∴ GNOSMIC ∴

This is Evernia prunastri, commonly known as oakmoss. This simple lichen, native to temperate climates, tends to grow on oaks, but it’s quite adaptable. For example, the 60-year-old azalea in my front yard here in Seattle is lousy with it.

It’s also the keystone note to two of the most successful, ubiquitous, and famous accords in perfumery: the chypre and the fougère. The basic chypre accord consists of bergamot, oakmoss, and labdanum notes. The basic fougère is lavender, oakmoss, and coumarin. Both have oakmoss at their hearts.

In 1991 the perfume landscape was dramatically altered when IFRA, the European body that sets guidelines for the safety of fragrance ingredients, set strict limits on the amount of oakmoss that a perfume could contain: one tenth of one percent. IFRA set the limit after conclusive evidence showed that oakmoss -- despite being 100% all-natural, vegan, and organic — is an allergen that can irritate the skin and mucous membranes, among other things. (More specifically, the allergens in natural oakmoss are atranol and chloratranol.)

As a result of the new classification of oakmoss as an allergen, countless perfumes had to be reformulated to reduce their use of the note. For perfume nerds, these reformulations were the equivalent of repainting the Mona Lisa or redecorating the Sistine Chapel. Monuments to perfumery such as Guerlain Mitsouko (1919, by Jacques Guerlain), Christian Dior Miss Dior (1947, by Jean Carles and Serge Heftler Louiche), Robert Piguet Bandit (1944, by Germaine Cellier), and hundreds of others were changed. Depending on the scent and the zeal of one’s opinion, these changes ranged from tweaks to the utter ruination of masterpieces.

Allergen classification and IFRA regulations aren’t the only reason perfumes are reformulated, and in my opinion IFRA is somewhat unfairly vilified in the perfume world. Other reasons perfume formulae are changed include ingredient prices and availability, attempts to suit contemporary tastes, and even whim.

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For a simple hybrid of sweet lemon and bitter orange, the humble citrus called bergamot reaches far. About a third of all masculine perfumes and about half of all feminine perfumes contain bergamot as a note.

The vast majority of bergamot is grown in Calabria, in the south of Italy, where it’s grown not for its juice but for its oil, the flavor and scent of which turns black tea into Earl Grey. Bergamot oil is also a major component in Johann Maria Farina’s Eau de Cologne, the first blockbuster perfume.

Bergamot is a key note of one of the most popular and lucrative accords in perfumery: the chypre (pronounced “sheep”).

Chypre completes the trilogy of classic accords, together with amber and fougère. The basic chypre accord consists of bergamot (head/top note), oakmoss (heart/middle note), and labdanum (base note).

The chypre accord often also contains patchouli, vetiver, and/or sandalwood. Note that chypre and fougère share oakmoss as a heart note, and chypre and amber share labdanum as a base note.

The word Chypre is French for Cyprus, the Mediterranean island. It’s named after the first fragrance that made it commercially successful in the modern era: the great François Coty’s Chypre, 1917. Yes, two of the classic accords in perfume are named after abstract concepts (the other being fougère).

You’ll probably never smell Chypre — it has been out of production for decades — but you might smell the monumental perfume that some say owes most of its success to it: Guerlain’s Mitsouko, 1919, the Citizen Kane of perfumery.

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These are tonka beans, and they’re the key to one of the most ubiquitous accords in perfume (along with amber). The beans contain the ingredient that began modern perfumery: coumarin.

The accord is known as the fougère (pronounced “fu-ZHAYR”), which is French for “fern,” so called because the perfume that debuted the accord is Houbigant’s Fougère Royale (“Royal Fern,” 1882), by Paul Parquet.

Yep, it's a fern.

What do ferns smell like? They don’t have a smell. And the coumarin Parquet used for Fougère Royale was synthetic — the first known instance of a synthetic ingredient used in perfumery. The scent that began the modern (modernist?) era in fragrance is based on an abstract concept and contains a synthetic base note.

The fougère accord at its most basic is lavender (head/top note), oakmoss (heart/middle note), and coumarin (base note). This accord and its countless variations have been a mother lode for successful masculine fragrances for over a century, and plenty of feminine ones as well.

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You are looking at a source of the scent known as amber. And if you’re like I was up until a couple of years ago, you think that scent must be somehow related to mineral amber, the fossilized tree sap. But fossil amber, if you grind it up and heat it, bears no resemblance to the amber scent with which you’re familiar. It smells faintly like pine sap.

So what does amber smell like? It’s an abstract accord that was originally meant to evoke the smell of natural ambergris, or ”grey amber” (which will get its own entry in time). The amber accord consists of a wide variety of notes — most commonly labdanum, benzoin, and vanilla, and sometimes myrrh, patchouli, tolu balsam, coumarin, civet, opoponax … the list goes on. (I’ll profile each of these notes eventually!)

But the most common element of the amber accord is labdanum, a dark brown gum or resin from the flowering shrub Cistus ladanifer, also known as gum rockrose, or brown-eyed rockrose. And that’s why when you smell amber, the picture above is the most accurate one to envision.

Amber is one of the most prevalent and varied accords in perfumery. Putting a perfume in the amber genre is like putting a song in the rock genre; it’s a category so wide as to be almost indefinable.

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Notes are individual scent elements of a perfume. The next structural step is the accord, a group of notes that work in concert to create a new scent, distinct from its component parts.

The usual metaphor for perfume notes and accords is music. The notes are like musical notes, and the accords are like chords, with a discrete sound. But a discerning ear can hear the individual notes within a chord. The same isn’t always true with scent.

Some accords create a scent that’s startlingly different from its component parts. Perfumers recall moments in formulation in which the accord turns on a single drop, becoming something utterly new and separate from its individual materials.

In this way perfume accords can behave more like light and additive color. For example, when red and green light are projected over each other, the result is an unexpected bright yellow.

Some well known accords are composed of individual notes that would surprise many. For example, amber accords contains no mineral amber, a fossilized tree sap which has very little smell. Nor do amber accords contain actual ambergris, whose scent they were originally designed to evoke. But amber deserves its own entry….