Perfumer Ineke

Ineke Ruhland is born in Canada she moved to Europe in 1988 to work in the fragrance industry. In 1996 she studied perfumery at ISIPCA in Versailles France. Following three years of apprenticeship at a fragrance house in Paris, Ineke moved to San Francisco where she created her own perfumes. The perfumes Ineke makes are delicate and elegant, presented in beautiful bottles named following the alphabet.

A

After my own heart

Notes: bergamot, raspberry, lilac

sandalwood heliotrope musk


After my own heart is a fresh tender perfume it has a tiny subtle sweet note but over all it's light and playful. The dominant note is lilac but it has also a fresh citrus note and a green note is also present. The color of this juice is reflecting the fragrance very well it's soft fresh with a transparent feeling.

B
Balmy days & sundays

Notes: freesia, leafy greens grass honeysuckle rose mimosa

chypre accent musk



Balmy days & sundays is more rounder than After my own heart, it's heavier because of the honeysuckle. But still transparent with a green freesia note. It's a quiet perfume like a whisper, a bit too timide for me.

C
Chemical bonding

Notes: smooth citrus cocktail tea blackberry dewy peony

vetviver amber powdery musk


This perfume has citrus but it's fruitier it's not sparkling citrus like in a cologne this citrus is combined with heavier notes, well like Ineke describes the notes herself she say it's a smooth citrus cocktail and that's true. You can smell some sweet fruity notes through it, maybe that's the blackberry I'm smelling? I like this one the most of all four because in this perfume the base is more prominent than in the other three. The base is dry ambery maybe some Ambrox and Cashmeran is used I don't know.

D
Derring-do

Notes: fresh citrus blend rain notes cyclamen magnolia fougere accents

guaiacwood cedarwood musk


This is the masculine perfume from Ineke it's a fougere accord(lavender, patchouli, oakmoss, coumarine) mixed with citrus and magnolia. I love the scent of magnolia and was surprised to find it in a men's fragrance, it works perfectly well in this perfume. It has rain notes for sure like the air can be filled after rain with a scent of waxy green wet leaves. I say waxy because it doesn't smell crispy green but rainy green waxy with a melon note as well. The base is nice woody musky.

Ineke's website is beautiful please have a look:

http://www.ineke.com/

The photo's are from her website and from:

http://www.basenotes.net/

Perfume the movie

Yesterday I've seen the movie "Perfume the story of a murderer" and I enjoyed it very much. I read the book a couple of times because the story is intriguing. I was real curious about how they would make a film based on the novel "Das Parfum" by Patrick Suskind(see photo on your right) from Germany who wrote the novel in 1985. There are 15 million books sold until now. Only in 2001 he gave away the film rights for 10 million Euro!!! The movie was directed by the German film director Tom Tykwer.

The story is about Jean-Baptiste Grenouille who was born in the 18th Century in Paris and had an incomparable sense of smell. He had a live without love and was only interested in scents and smell, not only scents that considered to be "nice" smells but also "bad" smells. The strange thing was that he didn't own a body odor of his own and noticed that because his body didn't had a smell he was a nobody to everyone. It was as if everyone was looking right through him and didn't notice him at all. As he grew up he "fell in love" with the smell of a young woman, a virgin. He wasn't fallen in love with her person but only by her scent, her sent gave him tears in his eyes and he was deeply touched by it. He wanted to know how he could conserve her scent, and wanted to create a scent for his own so he wouldn't be no longer a nobody to everyone.

When he met the perfumer Giuseppe Baldini he proved that he could do miracles with scents and created a perfume without ever learned how to make it. The perfumer was so impressed and knew that he could use Jean-Baptiste Grenouille to make him new wonderful perfumes a thing he wasn't capable of anymore.

The perfumer learned him how to conserve scent and Jean-Baptiste finally knew how to use it for conserving the scent of the young woman. He had to kill her, shaved her had and spread her in a layer of animal fat what absorbed her scent. He distilled the fat and finally had a view drops of her scent. He killed 12 virgins to complete his divine perfume....

