisive path in life.

Russian leather (cuir de Russie) scents have been inspired by the odour of leather cured in traditional tanneries in the vast steppes of Russia; steppes populated by the lonely silhouettes of silver birches like a page out of Tolstoy. The leather used for military garments of the Russian army and especially boots held a certain aura of authority and in its wake it brought images of hardship and virility; the latter in its etymological association with the Latin virtus, meaning virtue. Those were of course traits highly coveted by men who wanted to embody such images. But in the time of women’s emancipation in the beginning of the 20th century, when leather scents came into vogue, also by the fairer sex.
Birch tar is therefore the characteristic aroma that has been implicated in the makeup of Russian leather scents in the past. To soften dried leather they used birch tar and the fat of sea animals, which give off their own unique odour. Legend has it that Cuir de Russie was born when a Cossack warrior, galloping across the endless Russian steppe, came up with ‘the idea of rubbing his leather boots with birch bark in order to waterproof them’. Several modern Cuir de Russie scents merely draw their inspiration from birch, however, while using isobutyl quinoline instead to render the tar-like note. The recipe proved so popular that every house launched their own version from Piver to Le Jardin Retrouvé(1977) through Guerlain (1875), Chanel (1924) and Creed (1953).

Chanel certainly used birch tar in their Cuir de Russie enhanced by floral notes and aimed at women ~but serving admirably as a unisex scent. Recently it was repackaged in gigantic bottles of eau de toilette in Les Exclusifs line to be distributed through very select channels and is somewhat weakened.

Cuir de Russie by Louis Toussaint Piver was originally created in the late 19th century. Piver has this to say:

“Created at the end of the nineteenth century, the original version of this exceptional cologne has been adapted to today’s market. {re-orchestration in 2003 according to Osmoz}. Very “landed gentry” its fragrance is inspired from the leather smell of Cossack riding boots protected against the wet with silver birch bark. The entrancing and impossibly elegant smell of leather peppered with the tangy notes of mandarin and bergamot orange to leave skin feeling totally refreshed. Next come the wooden and spicy notes before these in turn give way to the aroma of honey. A fragrance that surrenders itself discreetly, unveiling its splendour all in good time and presented in a highly structural bottle inspired by the Russian constructivist period. Convivial, refined and yet never ostentatious. Absolute luxury”.

Worthy of mention however that the unisex Piver’s Cuir de Russie is listed as a 1939 scent on Basenotes.
The endearingly retro label depicts a traditional Russian dance in the snowy landscape, while the cap echoes the Cossack’s toque.

Koelnisch Juchten is {edit: is being debatable} the German name for Russian leather and the eponymous scent is still in production by Farina Gegenueber, the oldest German brand for cologne founded in 1700 by an Italian druggist. Much older actually than Muelhens (of 4711 fame), which copied the 'Eau de Cologne' recipe from Farina and allegedly invented a tale about how it came to their hands. Farina made his own Cuir de Russie (Russisch Leder) by Hugo Janistyn in 1967. For many, however, Koelnisch Juchten is how Russian leather should really smell like.
Others followed suit. A true legend was born!

Spanish leather (peau d'Espagne) has a fascinating background that goes back in history as well. In the 16th century, tanners used to scent chamois with essences of flowers, herbs and fruits and as a final step smear it with civet and musk. This was known as Peau d’Espagne (Spanish skin). Chamois is by itself a sensual material: silky, feeling wonderful in the hand, contributing its own leather undertone, providing depth and softness.

More specifically, according to Havelock Ellis:

“Peau d'Espagne may be mentioned as a highly complex and luxurious perfume, often the favorite scent of sensuous persons, which really owes a large part of its potency to the presence of the crude animal sexual odors of musk and civet. It consists of wash-leather steeped in ottos of neroli, rose, santal, lavender, verbena, bergamot, cloves, and cinnamon, subsequently smeared with civet and musk. It is said by some, probably with a certain degree of truth, that Peau d'Espagne is of all perfumes that which most nearly approaches the odor of a woman's skin; whether it also suggests the odor of leather is not so clear”.

For some it is this ancestral echo of the sexual stimulus of skin odour that accounts for its success. And for others it is a scent of profound reminiscence. One of the most touching ~and evocative of a lost memento~ tales comes from Peter Altenberg, the Viennese coffeehouse bohemian, according to whom

"There are three idealists: God, mothers and poets! They don’t seek the ideal in completed things—they find it in the incomplete."

Here he talks of a 1830 fragrance:

“As a child I found in a drawer in my beloved, wonderfully beautiful mother’s writing table, which was made of mahogany and cut glass, an empty little bottle that still retained the strong fragrance of a certain perfume that was unknown to me. I often used to sneak in and sniff it. I associated this perfume with every love, tenderness, friendship, longing and sadness there is. But everything related to my mother.
Later on, fate overtook us like an unexpected horde of Huns and rained heavy blows down on us. And one day I dragged from perfumery to perfumery, hoping by means of tiny sample vials of the perfume from the writing table of my beloved deceased mother to discover its name. And at long last I did: Peau d’Espagne, Pinaud, Paris. […]
Later on, many young women on childish-sweet whims used to send me their favourite perfumes and thanked me warmly for the prescription I discovered of rubbing every perfume directly onto the naked skin of the entire body right after a bath so that it would work like a true personal skin cleansing! But all these perfumes were like the fragrances of lovely but poisonous exotic flowers. Only Essence Peau d’Espagne, Pinaud, Paris, brought me melancholic joys although my mother was no longer alive and could no longer pardon my sins”.

