striking the RIGHT NOTES

“It is the despair of perfumers that certain flowers, however fragrant, do not deliver their souls!” This is how French perfume creator Sylvaine Delacourte sums up the frustrating fact that some floral scents are impossible to extract from the flower itself. On her blog espritdeparfum.com, the former director of perfume creation at Guerlain says there are several flowers that remain ‘mute’. These include lily-of-the-valley, lilac, honeysuckle, gardenia, sweet pea, buddleja and hyacinth. As Sylvaine explains, when extraction processes using steam or volatile solvents won’t work, the perfumer must reconstruct the scent, according to how they perceive its elements. The reconstituted scent is a ‘mini perfume’ made up of natural and synthetic ingredients. To reconstruct lily-of-the-valley, says Sylvaine, they would follow a recipe something like this, starting with some rose constituents:

● phenylethyl alcohol (green leaf note of the rose)

● essence of rose (richness of the rose)

● hydroxy citronellal (lily-green note)

● rhodinol (geranium and menthe notes)

● citronellol (fresh and lemongrass notes)

● linalool (fresh note) They might then add other elements, such as:

● lilial (green note)

● indole (animal note naturally occurring in white flowers)

● heliotropine (powdery note)

● ylang-ylang essence If they want it to be greener, or have stronger vegetable notes, for example, they’d add triplicate or violet leaves... and on it goes. Sylvaine adds: “This is an example, nothing is fixed, and everyone can come up with a result quite close to the smell of lily-of-the-valley with other components.”