It must have been a difficult job to make a movie about smell without actual smelling it but the book didn't have smell as well. I think they did a wonderful job filming this novel. Some parts of the novel are different but the movie tells the whole story complete and changed only small bits, I think because it was necessary for the movie.

Some parts of the movie could be "smelled" I think that's something incredibly difficult for a movie. I especially liked the end of the movie when he's about to be executed, when he's got disgusted by humans, he thinks about the women he killed and realized there is also something else to enjoy the scent of a woman... by making love to her, he never thought about that before.

Merry Christmas

vrolijk kerstfeest

sعيد ميلاد المسيح سعيدة

Joyeux Noël

frohe Weihnachten

merry christmas

Buon Natale

christmas alegre

Feliz Navidad

glad jul

веселое рождество

즐거운 성탄

圣诞快乐

mo’adim lesimkha

The nose knows????

Fig

On the Yahoo group: Perfume Making, we're talking about how to create a fig scent. There is a fig leaf absolute but the absolute can't be used in a perfume because it's extremely phototoxic. This photoxicity is because of bergapten a component also found in bergamot and the component angelicin. I found an article about angelicin that you can read here where is told that angelicin was tested on the skin of mice and the outcome was that it produced skin cancer when administered with ultraviolet A radiation. Also Ifra(The International Fragrance Association) says that fig leaf absolute can't be used in fragrances.

I like to eat figs they are honeysweet and I heard that figs are real healthy. I like the smell of fig leaves as well, my brother has a fig tree in his garden and the smell of the leaves are wonderful. So I tried to make a fig scent not the scent of the fresh figs but the dried figs and a fig leaves scent.

This is what I made for the dried fig scent so far, I used benzyl alcohol(light floral), linalool(floral woody, rosewood like), amyl cinnamic aldehyde(waxy jasmine), benzaldehyde(almond like), coumarine(tonka like), benzyl benzoate(balsamic), exaltolide(musky), maltol(sugary), ethyl phenyl acetate(honey like), ylang ylang oil(exotic), vanillin and indole(animalic).

The smell of it does smell like dried fig indeed but it needs more of a dark sweet scent so I think for the next batch I will use also some labdanum absolute, beeswax absolute for the honey note and some Geranyl acetate to sweeten it and maybe some amyl salicylate as well for a sweet herbal orchid like note.

I also tried to make a fig leaf scent and used stemone(fresh green), galbanum oil( green), linalool, benzyl acetate(fresh jasmine fruity), beta ionone(woody violet), leaf alcohol(smells like fresh cut grass), cis 3 hexenyl acetate(green leaf), styrallyl acetate(green gardenia rhubarb), lindenblossom base, vertelione(violet leaf like), Phenylethyl dimethyl acetate(pungent green), black pepper oil and cyclogalbanate(green galbanum pineapple).

It's a nice green leaf scent but I want to make it more green maybe a bit deeper green, so the experiments will go on.

What is it......

that made me start making perfumes? Sometimes I ask myself that question. I always loved fragrances, as a little child I always took a cloth with me to bed and my mother had to spray some perfume on it, I kept it close to my face when sucking my thumb. My mother was a consulant of Mora Shira when I was a child and I liked to sniff all those lovely fragrances.

I liked to read books about essential oils and liked gardening, so I also started to read books about all kinds of plants and flowers. I also liked to read about healing herbs, but one time my brother gave me a book from Jean M Auel it was her first book "The clan of the cave bear". I was hooked, what a beautiful book, I never read something like that before. It's a long story to tell but this book is about the prehistory it's about a "human" little girl that lost her family in an earthquake and starts to run and run for weeks until she is found by a Neanderthals clan.
She raised up between them but they don't accept her so easy, she is different. The woman that takes care of her is a medicine woman and learned her all the secrets of healing herbs. This way the little girl Ayla gets respect from the clan and she can stay. Well the story goes on but it's too long to tell it all. Jean M Auel wrote 5 novels about Ayla.

