Yesterday and today I wore two fragrances that feature lavender in the top note. When I wore these two (Armand Basi Homme yesterday, and Rochas Man today), I had the distinct impression that I was smelling not lavender, but another, similar oil that I had smelled years ago: lavandin.
Those some years ago, I had a bottle of Parfums Régence Lavandin. I tried to track down this scent on the web, but all I could find is the much more talked-about Kölnisch Juchten (which is in my current collection). I had two other bottles of Parfum Régence scent: Clary Sage and Oakmoss. These are also missing from Google searches, and sadly, also missing from my collection now.
The thing about these Parfums Régence products is that they were very close to giving a genuine impression of the note named on the bottle, with just the minimum of other notes to make them wearable as stand-alone scents rather than as pure essential oils.
An the weird thing about the Lavandin was that it didn't smell too much like lavender; it was more herbal, more camphoraceous. It's not that lavender oils don't have those characteristics too, but that the lavandin note was different enough so that you couldn't confuse the two.
What exactly is lavandin? Well, there are different species of cultivated lavender that are used in perfumery. The best, from the standpoint of a perfumer looking for refinement, namely sweetness and purity, is Lavadula angustifolia (also called by older names L. officinalis and L. vera). A second choice is Lavandula latifolia (or L. spica), which the French call aspic (this has nothing to do with savory jellies). This variety is much more camphoraceous than L. vera, and was often used in manufacturing cleaning products and soaps; until the 1930s, that is, when an accidental hybrid arose which is Lanvandula x Intermedia, now known as lavandin. In Provence today, this is the species which is most commonly under cultivation, accounting for over 17,000 hectares. It has three advantages: first, it can be grown at lower elevation (at about 1000 feet, as opposed to L. vera, which needs an elevation of 1800 feet to flourish); second (and perhaps more important), its flowers produce much more oil than L. vera.; and third, it is noticeably sweeter and less camphor-like than L. spica.
So, given all that, the question for me is: Why did the two scents that I wore yesterday and today give me the impression that they were based on lavandin and not on true lavender?
Well, one possibility is that they truly are. It could be that people making perfumes no longer see much difference between these two, since lavandin is so much more commonly cultivated; or that since they are both species of lavender, they can both be called lavender without any great degree of misrepresentation. A lot of perfume pyramids include fictional notes anyway; things like "violet" are often mostly the synthetic ionone, since ionone smells like violet flowers, and true violet oil is almost impossible to distill and doesn't smell much like violet blossoms anyway.
The other possibility, of course, is that the other notes in these scents "nudge" the lavender note into making a more herbal, camphor-like impression. In looking at the pyramids, I noticed that the Armand Basi Homme had three different spice notes (cardamom, cinnamon, and nutmeg) and a woody-oriental basenote, including cedar and sandalwood. I could see that this might "nudge" the lavender into a less floral vein. The Rochas Man, however, seemed to have more of a gourmand-oriental basenote (coffee and vanilla), and though bergamot in the top might give it a bit of resiny green flavor, musk in the heart would seem to make it more powdery.
So the mystery persists. Of course, my nose could be off a bit. Both these scents are relatively mild and close to the skin, but not so much as to make them hard to detect. Perhaps one or the other of them does use lavandin instead of lavender.
I looked in the Basenotes Directory to search on the note "lavandin," and I found a rather short list, 19 in all, of which I have smelled none. So the mystery remains, but an interesting side note to a fairly subtle difference I thought I might share...
Those some years ago, I had a bottle of Parfums Régence Lavandin. I tried to track down this scent on the web, but all I could find is the much more talked-about Kölnisch Juchten (which is in my current collection). I had two other bottles of Parfum Régence scent: Clary Sage and Oakmoss. These are also missing from Google searches, and sadly, also missing from my collection now.
The thing about these Parfums Régence products is that they were very close to giving a genuine impression of the note named on the bottle, with just the minimum of other notes to make them wearable as stand-alone scents rather than as pure essential oils.
An the weird thing about the Lavandin was that it didn't smell too much like lavender; it was more herbal, more camphoraceous. It's not that lavender oils don't have those characteristics too, but that the lavandin note was different enough so that you couldn't confuse the two.
What exactly is lavandin? Well, there are different species of cultivated lavender that are used in perfumery. The best, from the standpoint of a perfumer looking for refinement, namely sweetness and purity, is Lavadula angustifolia (also called by older names L. officinalis and L. vera). A second choice is Lavandula latifolia (or L. spica), which the French call aspic (this has nothing to do with savory jellies). This variety is much more camphoraceous than L. vera, and was often used in manufacturing cleaning products and soaps; until the 1930s, that is, when an accidental hybrid arose which is Lanvandula x Intermedia, now known as lavandin. In Provence today, this is the species which is most commonly under cultivation, accounting for over 17,000 hectares. It has three advantages: first, it can be grown at lower elevation (at about 1000 feet, as opposed to L. vera, which needs an elevation of 1800 feet to flourish); second (and perhaps more important), its flowers produce much more oil than L. vera.; and third, it is noticeably sweeter and less camphor-like than L. spica.
So, given all that, the question for me is: Why did the two scents that I wore yesterday and today give me the impression that they were based on lavandin and not on true lavender?
Well, one possibility is that they truly are. It could be that people making perfumes no longer see much difference between these two, since lavandin is so much more commonly cultivated; or that since they are both species of lavender, they can both be called lavender without any great degree of misrepresentation. A lot of perfume pyramids include fictional notes anyway; things like "violet" are often mostly the synthetic ionone, since ionone smells like violet flowers, and true violet oil is almost impossible to distill and doesn't smell much like violet blossoms anyway.
The other possibility, of course, is that the other notes in these scents "nudge" the lavender note into making a more herbal, camphor-like impression. In looking at the pyramids, I noticed that the Armand Basi Homme had three different spice notes (cardamom, cinnamon, and nutmeg) and a woody-oriental basenote, including cedar and sandalwood. I could see that this might "nudge" the lavender into a less floral vein. The Rochas Man, however, seemed to have more of a gourmand-oriental basenote (coffee and vanilla), and though bergamot in the top might give it a bit of resiny green flavor, musk in the heart would seem to make it more powdery.
So the mystery persists. Of course, my nose could be off a bit. Both these scents are relatively mild and close to the skin, but not so much as to make them hard to detect. Perhaps one or the other of them does use lavandin instead of lavender.
I looked in the Basenotes Directory to search on the note "lavandin," and I found a rather short list, 19 in all, of which I have smelled none. So the mystery remains, but an interesting side note to a fairly subtle difference I thought I might share...
