Do you know which is the biggest perfume family in the perfume world? Yes, of course, floral. Floral fragrances can consist of a single note, but much more common are fragrance compositions in which Mr. Master of Fragrance can express his idea of the perfect scent for Her. Depending on the fragrance notes, floral perfumes can then be divided into many categories, with popular scents being green, aquatic, powdery, fruity, or a combination of floral and oriental ingredients with aldehydes and many others. There are so many of them that it is difficult for even experts to get to know them. Let's not even try, let's just smell it for fun. Which flowers shall we choose? The royal ones.
Queen of Flowers - Rose
The rose is perhaps the most beautiful flower - but it has also been considered miraculous since time immemorial and is attributed unlimited and magical powers. It also has powerful antibacterial and antiviral properties. The rose is an expression of love and is said to be able to attract love. Queen Cleopatra knew this and bathed in a bath scented with rose petals. She attracted two of the most powerful men in the world before love became her undoing!
Roses in perfume
The rose has been through the history of the world and the history of perfume. In perfume, the rose "stands on its own"; anyone who has smelled the tiny "tube" hidden in the brown wood bottle, as it is sold in Bulgaria, knows what I am talking about. However, perfumers like to create perfume compositions and women like to choose.
Chanel no 5 (1921)
How many times have I mentioned it? It's a story of love and passion of Coco Chanel translated into a unique fragrance. Coco based her perfume primarily on a new scent of aldehydes, but used a royal pair of flowers - rose and jasmine - for the heart of the perfume.
Mademoiselle Coco (2002)
It's a very special inimitable fragrance, interesting because it usually appeals to women who don't "need" Chanel no 5 and it also "fits" both girls and ladies. The fragrance is the epitome of femininity and beauty. A very elegant, mysterious and seductive scent, the scent of a woman who attracts men like a magnet. A fragrance whose face is the famous actress Keira Kneightley. And how does it smell? It smells of orange, tangerine, bergamot, jasmine and Turkish rose, but it's the very appealing notes of white musk and vanilla that linger longest. Mademoiselle Coco perfume was launched in 2002 and brought new fame to the Chanel brand.
The next rose perfume I want to introduce to you also has a famous, albeit lesser known name than Chanel. My best friend wears it. A personable, highly educated lady with an all-round talent for anything. The perfume I'm talking about is as strong, original and pure as my friend's heart and soul. Can you guess? I'll give you a hint, it's a perfume from a brand that doesn't churn out one perfume after another, but strives for perfection. Perfume Eau du Soir by Sisley (1990) At the first inhale, it captivates you with a beautiful harmony of mandarin, grapefruit and pepper, then blooms with sweet notes of rose, jasmine and lily of the valley with iris, and finally moves into an atypical, warm combination of ambergris, musk and lichen. Soir's fragrance is sublime, yet delicate and suitable for everyday wear. However, Sisley was also founded in 1976 by Count Hubert d'Ornano, from an old French noble family.
I have smelled many perfumes in my life and I thought that no fragrance could surprise me anymore. I was wrong. The perfumer who did it has a very big name. It is Ms. Aerin Lauder, the creative director of Estée Lauder, who has the blood of her grandmother, the famous Estée, in her veins. Ms. Aerin's wish was to create a "modern wardrobe" of fragrances in which every woman could find her perfume, with which she could instantly create a mood and change the feelings of her surroundings. Evening Rose (2015) is a captivating fragrance with roses, roses and more roses at its centre. The beauty, purity, innocence of the rose is captured in the perfume. And complemented by something that is new - the emotive scent of cognac mixed with the noble scent of incense and ambergris. It's a beauty beyond description, you have to smell it!
Have you noticed which flower rose appears most often in perfume? Yes, the rose is the queen and has an equal partner, the king - jasmine!
King Jasmine
This beautiful white flower is masculine and has a demanding role. It is meant to complement, enhance and accentuate the scent of its queen in the perfume, not overpower or compete with it. For the jasmine, the king of flowers, to be up to the task, it has to know how to work with it. Collecting jasmine flowers is almost magical. Its flowers are picked just before dawn, when their scent is strongest and most beautiful. Each flower should be harvested by hand and with great care, as injured flowers produce poor quality oil.
It takes 8 million flowers to produce 1 kg of jasmine oil!
Jasmine provides perfumes with a strong, captivating, aphrodisiac scent.
Perfume J´Adore by Dior saw the light of the year 1999so we can safely classify it as a perfume classic. It is a timeless fragrance that is loved by women all over the world. J'Adore smells like a well-balanced bouquet of delicate, sweetly girlish flowers, from the heart of which exhale lady rose and lady jasmine, joined by precious tuberose. J'Adore is another gem among perfumes that we can take anytime and anywhere.
The closest to the present and closest to my sense of modern perfume is the perfume Ikat Jasmine of the year 2013. It comes from the same collection of Aerin fragrances by Mrs. Lauder as Evening Rose. It has a very simple composition in a combination of two types of jasmine - sambac and Egyptian, which are again combined with exotic tuberose and sweetly warming sandalwood. Ms. Aerin doesn't need a list of ingredients to make a statement; the surprising beauty of her fragrances is in their spare elegance.
Tuberose - the flower of two faces
Our royal duo in perfume has a third, strong partner. It's an interesting and somewhat controversial partner. Some people love his scent and others would like to banish him from the perfume world. However, French connoisseur Frederic Malle also said of the wearer of this fragrance:
"The tuberose is an interesting, contrasting flower in which two sides are combined - one is exultant, fresh, sunny, the other carnal, sensual, even a little obscene."
The flowers of the tuberose, the nocturnal hyacinth, open only at night and their scent has always fascinated people. The Aztecs attributed magical powers to the night hyacinth. Apparently they knew what they were talking about, because modern science has shown that the scent of tuberose affects the nerve centres in the brain that are responsible for sexual desire. What does the flower, hiding a secret, smell like? It's a sweet, intoxicating scent, but it can make you dizzy after a while. That's because tuberose is a little, a very little, poisonous. I personally like tuberose a lot, just for its contrast. It's anything but boring.
To end today's little journey through the fragrant world, I have a tip for a nice perfume for you. It's called My Way (2020), My way, and it's kind of atypical Armani. The ingredients of the perfume are really cosmopolitan, but happily chosen, they like each other. My Way contains orange blossom from Egypt, bergamot from Calabria, jasmine and tuberose from India, cedarwood from Virginia and vanilla from Madagascar. Even before the perfume reaches you with its scent, the bottle catches your eye. Its cap is symbolically blue, the colour of the Earth that unites us all. It is adorned with a ring, representing the journey that is yours and yours alone. On this journey through life, you will have many beautiful encounters as radiant as the ring of the bottle. Today, when journeys to faraway lands are somewhat forbidden, we can embody our dreams in My Way, which, with the support of perfume and the blessing from above, will come true. Happy travels!
This article was published with the kind permission of of the magazine Sphere
casopis-sfera.cz / gnews.cz-HeK
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