The parts in the book about healing herbs were very interesting to me, and I started to plant healing herbs in my garden and made creams for my face with them. Later on I liked to make a garden that was fragrant so when you walked trough it you could smell all kinds of different flowers and plants. I planted the fragrant flowers and plants in a way that you always could smell something also in the evening and night. It was like walking through a perfume and smell all the details of it. I think there it started, I wanted to make a perfume.....

Here you can read more about the books from Jean M Auel and read a piece of the first chapter of her first book The clan of the cave bear:
http://www.amazon.ca/Clan-Cave-Bear-Jean-Auel/dp/product-description/0553250426
Here a site about the herbs Ayla used:
http://ecfans.com/aylasherbs/AHerbs_ac.htm

Jardins de Bagatelle

A perfume what smells like you walk in a garden, a garden with all kinds of fragrant white flowers. The opening is fresh, flowery with some sharp green notes. It's filled with juicy Neroli tempered with Mimosa. It's not a fruity perfume but more a perfume made of a bouquet of white flowers with some citrus and woody notes with an animalic note in the background.

The heart of this perfume is full of white fragrant flowers, but the scent of the flower I can detect most is Gardenia soon assistant by the sensual notes of Tuberose and Jasmine. A scent often used together with Tuberose is narcissus, the smell is a bit similar to the smell of Tuberose although Tuberose smells more creamy and have a green note and Narcissus has a more fruity and more animalic scent, if the smell of Narcissus could have a color it would be yellow. The Narcissus gives a nice bite to this perfume.

To hold all these lovely fragrant flowers together there is added an Iris note, maybe with the use of Ionone a component of Iris that has a dry woody flowery fragrance. It gives a solid smell to these fragrant white flowers so their fragrance will melt with your skin and doesn't smell like you wear the scent of flowers but something that becomes a part of you and your body chemistry. The fragrance of Iris will lead you to the woody notes; a warm earthy smoky Vetiver together with Cedar and Patchouli to spice it up a bit, also an animalic note is added to prevent this perfume to become an innocent perfume.

Jardins de Bagatelle is a very well made elegant perfume, it surprise you with little unexpected notes and the notes are perfect balanced. I do love all the perfumes made by Guerlain and I do love this one as well, but it's not my favorite like Mitsouko, Shalimar or Samsara.

Apologize

I realize I don't post as often anymore, I apologize for that. I have many things to say I want to do more reviews of the Guerlain perfumes and also of the perfumes by Ineke. But lately I can't always find the time. I just post when ever I have the time or whenever I feel like it, I want to enjoy to write the posts and don't want to feel like it's a must. I hope you all don't mind that I don't post on a regular bases.

Fragrant wishes to all readers of this blog

Smell

Yesterday I was in a perfumery shop and had a real nice conversation with the lady of the shop. I asked her if I could smell some of the new fragrances and we start to talk about fragrances in general.

I told her that I think Chanel no5 is nice and that it was really new and special in the time it was made but that it's not one of my favorite. She said she was a real fan of Chanel no5 and that when she wears it people always say to her that she smells so nice. I told her that Chanel no19 is my favorite and that I like Coco Chanel as well.

O, she said, before I liked Coco Chanel as well until I went to a funeral of a good friend of mine, she said that the daughter of her friend was wearing Coco Chanel and since then the smell of this perfume reminds her of this sad day and that she can't wear it without being really sad.

That reminded me of a perfume I can't wear or smell without being sad, it's Light Blue by Dolce & Gabbana I weared this perfume when our dog Jacko died. Since then I don't wear it anymore, I can recognize this perfume without any doubt when someone wears it. I still miss my warm and dear friend.

This is our dear friend Jacko who died two years ago

We started to talk about how difficult it seems to translate smell in words, I found out that when I ask someone to describe a perfume they look at me like I asked something really strange, they say something like that it's nice or that it's sweet or that it's fresh but they find it difficult to tell more about it.

A couple of days ago I visited my brother, my friend was there as well, my sister in law and I started to talk about a perfume. She used words like, it has a high tone or this perfume smells round etc. My friend raised her eyebrows and asked where the hell we were talking about. She said it was like we were talking a different language. We explained to her what we were talking about and after the explanation she understood a bit more of this special language.

