AMBRE PLATINE

Amber is a fossil resin, secreted by conifers. Amber stones are mainly used in jewelry. In perfumery, it

is ambergris that interests perfumers. To the naked eye, the gray amber stone is not very beautiful, it is greyish, light and looks like a pumice stone. However, it is a very rich and very rare material. It is a kind of «calculation» that the sperm whale expels by natural means. Carried by the currents, the amber stones, then in the form of blocks, will run aground on the deserted coasts. The smell of gray amber is variable depending on the origin of the stone blocks and their floating time. As a result, amber offers many facets. Woody, camphorated, animal, even fecal odors, smells of tobacco, musk, but also marine notes, seaweed, sea urchins or even punctured Fish.

Anyway, ambergris is renowned for its warm notes. Amber gives warmth, tenacity and even a sweet sensuality to the wearer. In addition, it brings to the compositions, a harmony that is rarely found with other raw materials. The sturdy notes of gray amber are excellent fixers, which is why they are mainly found in the base note. Today we only use synthetic materials to reproduce this wonderful fragrance that is gray amber. Thanks to its fixing power and natural harmony, gray amber is found in many compositions. It combines particularly well with notes like vanilla, sandalwood, labdanum, white musk and we will therefore find it in oriental perfumes. Amber, like other animal materials, is a pheromone and acts directly on the wearer. An undeniable asset for perfumers!

AMBER

A ccording to the French dictionary, a spice is «An aromatic and vegetable substance used for

seasoning dishes». The spices can come from barks, like cinnamon, from flowers, like saffron and cloves, from leaves, like tea, from bulbs like garlic and onion, from fruits, like pepper or dill and seeds like coriander or dill. Most of the spices are exotic products (cinnamon, coriander, cloves, saffron, peppers, ginger, nutmeg, curry) and come from the Middle East. Some have existed since ancient times and were used in medicine. Today, spices have a special place in perfumery. In ancient times, the Egyptians used incense spices to communicate with the beyond, especially during commemoration ceremonies. The «Royal Perfume» (1st AD) which was used mainly for scented

baths consisted of cinnamon, cloves, saffron, nutmeg. The main thing was to get a tenacious and heady scent. If spices have always been part of perfumery, their number has increased and we can now add many ingredients such as cardamom, rose berry, curry or cumin. You should know that the spices are divided in two, namely the hot spices (cinnamon, saffron, pepper) and the cold spices (ginger, cardamom, coriander). In a composition, the spices offer warmth, opulence, sensuality, leaving a wake that cannot be forgotten. As such, they are mainly positioned as a base note to coat all of the other notes. Today, spices are very popular with perfumers because they are very popular with both women and men. Of course, spices are used in oriental compositions.

SPICES

T he almond, the fruit of the almond tree, cannot be, like many fruity raw materials, directly incorporated

into our perfumes to make it the pretty powdery and delicious note that we have known so well for several decades. However, thanks to the many discoveries made during this century concerning synthetic molecules, there are different materials which wonderfully reproduce the almond note in pretty flowery juices mainly, but also other beautiful fragrant creations. The almond note can unfortunately not be the direct product of the delicate nut that we know. Therefore, it was therefore naturally necessary to be able to alleviate this evil. One of the methods consists in using apricot by distilling the apricot kernel in order to obtain benzaldehyde, a natural almond note and what is more

allows to use all the parts of the apricot, not just its flesh, during the apricot making process. The famous tonka bean and its powerful coumarin active ingredients can also be used to create an almond note in a fragrance that requires it to transform into this pretty nut. As we have seen previously, the almond note although it does not exist naturally thanks to the almond tree, can be reproduced in different ways depending on the facet that one wishes to obtain. However the olfactory family of predilection of the almond note is of course the floral which exhale its delicate powdery and greedy notes in armfuls of flowers which enchant our nostrils! The almond note is also very popular with oriental perfumes. There are many perfumes containing the almond note and ultimately relatively original in their composition.

ALMONDS