Product Review: September 2024 Perfumer's Apprentice Haul.

 Since around October of last year, I decided to make good on an inkling I'd had, with regards to that fragrances would work out well for balancing my mood, so I began purchasing retail designer fragrances by Dior, and alternately, I also began purchasing individual aroma chemicals and natural fragrance products from suppliers such as Liberty Natural and The Perfumer's Apprentice, whom both have delightful catalogs of fine and natural, as well as synthetic (Perfumer's Apprentice) fragrance components. My use case scenario ranged from trying my hand at making a complete fragrance composition from scratch, to developing simpler layers to add, on top of my designer bottles of fragrance. In the past, I've also purchased fragrances such as Spicebomb, by Viktor and Rolf, for such purposes. 

My workflow in fragrance, lately, has been based on developing a fragrance from scratch, stemming from a purchase haul I made two months ago, which was, conceptually, a women's fragrance which had Anise (Licorice) and hyacinth as the feature ingredients, for which I purchased small amounts of over 20 ingredients, in order to create it. The results were moderately amusing, yet I found myself tending towards trying to wear the fragrance, myself, (being a male), so, as the weeks of the month wore on, in that month, I gradually developed the fragrance, staring from a confectionary licorice aroma, initially, to an overpowering floral hyacinth earthy aroma eau de parfum hydrosol, with strong remnants of the Anise and licorice theme still remaining - it was too strong to wear when going out, so I resolved to have it as a room spray. 

Image of hyacinth bulbs in bloom, by Artur Pawlak from Pixabay

I felt determined to not have wasted my investment money, for the month, in purchasing the ingredients for the composition, so I ended up setting it aside, and I made plans, for the next month, to renew my aspirations to create a reasonably wearable female's fragrance, with natural ingredients, from Liberty Natural. I purchased Rose Otto, for a sizable and costly dose of fresh petals and natural floral bloom, and the effect turned out nicely - the scent of Rose, in this case, ends up being a scent modulator, of sorts, and the effect of Rose Otto, rather than as much, the scent and smell, itself, of Rose, served to give the composition a twist, which I could be satisfied with, so I bottled up the oil layer of the composition in to small containers, for preservation and documentation of the creation. Prior to this, I had also given the fragrance a sizable helping of grapefruit essential oil, to brighten up the overpowering effect that the hydrosol composition had. I also added absolutes of Tonka bean and Cocoa, for a sweetened culinary gourmand effect, overall, since the fragrance had a confectionary theme to it, at its outset, with Anise and licorice fragrance at the core of the composition, for which I decided to try Canthoxal, a synthetic component, and it worked nicely. I also added Carnation absolute, for additional fresh petals and spice, being that the scent of Carnation blooms contains a high amount of eugenol, for which, the smell of Clove would be the best reference material (actually, carnation blooms, naturally, would seem to have nearly no scent, at all, so I am referring, here, to the extracted oil, or the absolute). Lastly, from Liberty Natural, which was last month's purchase, I added Champaca CO², for its anti-inflammatory therapeutic effect, rather than that it would seem to be a floral component, being that the scent of this particular extraction of Champaca blooms might best be liked to the exotic spices of Indian (subcontinent) culinary fare, with lightly fragrant hints of cardamom, fennel seed, and cumin to it. Comparatively, the essential oils and absolutes of the Champaca flower have, in increasing magnitude, respectively, much more floral and lovely aromas to them. 

I decided, initially, in creating this Hyacinth and Anise fragrance composition, to complement the natural fragrance components with synthetic ingredients. This might range, in meaning, from that the aroma chemical is a standardized formula, of the manufacturer's own design, or, alternately, that the entire ingredient, itself, is manufactured from sparse chemical raw material resources, through means, perhaps, such as additive or subtractive chemistry processes. For example, for the initial carnation flower effect, I had Carnation essential oil, to begin with, yet, according to my reading studies, and practical, hands-on experience, in recent and former outsets of creating fragrance compositions, essential oils, themselves, sometimes tend towards decomposing (oxidizing) in the fragrance composition, giving the creator (me, in this case),  temporarily false sense of what the fragrance would end up smelling like, being that some of the rarer fractions of scents, in cases where the ingredient is a delicate one; here, the carnation flower scent would have its soft, fresh petals character subdued, or disappeared, as the fragrance sits out, as time goes on. After all, the fragrance composition ought to be stable, over weeks, months, or years, depending on the production stage and packaging materials. In this case, I'm still in the early to mid-stage development process, so I use temporary, reusable plastic spray bottles, for example. In addition, synthetic ingredients also have the added benefit, at times, of being lightly colored, or clear and colorless, which is helpful during The marketing stages of producing a professional designer fine fragrance. The synthetic ingredient aroma compound for Carnation that I employed for this composition was Methyl Diantilis, which is reputed to be a more stable synthetic component. I wanted to experiment with the potential for the synthetic ingredients to have a "stabilizing" effect, as well, in terms overall course of things, given that I'm using a host of natural fragrance extracts, here - synthetic ingredients are relatively cheap ingredients, by comparison, and they tend to be lacking, in various ways, compared to natural fragrance extracts.

