the new idea
Skim any fragrance box and you’ll find a poetic description of a medley of notes, but that’s just part of the story. Many ingredients often don’t make the fine print; in fact, the average fragrance has around 50 total notes, most of which are supporting acts to enhance the stars of the show.
But there’s a micro-trend happening now – paring that 50 back to a handful or even a single element. It’s the Marie Kondo approach – just a few that spark joy; or in olfactory terms, a short formula that “creates the full emotion; a complete story,” explains legendary perfumer Francis Kurkdjian. His latest falls under this unique classification. “Baccarat Rouge 540 is a short formula in terms of number of lines and components, far less than most of my previous creations,” he says. “I chose to only select the ingredients that are strictly necessary to make the story complete and understandable.”
Kurkdjian is quick to stress that a short formula is no better or worse than a traditional fragrance, just a different approach. “Both have their technical issues and creative challenges. A short formula is easier to manage as you have fewer ingredients to oversee. However, you cannot make a mistake by choosing the wrong ingredient.”
Geza Schoen, founder of Escentric Molecules (which is behind the singlemolecule fragrance, Molecule 01), likens it to cooking. “The shorter the formula, the more you can control it. Try to cook with 20 herbs and spices or with just three.”
Minimalism is the appeal of these fragrances. “Usually it carries a simpler message; straight to the point and quite linear,” says Kurkdjian. What you spray is what you get – no transformative dry-downs that smell different to the initial spritz. Erica Moore, fragrance evaluator for Fragrances Of The World, agrees. “The typical fragrance-pyramid structure has long been a way of illustrating how we can expect a fragrance to develop. In recent times, we’ve found perfumers and brands shying away from it in an attempt to create a point of difference,” she says.