The purpose of this exercise was to blend something natural and minimal. I chose ES for two reasons. First, it seemed lots of features of this perfume could be reproduced using naturals. Second, in my opinion there is more to its composition than just combining cologne theme with hedione. To me ES is like Thai (red) curry, a combination of wonderfully aromatic ingredients that just wouldn’t work so well without rather pungent fish sauce (and shrimp paste or some such). Except in ES pungent indole also serves as a part of a great jasmine illusion: lemon – hedione – indole. Bold and superbly elegant.
So I set off with bergamot to lemon roughly at 2:1 ratio and touch of petitgrain. This would be about half of the entire formula. Second layer: lavender, vetiver, basil, patchouli and oakmoss. Now oakmoss together with animal notes corresponds to fish sauce in a curry. And just like in Thai curries basil is the amazing blender. This is the process leading to the formula in the opening post, let’s call it C1.
C1 has a decent top and a pleasant if different from the original drydown. Several iterations later, at C7 that is, the formula has no longer musk ketone and labdanum in it. Instead there is a bunch of new ingredients (everything suggested in this thread) including the key animal note of indole. The formula became long and complicated. At that point I became sensitive to the problem of congested citrus notes. The original ES has a rather short lived citrus opening followed by citrus – ionone combination smoothened by some fruity stuff.
Every next version was an attempt to fix the citrus congestion. One way is to add textures. Trying to stay close to ES original I included gardenia acetal and decanal in small amounts. Then I replaced many ingredients by their “cleaner” versions. For instance vetiver oil by Vetiverol extra. Then more fruity stuff more cumin more clean musks and finally AAG.
Anyways, the final formula is neither minimal, 34 ingredients, nor terribly natural, 30% synthetic. It does well in the drydown and in the opening but there is still some citrus congestion. Thanks to everyone for invaluable advice!