By the late 18th century, when the vogue for strong animalic scents which had monopolized the tastes of the rich and powerful for over two centuries had subsided, Peau d’Espagne remained an exception to the rule of the floral nosegays and the light handkerchief waters used. And by 1910, Peau d’Espagne had evolved into a fragrance to be donned on one’s person, rather than merely as the aroma of little bits of leather for scenting stationery and clothing. So cachets and gloves get a smell not only of leather itself, but also of spices and flowers added. The recipe was enhanced by the addition of vanilla, tonka beans, styrax, geranium and cedarwood. A powerhouse! Many followed the recipe from the discontinued Roger et Gallet (1895)to Santa Maria Novella (1901).

One of the scents that bear the name of Peau d’Espagne , albeit tranlsated as Spanish Leather is by Geo F.Trumper. The note on Trumper's website seems to be saying that there is no leather note in their Spanish Leather, however. A little soapy, a little sweet, it has a slight barbershop ambience to it and provokes antithetical responses from people: some love it, others hate it. The notes include musk, rose, patchouli.
Another Spanish Leather is by Truefitt and Hill: softly leathery, with slightly noticeable spice of which black pepper is more prominent. And of course there is the Santa Maria Novella Peau d'Espagne: one of the oldest and also one of the most controversial but still in production. It has the strong odour of liniment ointment, a powerful ambience for an assured person...

Spanish leather scents threfore comprise notes that have traditionally been used to perfume leather instead, much as has been described above for the curing of chamois. Ergo we come full circle: the material that inspires the trend is absent and in its place there is the evocation it produced through the means of a loan, a metaphor for connotation. Bataille would have felt at home.

Leather Series will continue with a tittilating spin on just how leather scents evolved into erotic ethos! *wink*

Pics from osmoz and Gentlemans-shop

Leather Series 4: A touch of Regal Stench

by guest writer Denyse Beaulieu

For centuries, leather and scent have gone hand in hand; and for centuries, that hand was sheathed in the finest of gloves… Like his predecessors on Western thrones from Catarina di Medici onwards, King George III (1738-1820) – the English monarch whose reign was interrupted by his descent into madness - shielded his regal nose from stench with a wave of a fragrant glove.

But things had changed in the realm of perfumery, and the strong animalic aromas favoured by his forebears had fallen out of favour half a century before he was born. Many still believed that the putrid miasmas emanating from cadavers, cesspools and the very earth were responsible for plagues, and that bathing, by ridding the skin of its protective coat of grime and immersing the body in hot water would expose one to maladies by opening up the pores. However, a change in sensibilities was drawing the aristocracy and the rising bourgeois classes towards lighter floral scents conjuring images of nature. Perfumes were no longer though of only as invisible shields: their poetic essence spoke to the very soul. Animalics were reviled and thought harmful: musc, for instance, was associated to the smell of excrement.

It is thus quite surprising to find that the first documented leather scent, now known as Royal English Leather was composed in 1780 for King George III by James Henry Creed at the height of the fashion for delicately scented colognes and powders.

Was the King’s master perfumer inspired by the flower-treated leathers still in vogue at the time? If so, he may have been the first to think of introducing a note not found in nature into the vocabulary of perfumery, a full century before the invention of synthetic aromatic compounds. Creed also seems to have been the inventor of an association which would persist up to the present day, the citrus-leather blend. “Seems to have been”, because the scent was apparently reformulated in 1805, at a time when stronger, animalic perfumes were enjoying a revival: at the outset, it may simply have been a floral hesperidic blend used to treat the King’s gloves…

Royal English Leather has none of the astringent bitterness we have come to associate with later, birch-tar based scents. Indeed, the leather note might have originally been created with styrax and castoreum, although conclusive info is not divulged.

Royal English Leather opens with a solar-sweet trumpet blast of the juiciest mandarin studded with cloves, peeled open in a study lined with leather-bound books. The mouth-watering citrus yields to a slightly soapy jasmine that can nearly be tasted, as though sipping jasmine tea – the tannic oakmoss produces the tea-like effect. In the dry-down, the scent subsides into a skin-like, salty leather drizzled with violet powder fallen from the royal wig… The merest touch of aristocratic stench pervades Mad King George’s bespoke fragrance: like its brasher descendants, from Eau d’Hermès to Miller Harris Cuir d’Oranger, Royal English Leather displays a virile disdain for the niceties of the floral-loving bourgeoisie. Leather scents, from then on, would firmly claim their elitist stance.


