The materials
What is actually in it.
A note list is an intention, not an ingredient list. These are the materials those notes name: what they are, where they come from, and where each one is worn in the five.
Woods and resins
- Sandalwood Santalum album
The heartwood, not the tree. The oil forms slowly in the centre of the trunk over decades, which is why species and age are the whole argument. Indian sandalwood is regulated at every step of its trade; plantations in Australia now grow much of the world’s S. album.
Creamy, milky, soft-edged; warm without being sweet. It holds other materials up rather than announcing itself.
Worn in002Somewhere Else · 004After You · 005Don’t Leave Yet · Read the essay
- Oud, or agarwood Aquilaria
A resin an injured tree makes. Where an Aquilaria is wounded and infected, the heartwood fills with resin; that wood is burned, or distilled into oil. Wild trees are protected, the real oil is among the most expensive materials there is, and most “oud” in perfumery is an accord built to stand for it.
Animal, medicinal, sweet and dark; barnyard in one distillation, cold temple wood in another.
Worn in003Burning Slow · Read the essay
- Benzoin Styrax
A balsam the Styrax tree makes when its bark is cut, collected in Sumatra and Laos.
Sweet, resinous, close to vanilla; a fixative, so it slows the evaporation of everything near it.
Worn in005Don’t Leave Yet
- Incense Boswellia
Frankincense is resin tapped from Boswellia trees in Oman, Somalia and India, and burned for as long as anyone has kept records. In India the word also means agarbatti, which is a whole composition of its own rather than one material.
Dry, peppery, cool smoke, with lemon rind at the top of it when the resin is fresh.
Worn in003Burning Slow
Spices
- Saffron Crocus sativus
Three stigmas from each crocus flower, picked by hand at first light. It takes some 150,000 flowers to make a kilogram, which is why it is the most expensive spice by weight. Kashmir and Iran are the two origins people argue about.
Leathery, warm, faintly metallic and honeyed. In perfumery it reads as heat rather than as food.
Worn in003Burning Slow
- Cardamom Elettaria cardamomum
Green pods from the hills of Kerala and from Guatemala; the seed inside is steam-distilled.
Cool, camphorous, sweet-spiced. It lifts a warm base without adding weight to it.
Worn in005Don’t Leave Yet
Roots, leaves and flowers
- Vetiver Chrysopogon zizanioides
Not a leaf: the roots. Khus in India, where washed roots are still woven into screens, hung in a doorway and kept wet so the hot wind comes through cool and green. Distilled in Haiti, Java and India, and each of the three smells different.
Earthy, damp, green and smoky, with a cool bitterness underneath. It dries a composition out.
Worn in002Somewhere Else
- Orris, from iris Iris pallida
The rhizome, not the flower, and only after it has been dried and left for three to five years while the irones in it develop. That wait, and the yield, make it one of the most expensive materials in perfumery.
Cool, powdery, root-like; violet at a distance, suede up close.
Worn in004After You
- Tobacco Nicotiana tabacum
The cured leaf, as an absolute. It has nothing to do with smoke, which is a different note entirely.
Honeyed, hay-like, sweet the way dried fruit is sweet.
Worn in005Don’t Leave Yet
- Black tea Camellia sinensis
Assam and Darjeeling leaf. A true tea absolute exists and is rare; most tea in perfumery is an accord built around and beside it.
Dry, tannic, papery, faintly smoky.
Worn in001Second Skin · 002Somewhere Else
- Fig leaf Ficus carica
The leaf rather than the fruit. Cut one and it bleeds a milky green sap, and that smell — not the jammy fruit — is what the note means.
Green, milky, cool; sap and sun on a stone wall.
Worn in002Somewhere Else
Sweet, and the musks
- Vanilla Vanilla planifolia
A cured orchid pod: months of sweating and drying after the harvest. Madagascar and Réunion lead it, with small plantations in south India, and its price moves with the weather.
Sweet, balsamic, leathery at the edges. Used dry it is warm rather than edible.
Worn in004After You · 005Don’t Leave Yet
- The musks
There is no animal musk in modern perfumery. It came from a gland of the musk deer, and it is neither legal nor necessary: what a house uses now is a family of made molecules, some of them the most-used materials in the industry.
Skin, warmth, clean cotton. Mostly they are felt rather than smelled, which is the point of them.
Worn in001Second Skin · 004After You
Which material or molecule each edition uses — the species, the origin, and whether it is the oil or something built to stand for it — is stated with its full ingredient list before the first bottle ships. How to read a fragrance · The journal