Fragrance Masterclass: How to Evaluate like a Pro

1. Intro: Hello, everyone. It's nice to meet you. My name is Ella, and I will be your lecturer for the master class on Fragrance and evaluation. I'm really excited to be offering you this course. So for me, I have been working in the Fragrance industry for quite some time, and I most recently graduated from the Grass Institute of Perfumery back in 2023. So I spent one year in France trained in Fragrance formulation as well as evaluation. And to me, I find the world of fragrance to be quite fascinating. I know that there is a growing number of viewers out there who are really interested in fragrances, whether it's a hobby of yours or if you're interested in blogging or reviewing fragrances, then this class is definitely going to be a good start for you. Please enjoy, and I will see you in class. 2. Part 1 The Olfactive Language and Fragrance Families: Hello, everyone. It's Ella. It's really nice to see you all joining my course. I'm really excited to be teaching this. Before we begin, we have a few housekeeping things to first address. The first question is, what does factive mean and what is the factive language? Well, simply put, the factive language is basically has been developed within the fragrance industry, and it's basically to help us communicate with the perfumers and the evaluators during the fragrance creation process. Because fragrance, as you know, it can be so subjective you have different memories, you have different emotions and feelings that are so personal to you. Sometimes it's better to have a universal language where we can all speak. This is why the fftive language has been established so that we can all use terms that we understand and we know, and it's really helpful when it comes to the whole process of creating a fragrance. If you can see on the screen right here, the first family we're going to be talking about is the citrus family. In the citrus family, you have your lemon. Berg moss, sweet orange, and grape fruit. Although these are citruss, they definitely all have very different facets. For example, lemon, I know when you have lemonade and whatnot, it tends to be quite sour. But we don't necessarily use the word sour when we're describing the scent. It's more of like sparkling, citric, It can be a bit waxy sometimes depending on the quality of the oil. Then you have Bergma which is completely different. Bergamo sometimes people say that it's spicy, but that's not really the case. The keyword you're looking for is zesty. Bergma can be described as citrusy, zesty, fresh, and then of course, we have orange. In the fragrance industry, we do use different kinds of oranges. Most popular is the sweet orange that is from Florida. This is exactly what you would expect if you would have a bottle of orange juice. It definitely is true to its taste as well as its smell. It's citrus, it's sweet. You'll definitely be able to figure out the difference between orange, lemon, and berg Mont quite easily. The one that might be a bit tricky, believe it or not is probably going to be grape fruit. I'll tell you why because in the beginning grape fruit for some people, they might be able to smell the orange facet first, because there is a molecule within the grape fruit that is also found in orange. This is why you'll get an orange aspect. But as you continue to smell, you'll notice that grape fruit tends to be a lot more bitter. Then there's also the white fleshy part of grape fruit, and that is sometimes translated into the scent itself during extraction. This part we call it or at least we describe the scent to be a bit sulphuric. Those are just some examples of words that you can use to describe the different nuances of the citrus fruits. Now, moving on to the next family, we have the family of florals. Now, this family is probably going to be one of the most important families. I have listed for you Rose, Jasmine, Elaine, Os as well. We're going to give examples of some of the words that you can associate them with when you're smelling. So with rose, of course, they smell rosy. You can definitely say that. There are also a petal be to it and sometimes depending on which rose is in the fragrance, either it's an absolute or if it's rose sentifolia, the absolute tends to have a honey facet. It's a lot more deeper and warmer as compared to rose sentifolia, which is more fresh. Now moving on, we can talk about Jasmine. So in the fragrance industry, there's two types of Jasmine that we use around that's quite popular. There are other types as well. But the two that's very popular is Jasmine from India as well as Jasmine from Egypt. These two have really different facets. If you ever get the chance to smell them, I definitely encourage you to go and explore these facets yourself. But most commonly, Jasmine can be associated with a anamolic note. This anamolic note is called d. It gives off the impression of vintage or old or grandma feeling. But otherwise, Jasmine also has a fruit facet and this fruit actually reminds a lot of people of banana. So that's how you can tell if you're smelling a rose or a jasmine because Jasmine has the animolic and the fruity aspects. On the list of flowers that I have listed here, perhaps Jasmine and Elaine can have some similarities. They do have that fruity aspect of the a banana, but then Elaine tends to be a lot more solar. It's solar, it's white fora, it can't be heavy, sometimes tropical, Then the word that we usually use to describe Elaine is narcotic. There is just something about it that's just really intoxicating and why people love this flower so much. The number one facet that you can find in Os is definitely going to be the powderins. For