Friday, February 26, 2010

Green Clean Scents ~ Flowers for Demeter



I am exploring the world of Green Clean Scents...

When I was blending custom perfumes at the Four Seasons "Everlasting Valentines Day" Event, I noticed there was an overwhelming trend - Everyone, had the same request for a "Green-Clean Scent."

Even when I spoke with Kim (Director of Public Relations at The Four Seasons Hotel, Beverly Hills), about her Bespoke Perfume, she told me the same thing - that she wanted "A clean, fresh, green scent", that she could wear everyday...

I mentioned this trend to my Mom, and she told me a story about one of her last Scent Memories (she's completely anosmic due to a head injury). There was a hair salon in Toluka Lake where she especially enjoyed going to have her hair shampooed, because they used a wonderful "Hay"/Grass scented shampoo. (She's an outdoorsy Horse-Person who brightens whenever she talks about her favorite scent memories.)

How could I have missed this?!... Through all our years of "Shared Scent Experiences", it never dawned on me that she was focusing on the GREEN aspect of our scent environments...I guess I have always been so pulled by the narcotic allure of floral scents that I never even stopped to think that maybe she was experiencing a simultaneously overlapping Scented Moment...

In other Words: Green Clean = "Demeter's Choice"

Well that makes it official - I am off and running on a mission to create the ultimate "Green Clean" Perfume for our House Collection!

To me, GREEN smells like ~ SPRING...Fresh, clean, happy, bright... Aromatic, light, Pear, fertility, abundance, possibility...Young Love, a walk in the rain... A pile of fresh cut grass just as the rain begins to fall...COUMARIN...


*** What does Green smell like to you
?***

The first 3 people to post a blog comment with their definition of "What Green smells like" to them, will receive a 1 Dram bottle of said perfume when it is finished!

TASTY TID-BIT:

COUMARIN; (Per Wikipedia)Is a chemical compound (specifically, a benzopyrone) found in many plants, notably in high concentration in the tonka bean(Dipteryx odorata), vanilla grass (Anthoxanthum odoratum), woodruff (Galium odoratum), mullein (Verbascum spp.), and sweet grass (Hierochloe odorata). It has a sweet scent, readily recognised as the scent of newly-mown hay, and has been used in perfumes since 1882. The name comes from a French word, coumarou, for the tonka bean. It is a crystalline white solid when seen pure.

Tonka Bean Tree / Dried Tonka Bean

















Coumarin in Perfumery:


Coumarin has a history of importance in perfumery, being the first synthetic (synthesised by W.H. Perkin 1868) to be used in a fragrance. Fougère Royale,from the house of Houbigant was created by Chief perfumer Paul Parquet who used coumarin,combined with lavender, citrus and woody notes to Author the first fragrance that defined the Fougère(fern)genre. It is said that the creation of Fougère Royale marks the birth of modern perfumery.




Soon after the release of Fougère Royale, perfumer Aimé Guerlain (1834-1910) combined natural and synthetic fragrances to produce Jicky in 1889, a scent that is still sold widely today. Guerlain added the synthetics coumarin and vanillin (the fragrance principle of vanilla)to natural fragrances. Like Fougère Royale, Jicky is a fern based fragrance.



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Green is....the taste of a bright juicy spring leaf, plucked from a shy violet.

...the smell of the crumpled mint patch.

....the color of the lake water as I lay back, holding my breath and sinking into it's embrace.

Green is life.

Marlene said...

GREEN is the delicate mint shade of the buds on spring trees and the smell of basil in my garden. It is the color of health and vitality, of all things new and thriving, and it is a reminder that the earth is warming and we are coming out of a long winter into the light of rebirth.