This month, I received a surprise fragrance endowment, care of my Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health Peer Support and Caseworkers; in particular, from one of them, named Matt (thanks, Matt), who gifted me with a 3.4 fl. oz. bottle of Dior Sauvage, Eau de Parfum version (there are 5 different versions of Sauvage, for men; I typically like the Sauvage Elixir one, especially during the fall and winter seasons, and I haven't yet smelled the newly released Sauvage eau Forte hydrosol), which gave me a new and unexpected fragrance project to work on, being that I'm mostly unfamiliar with the Eau de Parfum version of Dior's Sauvage line of products. The reason I favor the Elixir variant is that it is lush and heavy; perfect for colder weather, whereas I find that the Eau de Perfume version is pungent and literally perfumey - not so much a problem, however, and Mark, my Department of Mental Health nurse, assured me that the scent is masculine enough. Still, I like an over-the-top good smelling fragrance profile, so, this month, I stocked up on some old favorite ingredients, which I'd run out of, such as Benzoin Oliffac, Ambroxan and Exaltone, two musks, which I'd lost, during the course of a former, unexpected eviction, some new-to-me samples of fragrance profiles that I'd been favoring, such as Siam Benzoin Resin in Benzyl Benzoate, Black Hemlock Absolute, for which I'm sampling as a complement, or as a woodsy, smoky-sweet alternative to Blackcurrant Bud Absolute, and related compounds, such as Labienoxime, and Rhubofix, in the vein of earthy and mailette ingredients I'd initially purchased to create my perfume-from-scratch, such as Terrasol and Sarriete Base. Lastly, I venture off, this month, in to incorporating flavor ingredients in my fragrance compositions, with cinnamon and hibiscus flavor concentrated, being that I'd mostly not found a powerful and pungent-enough cinnamon, for my spice olfactory profile; here, hearkening back to my love of Spicebomb - I felt that i could create a reasonably-distanced and unique take on Spicebomb with my Anise / Licorice / 🪻 Hyacinth fragrance, and I also needed a flavor to fill up a Geek Bar Pulse nicotine vaporizer, which I found I found I could refill, so I chose Hibiscus for the flavor, and it worked out great with my flavorless 50 mg nicotine salts that I purchased locally, from Broadway Smoke Shop. The Hibiscus 🌺 flavor concentrate worked out great, since it has propylene glycol in it, which is a food grade antifreeze that vaporizes (it's in fog juice) in an e-cigarette inhaler, such as the Geek Bar Pulse.

I felt that the fragrances I was wearing (Dior Homme Sport), working with (Dior Sauvage Eau de Perfume), or creating (the Anise / Hyacinth spice fragrance), lacked a certain degree of Amber and Musk, so Ambroxan and Exaltone became two iconic favorites that I could implement in to layers of fragrance that I could apply, as separate perfuming sprays in different spray bottles. They both smell great, at different price points ($15.00 and $72.00, respectively), and, in the case of this purchase haul, the both of them smell a bit more powdery and less base-y than I'd recalled, off-hand, yet they work well, for my situation, since the low end of the fragrance spectrum I'm working with, and fragrance profile I'm trying to fill out, such as with the Sauvage Eau de Perfume, is reputably satiated by the addition of the Black Hemlock Absolute, which has a rich woodsy, syrupy, sweet, and smoky fragrance to it that I'd been looking for, all in one ingredient. Rhubofix is a nice, spicy, earthy fragrance ingredient - a bit pungent, so I only incorporated several drops, as opposed to a few squirts that I put in, when it came to Benzoin Oliffac and Calibrian Bergamot (I'd forgotten, during the course of writing this blog, about needing to refill my Bergamot supply, and the Calibrian Bergaptene-free Bergamot from Perfumer's Apprentice is far more delightful than a standard Bergamot oil, with a bright and sweet citrus aroma to it. It's just great, as far as that slice of citrus fragrance profile is concerned.

September's haul of fragrance ingredients.

In diffusion, this little stub fragrance layer, in combination with the Sauvage Eau de Perfume, ends up giving off the impression of bubblegum anaesthesic, in my opinion. On the skin, the combination smells like a powerfully artificial cinnamon feature, dressed up in the fanciest of decolletage, with what I consider to be the feminity of the Dior fragrance feeling subdued; perhaps veiled, in that it might still be inferred.