Let's take the most important 16 molecules found inside floral notes and assign to each of them a letter from the alphabet (A, C, E, G, H, I, J, L, M, N, O, R, S, T, U, V).
But before the study, you should make a small adjustment of their concentration in solution. Because each molecule comes with a different set of physical properties, they should be adjusted like the size of the typographical symbols for an intelligible text. I find working with pure ingredients completely useless, unless you want to write your phone number on a small 8x4 cm business card with Arial 128 font. The dilutions to be used are 100%, 50%, 25%, 12,5%, 6,25% and so on, in other words I am using the powers of two (20, 2-1, 2-2, 2-3, 2-4, 2-5) because this is the most elegant way to work. If something is too strong for the olfactory test, you divide the concentration by two, you dilute it with the same amount of solvent, using the most basic balance known since Antiquity and not the expensive electronic modern versions. There are several very elegant equations which relate the physical properties of a raw material and allow working within a scale of similar power (for instance karanal + damascenone b + benzyl salycilate + neryle acetate) but I prefer changing the value to a number which belongs to the set of the powers of two, obviously in connection with the relative power of the blend I'm thinking of (in other words EXT / EDP / EDC / deodorant) to achieve the maximum of intensity. However, working only with the major floral notes and not with all their details (the powerful characteristic green notes and all the nasty unusual molecules) there are only 3 levels to be considered in this exercise.
After these 16 molecules are ready for the study using a very small adjustment of their concentration when it is necessary (for indol, for an aldehyde, for some strong rosy notes), we'll make a set of generative theorems and at the end we'll define each flower: from the highly characteristic aspects to those details which represent only a fraction of their general odor. Because we do not know the correct position of an odor in the immensity of the scent space, I'll divide the facets ad infinitum, from major to minor, from important to detail, until the odor is placed on a "region" which can be defined mathematically. It is of great importance to smell correctly and not to be fooled by the variety of facets. You might find an orange flower note in a rose molecule, but taking the smallest detail for the major note is totally forbidden until you have defined the space.
Let's forget for the moment the "smell" and think only about the letters I have assigned to each ingredient in the typographical dimension and let's imagine a program which generates endless combinations between these letters. These results are given in a table with 64 columns and 64 rows. In the huge space of our results we'll notice that some letters give something more than a combination, they pop up with a meaning under our nose like a word, while other, without giving any known word will be organized in visual shapes, much like what is known today as the ASCII art. The letter "m" looks like a reversed "w", this remark being totally useless in the act of speech or during the writing of an ordinary text. In both cases, the endless and random combinations of our generative program, having absolutely no "higher" goal other than relating the elements we defined in our small system, will produce something that tend to "pop-up" or to "leave" its own system. You smell many things during the day but only in some cases you'll pay attention because you found something.
We have a 64x64 matrix of letters which look very random but in some cases we can notice some "words" and some "visual configurations". Because we assigned letters, which are both elements of our conventional language and a graphic visual symbol with curves, lines and angles, we get words and images. We could imagine that a bigger matrix, selected from an endless amount of possible permutations of those 16 letters, could combine these strange properties using words and a coherent visual result. It looks like a huge haiku inside a matrix which appeals to our senses because the whole complexity can be resumed to a much simpler "visual shape with meaning and text". But before arriving to a higher and sophisticated dimension based on the same 16 basic letters of our system, let's go back to those sets when we were able to identify a word and put it in brackets as it would be something extremely special.
A perfume accord is precisely this small or long word. From endless permutations of basic elements, apparently unrelated and using different generative rules, you get the same "words" as if they were impossible to avoid. This happens because accords are not usual combinations and because there is something unique and universal about their nature. With only eight ingredients you obtain an amazing key accord based on a carnation idea, discovered by Jean Carles in the 30's and used in a less known perfume, I (re)discovered later in Opium (YSL).
Each time something appeared from those letters through a basic generative theorem we invented, this new "word" is extracted and put aside in a "dictionary". This allows us to attach identity to what we smell and make the difference between "4 molecules which are only juxtaposed sitting one next to the other" and "4 molecules we instantly say gardenia", we are paying more attention to the pattern obtained than to its constituents but nevertheless we are aware of them . Because perfume design is based only on additive actions we might think that our new word has some special properties which describe its uniqueness. The "dictionary" of accords is the most precious creative tool because it is predictive and it allows the exploration. However, this dictionary has a strange property over the time much like a language where words evolve.