Portrait of King George III by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1780 courtesy of royalacademy.org.uk

Leather Series 3: Production

Rendering a leather note in perfumery is a challenge for the perfumer who must coax this difficult and cult note into submission to make it sing with the rest of the composition. Production relies on two different courses: naturally derived and synthesized in a lab. Both account for a potent aroma of smoky and alteratively drier or sweeter notes, characteristic of the cuir family.

Let’s see what is actually used.

The naturals:

Birch: Betula Alba, the tree known as birch, owes its name to the Latin verb batuere meaning to strike. It is no coincidence that the branches of birch have been used for corporal punishment. Traditionally used in tanneries in Russia, Finland and Northern Europe in general, its bark produces birch tar and resin, an intensely wintergreen and tar-like odour, which has been used in Cuir de Russie type of scents in the distant past. The oil is widely used in suede and leather tannery in Russia and the essence obtained from birch buds is used for hair tonics and some cosmetic products.

Juniper and cade oil:
Juniper trees produce dark viscuous oil (cade) upon getting burned which possesses a smoky aroma that reminds one of campfires in the forests. Also used in Cuir de Russie type of scents in the past along with birch. It additionally has an anti-mould property which explains why it is a prime material for the binding of books, surely prone to decay and deterioration otherwise.

Styrax: Liquidambar Styraciflua and Liquidambar Orientalis trees are used for their excretion of the sapwood obtained by pounding the bark of both varieties. L. Styraciflua comes from the Americas (in particular Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico), while L.Orientalis comes from Asia Minor. The essence used in perfumery to give a leather undertone comes from the Honduras and is purified with volatile solvents or through vacuum distillation.
Styrax notes are usually sweeter than those of birch when used for leathery notes.

Cassie: The bark of cassie, a tree that belongs to the family of mimosa, and the absolute from the flowers are also used for giving a deep, intense leather note in some perfumes based on natural essences.

Castoreum: The secretion from the glands of beavers from Russia and Canada is a very intense, repulsive odour that when highly diluted can provide a leathery scent to fine perfumery. A by-product of the fur industry, it has been prized in perfumery for its tremendous fixative powers and its deeply animalic edge with a dry quality that smells like real leather.

Another natural essence that can produce a leather note although not usually used as such is Myrtle. Because of its camphoreous, green, rather than pungent leathery aroma, it is not the preferred choice for rendering a leather note in perfumes; although it is used in tanneries for the curing of hides.

Last but not least, cistus labdanum can provide a leathery backdrop- in cases where a more smokey/ ambery note is required ~such as in Caron Tabac Blond, Serge Lutens Cuir Mauresque and Ava Luxe Madame X {click for review}.

It is important to note that natural perfumers can render leather notes in their perfumes through the combined use of different essences such as black tea, patchouli or tobacco in addition to the above; sometimes opting for ethically avoiding animal products (castoreum) altogether.


The synthetics:

The major revolution in the production of leathery notes in perfumery came in the 1880s with the apparition of quinolines, a family of aromachemicals with a pungent leather and smoke odour that was used in the production of the modern Cuir de Russie scents appearing at the beginning of the 20th century such as Chanel’s (1924) as well as in Caron’s Tabac Blond (1919), Lanvin’s Scandal (1933) and, most importantly, Piguet’s Bandit (1944).

The chemical name of the ingredient primarily used from the quinolines groups is 4-(2-methylpropyl) quinoline, commonly referred to as isobutyl quinoline. A colourless to pale yellow liquid, used in a dilution of 1.00 % solution or less, it possesses a fiercely potent odour profile described as earthy, rooty, and nutty, echoing certain facets of oakmoss and vetiver and blending very well with both. Isobutyl quinoline also has ambery, woody, tobacco-like undertones: a really rich aromachemical! Its character can be very well perceived in the above scents as well as Cabochard by Gres.

Another synthesized note is the suede accord: a much subtler, more velours deep feel in the realm of leather notes. Less aggressive, suede notes are created in the laboratory for modern fine perfumes such as Lutens’ Daim Blond and Donna Karan. The origins hinge on muscone in the past or a complex tactile evocation of suede through a secret formula for more recent examples.

To a lesser degree the safraleine aromachemical can add a leathery tinge to perfumes. Evident in isolate of saffron, safraleine has an interesting smell ~ a combination of shoe polish/black cherry/air conditioning refrigerating fluid.

Aldehydes and especially C10, C11 and C12 are also used in addition to other ingredients in leathery perfumes to round out the composition and make it smooth.

Last but not least, in an effort to find materials that would enhance or augment leather tones and provide a cheaper and more stable alternative to animal-derived castoreum for rendering leather notes, the US Patent 4528124 (Jul, 1985 Sturm et al.252/522) has been proposed as a solution. The compound having the structure ##STR2## is a known compound disclosed at Chemical Abstracts Volume 99, Monograph 139339e. As I haven't smelled this secret ingredient I cannot report back on its effect, but it worth mentioning.

The search for materials which can provide a more refined leathery and castoreum aroma profile apparently continues.



Next instalment will focus on a scent fit for kings.

Pic of birch forest, Birch Hill Fairbanks in Alaska by Jeff Breu courtesy of Google images