Tri-dimensional Perfumery

My search for the real musk deer scent has carried me in some of the farthest spots of the Hindu Kush but at last, I found it from its fount.

I fully understand the need of all perfumers for a sustainable musk scent substitute, but the point maybe is rather about the use of an animal note in our botanical scents, such as Ambergris, Civet, Hyraceum or Castoreum, in order to obtain a perfume with a third dimension.

Like the small machines resembling binoculars through which you look in order to watch 3-dimensional photographs, there are only 2 images in the machine but the vision is truly tri-dimensional.

All these animal aromatic substances are pheromone molecules and they appeal to our nervous system and to our emotions as no vegetable really does. They do not need to be perceptible in a perfume, it is enough for them to be there. I remember a customer who recognized any tiny amount of rose present in any of my compositions because he hated rose due to some old traumatic memory. In the same way, I observed that people recognize straight away in my compositions the ingredients that they particularly like or dislike even if I myself do not even smell it due to the tiny concentration of it.

I understood that our nose is really working like a gas chromatography machine unconsciously and that what we can perceive of a perfume may be very different from person to person. The search for the third dimension of perfumery goes through animal scents but the use of them is a hard path, prohibitively high prices, difficulty to obtain, and ethical dilemmas. So the first step was hair goat tincturing as a sustainable substitute for musk deer but more can be done.

I myself shall tincture a mutton this week because yesterday I smelled a very nice powerful one at my neighbors. With a liter or two of alcohol and a big pan, I shall rinse it to get his perfume. Mutton’s smell is somehow sweeter than the one of Billy goat, and certainly more acceptable to most people than civet. Knowing how civets can blend into marvelous perfumes, there is no reason that horse or mutton does not. Just imagine the amount of mutton absolute could be produced as a by-product of wool washing in Australia for instance.