The first task in the combinatorial art is to search for these words within a limited set of letters AND exhaust all the possibilities in order to find the best correlation with those elements which are outside the system, OR to find meaningful combinations.
In the first exercise, we are only able to combine according to a small selection of generative theorems. We do not know for the moment what "rose" or "violet" are because the goal is to find out the "family of words" and only later we will be able to define the theorem which gives "rose" or "violet". We are exploring in order to discover the rules, formulate them and only when we know what the word "rose" is, what the word "rose" means, how the word "rose" is generated and how the meaning of the word "rose" might be generated in another way, we could apply the new rules to other less explored sides of our alphabet through new combinations.
Chemistry is at the heart of perfume creation because it gives access to the alphabet of nature.
These letters would be: A, C, E, G, H, I, J, L, M, N, O, R, S, T, U, V. I will not unveil the 16 most important molecules of the floral scents because it would be extremely easy to pass from the act of reflection to the object of reflection and its mirrored image.
Without any strict rules (like "there should be a strict number of letters") we make permutations and we might obtain the following words:
ROSE, JASMIN, VIOLET.
You will instantly notice that each has something unique in its formal distribution of letters, each starts with a different letter, but also they share some letters. This doesn't make them less unique. They EXIST outside the great variety of other possible combinations, unlike the combination TSJM which has no sense for an English speaker. Already, in our huge amount of combinations we noticed that the idea "everything has a meaning, maybe in another language, maybe it is subjective" is not helpful at all. Beauty in perfume is UNIVERSAL and not subjective, subjectivity is meaningless when a perfumer creates something for millions of consumers.
Now, you have certainly noticed that ROSE, JASMIN, VIOLET are words in our formal language but also my reference for some odors in the real world. Each odor has unique elements, it has also elements which are somehow related, being less or more specifically for the main odor.
ROSE and JASMIN share little things both as odors in the real world and as words in my example and no matter how much you combine the letters you cannot approximate VIOLET. The starting point and the ending point are for the first time new letters brought from our initial alphabet and there is even a strong visual difference between the symbols. It is true however, that inside JASMINE we have the letter M which looks like a "V" sitting near two "I" from VIOLET. Going back to nature, it is impossible to make the violet scent using only the elements of the jasmine flower, BUT, you can use a violet note inside a jasmine reconstruction to give something extremely unique, actually the construction principle of a beautiful perfume specialty I've discussed this spring. The reason can be found in biochemistry, but this is another story. From this first observation we might say that V is something essential in VIOLET but it doesn't actually define the violet, which is a combination of letters.
You have discovered that there is something unique about ROSE, JASMIN, VIOLET without being able to point at something. You cannot say that R, J and V are the essence of the rose, jasmin and violet, unless you have a very small set of elements you analyze.It is also true that "RJV" in a very small collection of combinations immediately evokes the words where these symbols were the first letter but if you try to add other letter you'll notice how the initial sense obtained by the shortening rule is completely blurred.
Now, let's introduce a new member with even more unusual properties, the word MUGUET.
You have instantly noticed that I used something in French, shorter than the English "lily of the valley" or German "maiglöckchen". MUGUET has an unusual relation to all the words we have previously discovered (ROSE, JASMIN, VIOLET), it has 2 new letters (U and G) and one striking resemblance - U looks like a V. MVGVET is not far from MUGUET. In fact, in the perfume art, the first lily of the valley perfumes were built with rose-jasmin-violet notes taking something from each to suggest the real and unique odor of the small flowers. The most beautiful example is the very old Muguet de Guerlain. The introduction of a molecule known today as Cyclosia (Firmenich) meant that a unique feature of the flower could be approached. One cannot avoid the fact that the letters "V", "U" and "O", though being totally distinct share something. "U" (from muguet) can become "O" (in the rose) but not when it resembles to the "V" (from violet). We also notice that MUGUET has the same number of letters like JASMIN and its starting letter is inside the word.