I told the lady of the shop about this and she affirmed this, she told me she did a wine tasting course once and that it was difficult to describe the taste or smell. There are some kind of words used to describe some aromas, but she told me that some descriptions were not her descriptions, everyone has their own scent memories or referents, so the description by someone else could be from a whole different scent experience than yours.

We also made the connection to music, we both like music it seemed. Music can touch you in the same way a fragrance can, but somehow it's easier to describe music then to describe a fragrance. We can even find out what kind of notes the music is made of, try that with a perfume....Maybe we have to learn how to describe what we smell it's an important part of our live, strange that we have a difficulty to find the words for such an important thing.

Blending perfume

Today I was thinking about the difference between a blend and a perfume. I still don't know the difference but I guess a blend is a simple mix of some aromatic materials, well maybe it doesn't need to be a simple mix but it isn't a perfume although you could call perfume a blend but that's not a common word used for a perfume(I think). You're still with me? It sounds a bit confusing.

I searched for the word "blend"(in verb form) in the free online dictionary and this is what it says:

*To combine or mix so that the constituent parts are indistinguishable from one another.

*To combine (varieties or grades) to obtain a mixture of a particular character, quality, or consistency.

*To form a uniform mixture.

*To become merged into one; unite.

*To create a harmonious effect or result.

Mmm you could say the same thing about perfume, so maybe you can use both words but I prefer to use the name perfume above a blend. A blend to me is a mix but not necessarily a perfume. To mix some aromatic materials doesn't make a perfume even when it smells good. You wear a perfume on your skin it becomes a part of you, perfume has something special it becomes personal. I think you can say that a perfume is a blend but not every blend is a perfume.

Blending different aromatic materials is a remarkable process, you think you know how the result will smell because you know what you just mixed but the outcome is sometimes different than you expected. Sometimes you know because of earlier experiences but you can't always predict how a mix will smell. Like when you paint and you mix colors you'll see that blue and yellow mixed together will form a whole new color; green. We all know that by now, it's the same in perfumery we know the outcome of some combinations but we can't predict them all. A couple of days before I added a tiny bit of Maltol to a creation. Maltol is an aroma chemical that smells like sugar. I added a real small bit, but the outcome wasn't sugary at all, it made the fragrance more stand out it gave the fragrance a solid base what gave the top and heart notes a lift. I like discoveries like that.

I found a new hobby

At my Perfumemaking group we are talking about tincturing. I like the idea of making tinctures of unusual materials. Zz from Parfume Moderne gave us some tips on how to make tinctures. I remember that I tried to make them a couple of years ago but that wasn't a success.

Right now I made two tinctures; one with coffee and one with dried apricots. When I like the result I will make more tinctures. I used 2 grams of the materials and 14 grams of alcohol to try it out, I'm not sure that it will work that way or that I have to add more coffee or apricots.

I can imagine that it's a really nice hobby to find all kinds of things to tincture. I know that Zz tinctured mushrooms for example that sounds really interesting. I'm already looking around for more materials to tincture, but right now I just have to wait patiently......

The photo is from http://www.jashbotanicals.com/

Have a fragrant day!!!

Orris by Andy Tauer now available

The wonderful Orris perfume by Andy Tauer is created without thinking about the costs. It's made of the expensive materials Orris and Agarwood with dark rose, spices and mysore sandalwood.

Andy shared this perfume with 40 people by sending them a free sample to celebrate the 1 year anniversary of his blog. I was one of the lucky ones that received the sample.

The reaction he received on this perfume was sensational. Everyone wants this perfume. And even though Andy didn't have plans to make this perfume in production because of the high costs of the ingredients, he decided to create a limited number of bottles of this incredible stuff.

The Orris is different than any other orris scent I'd ever smelled. It's soft dry woody, but because of the spices it isn't just soft powdery but more intense. It's soft with a smoky and spicy touch. It's starts with lemon and spicy notes but soon gets dark, deep and smooth with still the spiciness on top of it. Somehow all the perfumes of Andy have something that you can recognize as an Andy Tauer fragrance. He has his own style that always come through his creations.

