Sunday, July 29, 2007

Intuition



Sometimes your first intuition is the best. I'm working for years on the same perfume, it's a perfume that I wanted to smell delicate, floral, smooth, gentle, soft and feminine. This perfume is inspired by the blossom of magnolia and I created it for my sister in law, who loves delicate flowery perfumes. It's not a soliflor perfume but contains a bouquet of many other white flowers, like freesia, rose, jasmine, orange blossom, Lilly of the valley, lilac and the leading part; magnolia. The top notes has citrus notes while the heart is floral and the base is woody sweet powdery. It's a floral fantasy perfume.

I created this perfume years ago for my sister in law and she loved it. But I was not yet satisfied, it needed more staying power, and I wanted the perfume to linger more. Now that I have a choice out of so many more perfume materials, and gained much more knowledge about perfumery, I finally can go on with this perfume and hope to finish it. In the mean time I created many, many variations of this perfume, but when I look back at the original creation, I see that this one was the best idea outof all. At the time that I created this perfume for the first time, I didn't know the things I do now, but when I look at the formula I wrote in that time, I can see based on the knowledge that I have now, that my intuition was right.

For example, I used some wintergreen oil, an oil that contains methyl saliclyate, I didn't know why I used it but thought it would be nice to use just a tiny bit of it in the formula. Now I know that it sweetens the top note of a perfume when you use just a little, so I was correct using wintergreen. In that time I didn't know what kind of aroma chemicals magnolia contains, now that I do know I can see that I used the right aroma chemicals, at least the ones that I had access to at that moment. Now I do have so much more choices of aroma chemicals, this way I could created a magnolia base, a base that I created separately from the perfume. I searched for gas chromatography analysis of magnolia on the web, and created a magnolia base the way I wanted my magnolia to smell like. One of the materials I used is Magnolan which has a typical magnolia, grapefruit scent, it smells a bit similar like Hedione but more fresh and more citrus like.

When I first created this perfume, I had a hard time to keep the perfume smell 'transparent' and give it fixation at the same time, instead of adding enough fixation, I only used a small amount of fixative materials. Now I know what kind of materials I can use to give enough fixation without making the perfume smell too heavy. Creativity and intuition is important in perfume making, but you need knowledge as well.

8 comments:

chayaruchama said...

Lieve Jenny-

What a fascinating retrospective.

Thank you for illuminating my path...
I'm fortunate to encounter so many teachers on my way [to only God knows where...!]
Liefs-

Jenny said...

Lieve Chaya,

Thank YOU for illuminating my path. It's a delight to read your comments every time. I'm thankful, more than you know, for your support and encouragement.

Dikke kus!

Anonymous said...

Hi Jenny,
I am Milan Bijur, a hobby flavourist from Mumbai, India. Could we be in touch so that we could exchange some notes for mutual benefit?
Thanks and Regards
Milan Bijur
milanbijur@hotmail.com

Jenny said...

Hi Milan,

That would be very nice. I sent you a PM.

Octavian Coifan said...

the magnolia flower (head space) is based a lot on linalool and a key ingredient is an orange flower note (methyl anthranylate or dimethyl anthranilate).
it is also quite rosy (citronellol, geraniol).
the soft aspect could be obtained with some salycilates.
so: a very fresh, rosy and light lily of the valley, with a trace of orange flower.

Jenny said...

Hi Octavian,

Thanks again for your info. I agree Magnolia is based on Linalool, and rosy notes like Geraniol and Citronellol. There is an orange blossom note in it as well. I used orange blossom absolute to obtain this note. I also used lily of the valley notes like Mayol. Other important materials in Magnolia are Jasmolactone and Jasmone cis.

Anonymous said...

hey thank you very much, for you lovely post, I have been facing similar problems
yet I wonder what kind of fixation are you using??
thanks in advance
sool.gst@gmail.com

Jenny said...

I used different musks like Velvione and woody notes as a fixation.