by: Jodi Battershell
Today's fragrance consumer has more choices than ever when it comes to selecting a fragrance wardrobe. With the number of new fragrance releases exceeding 1,000 in any given year, and with new houses and designers popping up around the world every day, we have seemingly endless opportunities to experience novelty. In the age of the Internet, we are no longer confined to the selection available at our local department stores and drugstores (not to meniton perfume shops and niche boutiques if we're lucky enough to live somewhere that has them). We're no longer stuck with the new and now and can seek out the long-lost fragrances of our youth and our grandparents. Maybe we can't get to Paris or Barcelona or Moscow but we can have fragrances from those cities sent to us, for a price.
Today's fragrance consumer is also more educated than ever before. We know about notes, fragrance families, aromachemicals and natural ingredient sourcing. We know the names of the perfumers behind our favorite creations. We know the histories behind the classic creations of the early 20th century which still enchant us today.
WIth all of the above at our disposal, today's fragrance consumer sometimes finds it is still not enough. It is not fulfilling. We try fragrance after fragrance and love many, but that je ne sais quoi continues to elude us, though we are certain it exists.
Recent fragrance trends suggest that je ne sais quoi may actually be ... us! Our personalities. Our creativity. The unique stamp borne by something we have had an active hand (or nose) in creating or shaping.
Alongside the increased retail selection and knowledge-empowered shopping experience, the Internet has sparked a renewed interest in the hand-crafted, the custom-made, the one-of-a-kind and unique. We pin tutorials, share tips and techniques on internet forums and watch instructional videos on Youtube. Maybe we're not all shearing our own sheep, spinning yarn from the wool and dyeing it ourselves with blueberries, but we're buying such yarn from skilled craftspeople and knitting our own scarves.
Enter the custom fragrance blending collections.
Such items are not new. Fragrance lovers of a certain age will remember the Coty Sweet Earth palettes of the 1970s. My favorite babysitter in 1976 had a Skinny Dip Fruit Dip Solid Cologne compact, whose perfume-y abstractions of strawberry, tangerine, melon and lemon singly and together predicted the dominance of the fruity-floral in the late 20th century. But the rise of such collections of fragrances—often sold as kits, sets and palettes—taps into the 21st century zeitgeist for uniqueness and the personal touch.
Jo Malone is an obvious pioneer in this regard. The brand's Fragrance Combining™(yes, it's trademarked) suggestions and consultations have long accompanied each new release in the collection. They also highlight an important feature about the fragrances included in custom blending collections and sets: they can serve as stand-alone fragrances but are designed to be worn in layers and blends.
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The individual scents in such collections are often simpler, consisting of a single dominant note or complementary selections of notes from a single family (Spicy, Citrus, Floral, etc.), notes that offer a single tone (Warm or Cool) or perhaps notes that form one of the layers in the traditional fragrance pyramid (Top, Heart, Base). From there, the perfume world becomes our oyster. Spicy + Floral = Oriental Floral. Citrus + Floral + Musk = a complete perfume pyramid. Heat up a Floral with a Woody. Cool down a Spicy with an Aquatic.
Such combinations are certainly possible with singular fragrances (I stand by one of my earliest attemps at fragrance layering, patchouli essential oil + Patou 's Joy Eau de Toilette), but the results are just as often a disharmonious disaster and a waste of precious drops. I wouldn't try to combine Van Gogh's Starry Night with Picasso'sGuernica, knowing both are finished works of art that stand alone, but let me take blue paint and gray paint and combine them in my own way on my canvas. Using a custom blending set or collection gives us the "paint" to compose our own work of art.
Best news of all: today, there are custom blending collections and sets available at every price point, enabling any of us to play the nose and create our personal scented experience. Let's take a look at some of them.