The Orris perfume could be ordered right now the shipment will be by 15 November.
http://www.tauerperfumes.com/blog/

Blending, mixing, stirring and sniffing

The whole week I'm blending, mixing, stirring and sniffing. I took the whole week off so I can spent all my time on making perfumes. I'm studying the musk materials right now, I have many different musks and I'm trying to find out which musk combines well with the other. The odorants of musk are really different I have sweet musks but also musks that have a dominant animal note, I have musks with a dry note a full rounded note, a green note, a musk ambery note and so on.

I'm also working on the fruity/chypre again. The fragrance matured for a while so I had the change to smell the result. I'm in love with this fragrance the picture I had in mind for this fragrance is a self-assured woman who is feminine but also strong. The fruity notes stands for the femininity and the firm base with oakmoss and amber for her self-assurances. I added some notes that are also used in men's fragrances but combined with feminine notes like fresh juicy tropical fruits and flowery notes of jasmine and tuberose. I like the result but I will smell it over a longer period, I can't wait to wear it when it's done. I will try just a couple of things to see what it will do to the fragrance.

Two male colleagues asked me to make a perfume that smells fresh, watery, fruity-apple like and it has to be a little but not too sweet. It has to smell in the direction of Cool Water by Davidoff and One man show by Jacques Bogart. Sounds interesting so I experiment with that as well.

Taste

Do you recognize this? Sometimes you can almost taste someone's perfume. I remember one time I was eating diner with a whole group of people and couldn't enjoy my diner because every time I opened my mouth I could taste the perfume of the woman sitting next to me....

Have a nice Sunday!

The most sexy fragrance

My most sexy fragrance is Must de Cartier perfume (not the edt). It brings back special memories to me, it's a warm sweet oriental heavy fragrance. Above all it's a warm sensual fragrance with animal notes like civet and musk, woody notes like sandal, vetiver and cedar and (of course) galbanum. But also some flowery notes like jasmine, rose and narcissus. When you smell this fragrance you don't have to wait for the reaction it will give to you, the reaction is there in a split second. Of course I have more favorites as sexy fragrances but this fragrance can change my mood in a sensual sexy mood.
What's your most sexy fragrance?

Mitsouko

Mitsouko (mystery in Japanese) from Guerlain is a perfume that you simply have to smell to understand. The perfume evokes an emotion to me I can't describe in words, it's especially hard to describe when English isn't your own language, but even in Dutch it would be difficult to describe. It's kind of a sad emotion in a way and at the same time it gives me an elegant and rich feeling. It's not a perfume that I would wear when going to work, it's more for special occasions, I can't imagine wearing this fragrance with a jeans but that's just my opinion. Mitsouko is a perfume of the Chypre family, it has oakmoss and I smell a lot of Labdanum absolute(Ciste or Rock rose) and a warm balsamic opopanax note. The topnotes are made of fresh citrus notes and the heart has rose, jasmine and lilac. I can smell something like thyme as well and some smokey notes that could be coming from birch tar. Guerlain started a new trend by adding a peach note coming from Aldehyde C14, many perfumers followed that trend. The peach note isn't overwhelming but ads a smooth fruityness to the other somewhat spicy harsh smokey notes. This perfume is so wonderful made that you have to smell it ones in your live.

Galbanum and apricot

Because I liked the result of the experiment with galbanum I decided to continue with this experiment. To accentuate the green note of galbanum I used cis-3-Hexenyl Methyl Carbonate that gives a nice green violet leaf scent. A nice and often used combination with galbanum is hyacinth so I added that as well and some light rosy and lily notes. To give the perfume fixation I added some green woody base notes like a little oakmoss absolute unfortunately it's only allowed by IFRA (International Fragrance Association) to use a little so I used some substitutes as well and vetiver which has a incredible nice green woody asparagus kind of scent in combination with vertofix coeur that has a vetiver scent in combination with a leather note and finally some cedar and cedryl acetate to enhance the woody notes. Okay the perfume was nice in this stadium but just nice, I call that a safe smelling perfume, nice but simple with no surprises.