If we were able to write RJV and think of an abbreviation for rose, violet and jasmin, we cannot apply the same shortcut for JASMIN and MUGUET and should rather use JG. But the simple combination JG gives us a headache because J and G are close letters in our English alphabet, they are even pronounced in a similar way. How much similarity do we have between the JASMIN odor and the MUGUET odor? Is JG an abbreviation of JASMIN-MUGUET or a kind of jasmine? With a muguet odor you modifies with elegance a jasmine composition, that's why you have so many around us today.
I will give also the word YLANG which has a very unusual property. It is obviously related to 2 key letters of MUGUET and JASMIN, but it has something new. A letter written Y, which looks like a V + an I from VIOLET but sounds like the I in JASMIN. You already know that a diluted ylang essential oil has something from the lily if the valley, and Jacques Guerlain used it in his famous Muguet. Should I consider Y as a new letter in my alphabet? For the moment I will use it only as an artifice.
Now, having already JASMIN, ROSE, MUGUET, VIOLET as known words and using more than a half of our initial 16 letters alphabet we can play to invent and discover new words.
For instance, I might invent MAGNOLIA which combines all the letters, but not precisely those I considered important at the beginning. During my endless combinations I might find not only MAGNOLIA, but also MAGMOLLIA, NAGMOLIA and MAGNOLYA. What word should I consider correct and what should I consider an error? Is MAGNOLIA better than MAAGNOLLIA? Is MAGNOLYA and improved version of MAGNOLIA even if I used an artifice, a letter which I was not even sure I can add to the alphabet? Suddenly, with MAGNOLIA and NAGMOLIA, I am in front of a dilemma. They look and sound terribly similar giving the feeling that both are correct and this illusion, contrary to the sharp clarity of ROSE, is pleasing. This confusion which actually exists around the real odor of magnolia flowers (one of the oldest on the planet) is part of their beauty and fascination. Is it closer to the rose, to the fresh jasmine, to the exotic Michelia, why is it fresher but also opulent? Once the letters of MAGNOLIA are discovered, we can play on its ambiguity in an endless game. This game is translated by the relation form and ground, an important subject in fragrance design which deserves closer examination.
(The next transformation is MANGOLIA - relating the huge white flowers with a faint fruity shade and terpenic note to the silky texture of the ripe mango pulp, the impossible fruit of the indecent white exotic flower, capturing the ambiguity of this "word" and the versatile character of the odor in permanent metamorphosis)
Starting to use the remaining letters we'll discover other words like LILAC, ŒILLET, HYACINTH with the rules which determine their formation. But as we get more words in the dictionary, we can start using them combining words with words, or words with letters, shorter or longer. I underline the use of "Œ" instead of "OE" (which looks like a contraction from ROSE), because the carnation is an unusual subject in fragrance design, located precisely at the heart of floral notes - I'll leave you to reflect about the biochemical explanation behind its uniqueness.
I can take HYACINTH and transform it in JACINTHYA, taking care to preserve the start (HYA), now at the end, like an echo. Because JACINTHYA shares something with JASMIN, I will be able to generate JASMANTHYA, which is neither jasmine, nor hyacinth, nor a very new word, but something between them and still having a unique sense. To my surprise, though I had a very clear purpose in mind when I made JASMANTHYA, it looks almost like OSMANTHIA, a long word I started to construct from ROSE, JASMIN and VIOLET almost forgetting how I made it.
But after I got lost generating new words, I noticed that very small combinations are still full of surprises. For instance LILY and this new word is extremely tricky. It seems to share similarities with LILAC and ŒILLET but are the three letters (L, L, I) giving a similar meaning? Because I am allowed to play with typographic symbols as I did when I presented the artifice of YLANG, I notice that these 3 letters (L, L, I) can produce something similar with the J in JASMIN and this make a terrible difference between LILAC and OEILLET where the O and the E look like the vowels in ROSE.
