Tri dimentional perfumery

[AbdesSalaam Attar, Perfumer Composer]

The search for the musk scent have carried me in some of the farthest spots of the Hindu Kush and I fully understand the search for a musk scent substitute, but the point maybe is rather the use of an animal note in our botanical scents, in order to obtain a perfume with an other dimension. Like the small machines resembling binoculars through which you look in order to watch 3 dimensional photographs.
These animal aromatic substances are always pheromone molecules and they appeal to our nervous system and to our emotions as no vegetal 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 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 third dimension of perfumery goes through animal scents but the use of them is a hard path, prohibitive 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 neighbours. With a litre or two of alcohol and a big pan I shall rinse it to get his perfume.
Mutton smell is somehow sweeter than the one of Billy goat, and certainly more acceptable to most people than civet.
Knowing how civet can blend into marvellous 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.

AbdesSalaam Attar
Compositore Profumiere

Scritto Da – Salaam Attar il 12 Settembre 2006alle ore 17:15:00

[FrankieCee]

What an interesting hypothesis, the search to find a viable alternative for a senses pleasing, animal pheromone. I wonder if your theory could perhaps trickle down to perhaps include the common house cat (domestic) or possibly even the dog? As we know that they emit similar attractants, could it not be possible to consider their pheromones as a source of investigation? Is not the “cat”, in particular, of the same species as the civet? I don’t know the particluar species or genus but it would appear, at surface level, to be within the realm of feasibility. Who knows, we may have the answer to this dilemma as close to us as an “arm’s length” as we search to discover a viable alternative. Frank

[AbdesSalaam Attar, Perfumer Composer]

As Jesus said, Man does not feed just on bread.

He needs spiritual food as well.

We have been made to think systematically by our modern western culture makers (moneymaking culture), that perfume means sensuality and sexuality.

I learned in the East that perfume means spirituality.

Here is the key to our innate taste for the animal scents. Through the wearing of perfumes we seek to absorb and appropriate the perfect harmony of nature, and the different vital forces that it contains, in order to regenerate our own vital force and to re-establish our inner harmony.

That is because perfume is source of sanity, exactly the contrary of what Suskin’s book proposes.

In this instinctive human search for balance, which does not belong to animals because they do not have our complex psyche (psychological disturbs) and because they do not commit acts that are contrary to their nature (bringing on themselves physical disturbs), the vital force of animals present in their scents is as important as the botanical one.

This is one aspect of perfumetherapy similar to homeopathic, which by the way uses Muskdeer, castoreum and Ambergris.

We love to live among flowers and plants and we need so much their presence that we bring them into our houses, exactly as we do with domestic animals. The lack of vegetal and animal presence that comes with the modern city life is very new and unique to the story of mankind. This renders our need for a “tridimentional” botanical and animal perfume all the more imperative to us.

AbdesSalaam Attar
Compositore Profumiere

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