Image: Melange Perfumes
Melange debuted their solid perfume palettes in 2010 and they were an instant hit. The brand offers ten individual palettes today, organized around thematic notes (Green, Citrus, Floral, Amber, Vanilla and Fruit) as well as medium (Essential Oil Palette). Each palette consists of four solid fragrances that may be combined with any other scent in the palette, or with other palettes (Citrus Notes Palette No. 1 and Vanilla Notes Palette seem an obvious choice, for example). The palettes are travel-friendly, in beautifully designed parchment boxes, and available online and at select retailers and etailers around the world for around $30 each. Visit the official Melange website to purchase or find a retailer.
Polish cosmetics house Inglot offers solid fragrances in its "Freedom System" packaging. Consumers can choose from five solids—Green Fruit, Purple Musk, Mandarin Crush, Bright Amber and Golden Wood—that work alone or in combination with the other scents in the collection, and store them in a variety of magnetic palettes for maximum portability. Learn more at Inglot Cosmetics and purchase in the United States (with shipping worldwide) at Camera Ready Cosmetics.
Image: Biography Scents of Self
Many of us already know and love perfumer Sarah Horowitz's Perfect Veil. If there is a universal blending fragrance, it is probably this one. Horowitz is now offering a set of fragrances featuring Perfect Veil and three complementary scents: Scents of Awakening (a fruity top layer), Scents of Harmony (a floral heart) and Scents of Passion (a warm and sweet Oriental base). Sold as a set of four fragrances called Biography Scents of Self, the fragrances can be layered and combined according to mood and the set comes with suggested "recipes" as a starting point. The set is available exclusively from QVC.
Image: Être Au Parfum
A recent debut at this year's Elements Showcase, Être Au Parfum is a set of three fragrances exploring different facets of a single note: rose. Offering a floral green scent (Rose Une), a floral fruity aroma (Rose Deux) and an Oriental floral fragrance (Rose Trois), the three scents can be combined to create your own custom rose bouquet. Available from the official Être Au Parfum website and Ron Robinson.
Image: Giardino Benessere
A complete line from Italy that offers both fine and home fragrances, candles and personal care products, Giardino Benessere fragrances were designed to be simple, long-lasting and ideally suited for layering and blending in endless combinations. Created by perfumer Paolo Terrenzi, Giardino Benessere offers such unisex aromas as Amber and White Musk, with the high quality we expect from a niche designer but at an affordable price point: about 80 euros for an eau de parfum. Look for retailers onthe official Giardino Benessere website.
Image: Fred Segal
The perpetual purveyor of Los Angeles chic began offering super-secret custom blends to his VIP customers more than 30 years ago. No longer under lock and key, and available at the Los Angeles boutiques as well as through a partnership withSephora, The Blend by Fred Segal takes the beautiful components of those exclusive blends and puts them in the hands of the average consumer. The set of ten individual essences, oil-based and in specially designed rollerballs that prevent oil which has come in contact with skin from contaminating the rest of the bottle, expound on popular themes in perfumery (01 Water Lily, 05 Tropic Bloom, 10 Citrus Zest, among others). Sold individually, in a mini kit with four essences, or in a complete set with all ten, The Blend by Fred Segal includes suggested combinations and proportions to encourage mixology success.
Image: Demeter
Our secret is out, perfumistas. How many of us have been using the Demeter Pick-Me-Up single note scents to punch up the Pineapple or Sandalwood (for example) in our other fragrances over the years? Or maybe we made our own "fantasy" accords and cocktails by combining two or three of their photorealistic fragrances? Demeter is making it even easier these days with their Foolproof Blending Duos and Trios. Some are obvious (Grass and Dirt! How did I not see it before?) but some are more subtle (Patchouli and Baby Powder or September 2015's limited edition trio, Chrysanthemum,Asian Pear and Fig Leaf, which strikes a Japanese mood). All sets come with suggested blending proportions and the Foolproof Blending Duos also include a funnel, pipettes and an empty bottle for storing your custom creation. The Duos and Trios are available on the official website of Demeter Fragrances.
And what about you, Fragrantica readers? Are you a master of DIY mixology (with or without a custom blending kit) or more likley to leave it to the pros? Any fragrance blends or combos you want to share?
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