After this exercise of translating the complexity of the floral odors into the realm of letters and words, through the use of only 16 molecules we can expose several conclusions:
- there are short and essential accords with a great uniqueness despite the similarity of their formal construction;
- there are long and very long floral accords which can evoke other flowers without being constructed according to similar paths;
- the distinctiveness of a floral note or its qualia has a precise meaning only within a small set of objects and what is found as essential can be totally useless in a different context;
- many flowers brought together can be rewritten in very different ways;
- many flowers brought together tend to be rearranged from smaller and more powerfull accords unless a bigger word can be made where the ambiguity of the reversible form plays a major role;
- floral accords should be corrected, improved and given an essential form;
- an object becomes a new rule when it achieves coherence;
- in some cases, different letters seem to indicate the same meaning, but they are not necessarily equivalent, words can be misspelled;
- simple operations with complex forms don’t necessary bring new information;
- simple operations with simple forms tend to generate the same things;
- there are basic flowers which have not been "discovered" yet;
- flowers can be made by invention and derivation;
- each letter is a molecule but, when one desires to approach even closer Nature, each letter becomes a set of molecules, usually with similar chemical structure;
- some perfumers explore letters, words, small phrases, other are able to extract rules and theorems, but each is doing something very important;
- the alphabet, the dictionary of words and the one which encodes the rules are in a dynamic relation.
If I bottle the concept of ROSE expressed by this explicit word and I make several dilutions according to the principle I exposed at the beginning, you'll notice that starting with some point you'll not be able to "read" it with the same accuracy. You'll get something which still possess the roundness found in O, in the curvy S or the letter R. Below some concentrations, complex accords can be transformed in easier combinations of "letters". Every WORD, actually an graphic abstraction in our mind and on the computer screen, is much different in reality. You have fonts and scale. When you enlarge a written document you will see that O is not necessarily a circle, that paper has a texture. You can even consider that each letter is made from other small letters ad infinitum.
Every molecule used in perfume creation is like a letter, a convention. Closer you are in its study with time, patience, and many dilutions, you'll notice that many facets appear under what it seems to be only "nail polish banana jasmine". For each molecule there are steps of concentration. Below it does this, above it does that, needless to say the point is not fixed and it is influenced by the context. Make an error in a novel, it doesn't matter, do it in a haiku, it hurts your eyes.
A perfumer expands the universe of perfumes on several levels:
- the alphabet, helping to define what a molecule really is, something not very clear in the first months following its new synthesis;
- the new WORD which is often a synthesis of what the world knew about something and this new simple and easy to use "invention" opens the gate for new odors;
- the new ORDER which is a set of rules, either describing an "object" (it took more than 50 years to say what a lily is and how it works), describing how the things work inside the complex system or a new set of rules which say how to combine letters and words to get something complex.
The discovery of the new words which are part of many perfumes, sometime as a whisper blurred by more potent "words of the day" (trendy accords), is done either in the Mechanical mode (physical combinations) and the Intelligent mode (working with "rules" and "symbols").
Because Fragrance Design deals with infinity and achieves order (can you work with 2000 molecules inside a formula?) it uses many elegant shortcuts.
These shortcuts will be soon transformed into more sophisticated computer models allowing to imagine the perfume before blending. Odors and numbers are closer than we might imagine. Like numbers, there is something extremely universal about odors and the beauty they can express when a talented perfumer discovers a new "key". Often, such "keys" are given inside perfumes. It is important to notice that when you smell a blooming gardenia you get at least 300 molecules in your nose, most of them unknown or unavailable in a usual lab. But when a perfumer does a good gardenia scent he reveals some of its secrets because for his gardenia note he is not using 300 mysterious molecules, just a selection molecules you've smelt before but certainly not in the "gardenia configuration". When you smell a good perfume, no matter when it was done, you get a key or an understanding of the more complex Reality and you can go back to Nature for a deeper study.
Perfume as an ART is one of the most advanced and sophisticated "oeuvre d'esprit" and each masterpiece has a degree of complexity similar to the Musical Offering of J.S.BACH.
Photo: ERTE, Nile, Numerals 2, Alphabet Z
Did you enjoy my article? Sign up for updates about new fragrances, reviews of artistic perfumes and exceptional vintage masterpieces. I would be very happy if you would consider joining 1000 Fragrances, throughRSS feed,GoogleFriend connect, Facebook (more personal), or any other way that appeals to you.
Fragrance is the 8th Art - Octavian Coifan - Le Parfum est le 8ème Art
by Roman Kaiser
by Gunther Ohloff