I smelled the perfume on a smelling strip and on my skin to study the result and thinking about what was missing. The process is all in my head, I think about notes that I can use and imagine how this note would smell in combination with this perfume. I liked the green fresh note but liked it to be more full bodied and warm, and there it was.... it needed a warm fruity note I chose the note of apricot a warm fruity full bodied note and added quite a bit together with some cinnamon and a touch of vanilla. To give the perfume some warm softness I added a wonderful orchid note and some narcissus because beside the flowery notes it has some fruity aspects as well. The result is a green fruity warm perfume with a soft feeling, I keep you informed about the experiments with this perfume.

Just played around

Working on a perfume and perfectionice it takes a lot of work and time, and sometimes it's better to take a break and start working on it with new energy. So sometimes I like to just play around with my materials without any goal just play with them and see if I can find nice combinations. It's real fun to work like that and give the opportunity to find interesting accords. Today I just played with my materials as well and started with one of my favorite materials: Galbanum a wonderful green material. I added some other green and leafy notes and some fresh notes. An interesting material with a galbanum note is Pharaone, the first time I smelled this material it wasn't nice at all, well I still don't find the smell nice but because of that I was getting interested in the material, it's described as having a galbanum/pineapple/angelica note. I diluted the material way down but it still was bad, so I tried the Pharaone in the Galbanum to see how it would smell in a blend. And the result is real nice.... it lifted the fragrance and gave it a fruity note. That's the strange thing about perfumery, you can't judge a fragrance material without working with it, and see how it reacts with other materials.

Perfume house Guerlain

Pierre-Francois-Pascal Guerlain was born in Abbevile France. His dream was to become a chemist and went to London in 1820 to study. He worked in a shop that sold aromatic vinegar and soap to earn some money. He became the assistant of the masterperfumer and in 1828 he returned to France to open his own shop. He was a specialist in making personal perfumes for his costumers. But he also made toothpaste, soap and creams.

Soap label from 1890

Pierre became very famous and delivered perfume to the Belgian kings and the prince of Wales. He created Eau de Cologne Imperiale for the emperor Eugenie and became the official deliverer of the emperor Napoleon the third. His son Aime followed his father and wanted to make heavier perfumes instead of the fresh eau de colognes that where popular in that time. The result was Jicky. This perfume came in 1889 on the market and was nothing like an imitation of the nature or a creation of flowery smells: it was a combination of sensual notes; Civet, Coumarine, Vanilline and Linalool all synthetic products and Lavender and Bergamot. Jicky was "new", it was so new that people in that time need to get used to the perfume and only 20 years later it became a success.


In that time there where created a lot of perfumes and some of them are still around. One of them is L'Heure Bleue form 1912. The clear part of it is created by Bulgarian rose, Iris and Heliotroop, and the magical dark heart is created by Vanilla, Jasmine and Muskus. Until now perfumers use the basenotes from this perfume to variate with it to created a new perfume inspired by L'Heure Bleue.




The company Guerlain is still alive and there where always followers in the family. The last perfumer until now is Jean Paul Guerlain.
The company Guerlain created a lot of perfumes here are some of them:

Mitsouko

1919.

Type: Chypre.

Notes: Bergamot-Rose-Jasmin-Peach-Spices-Oakmoss.

Guerlinade

1922

Type: Flowery Oriental

Notes: Bergamot-Tonka bean-Vanilla

Shalimar

1925

Type: Oriental

Notes: Bergamot-Iris-Vanilla-Ambar

Vetiver

1959

Type: Woody

Notes: Vetiver-Nutmeg-Pepper

Jardins de Bagatelle

1983

Type: Flowery

Notes: Jasmin-Magnolia-Gardenia-Tuberose

Samsara

1989

Type:Oriental

Notes: Jasmin-Sandalwood-Rose-Narcis-Vanilla

L'Instant

Type: Flowery Oriental

Notes: Lemonhoney-Magnolia-Ambar