The notes

Calabria, Italy

Calabrian Bergamot

Bergamot is a citrus fruit no one eats: it is grown, almost exclusively in Calabria, for the essence its cold-pressed peel yields.

Florence, Italy

Iris

Iris is the most patient material in perfumery: it is not the flower that is distilled but the rhizome, dried for three years before becoming iris butter.

India

Mysore Sandalwood

Mysore sandalwood is a milky, creamy wood, of a softness like no other wood.

Haiti

Haitian Vetiver

Vetiver is a root: a grass whose rootlets are distilled into an earthy, smoky essence with a faint edge of grapefruit.

Southeast Asia

Oud

Oud is born of a wound: it is the dark resin the Aquilaria tree produces to defend itself.

Madagascar

Madagascar Vanilla

Vanilla is an orchid, a pod and two years of work: hand pollination, scalding, curing.

Leather

The leather note is a reconstruction: birch, styrax, saffron and musks recompose the scent of the old tanneries — smoky, dry, animalic.

Oakmoss

The lichen of oaks yields a dark, damp absolute — undergrowth, ink, earth after rain.

Venezuela, Brazil

Tonka Bean

The seed of the cumaru, a towering South American tree, rich in coumarin: almond, cut hay, blond tobacco.

Ambergris

The strangest of materials: a marine concretion, once found on beaches, today recomposed.

Tunisia, Morocco

Neroli

Distilled orange blossom gives neroli: green, floral, faintly bitter, radiant.

Grasse, France

Centifolia Rose

The "hundred-petalled" rose, picked at dawn in May, yields a honeyed, deep absolute.

India

Sambac Jasmine

Arabian jasmine, picked by night, is greener and fruitier than the grandiflorum of Grasse — tea, orange, crumpled petal..

Morocco

Atlas Cedar

The wood of pencils and old chests: dry, straight, faintly smoky.

Oman, Somalia

Incense

The resin of the Boswellia, the olibanum of ancient rites: lemony when cold, smoky when warm, vertical always.

Fig

The fig of perfumery is an entire landscape: the green leaf, the milky fruit, the dry bark of the fig tree.

White Musks

White musks are the molecules of cleanness: linen, skin, warm cotton.

Iran, Kashmir

Saffron

The most expensive spice in the world gives perfumery a leathery, honeyed, faintly medicinal note — a dark flame rather than a fire..