some people, it might remind them of cosmetics, maybe like the cosmetics powder. That's a good way to put it. It's fo, it's powdery, sometimes it can also be buttery as well. But overall, it's such a beautiful ingredient, but also quite expensive. The next family we're going to be talking about is the fruity family. Believe it or not, many of the fruits that are used in fragrances aren't actually part of the real fruit because it's actually quite difficult to extract the scent of the fruit without completely destroying it. And so we have alternatives. For example, for the peach, the important note that you need to remember is that it's actually from the scent of aldehyde, four team. How can we describe the sense of peach? Well, if you have peach or nectarine available in like a grocery store, I definitely recommend you try to pick them up. But the first sense of peach that you're going to get is definitely going to be the fruity aspect. You can say the peach is fruity and it belongs in the fruity family. The second aspect you're going to get is like this comforting, milky aspect, not really like milk, but it's something that we call la toonic. It's something that is so cocooning, it is comforting. Then when you use peach inside a fragrance when we formulate, it helps to round out the formula actually. Bananas, they're definitely going to be a lot sweeter. It's going to be sweet, fruity, Then with the pineapple, sometimes it can be juicy. It really depends on how you formulate it or how the perfumer wants to express the pineapple. It's going to be sweet, juicy, and fruity. Next up, we have the green family. I think the most easiest way to talk about this family is if you have some plants lying around, and if you're willing to maybe rip the leaves or maybe cut the stem. Then that is how you'll be able to get more of an idea of what green smells like. Some of the notes that I have listed here, for example, that I want to talk about would be violet leaves, cister hexanol, stem. Cister hexanol and stemoe. They are actually molecule, so they are synthetics. However, I believe they are actually found in plants. Stemone has more of a figi aspect to it, and this is actually the note that people use to create a fig scent because we don't actually extract the fig fruit. It's not possible. Stemmone, it has that fig aspect, and then we have sister hexanol. After you've mowed the lawn, and then you walk outside, you'll notice that there's this pungent green smell. I would say that cister hexano very much embodies that pungent green smell. As I mentioned before, with the fruity nos, I said the peach is quite round. With the green nose, some of them are quite sharp. What do I mean by quite sharp is that they go straight up into your nose. You'll notice as when you start to smell more, that a lot of scene and aromas around us. They have different textures, different vibes even. Then this is how roundness and sharpness came about. There's a shape to it. It's quite fascinating, indeed. I do ask you to observe when you smell and see if you feel any aspect like textures or shapes that come to your mind when you're smelling them. Violet leaves, actually, it smells to me almost like fermented vegetables. This is why you can also use the word vegetle to describe it. It's green, it's leafy, it's vegetal. The next family I wanted to talk about here is the aromatic family. Aromatics are probably quite popular. I would say, especially if you're living in the states, for example, lavender, definitely an aromatic. We also have over here, rosemary. Rosemary and lavender, they can have some similarity. Lavender essential oil tends to lean more into the floral aspect, but if you're using avenden, It's also another ingredient that we use within fragrance. You can probably see avenden used in fuger fragrances, aftershave, men's cologne, things of that sort because it really gives this freshness to it. That one is definitely going to be a lot more cporous, a lot more herbaceous, we would say. We also have spearmint, and even though peppermint isn't listed, peppermint will also fall into the aromatics category. Now, spearmint and peppermint, you can definitely describe them as ni because it gives this cooling sensation. Whenever you use the word minty to describe a fragrance, it has to have that cooling nose numbing sensation. I think a great way for you to really get an idea of what spearmins or peppermint smells like is definitely try to get like chewing gum, as well as the candies and the toothpaste. They definitely use spearins in gum. They definitely use spearmins in the toothpaste, and then there's like peppermint candy. Those are probably going to be your best ways to get an idea and to familiarize yourself with their sense and their facets. Moving on, we have the Woody family. Just like the floral family, the Woody family is definitely going to be important because woods are everywhere, is used in every single fragrance. I will talk about the structure of the fragrance soon. In terms of the woods, the common ones we see is sandalwood, cedar wood, there's also vetear, and Pachuli and Gaia wood as well. All of these woods are very unique. They have really distinguishing characteristics about them. And so I'll talk about the sandal wood first. A good way to describe sandal wood would be that it's woody, it's milky, it's also spicy. It has a really interesting facet about it. Personally, for me, I really like sandalwood. I think it's just a really comforting scent to work with. Then we also have cedar wood. So my best advice to you in terms of how a cedar wood smells like would be if you were a kid back in the 90s and you have to use those manual pencil sharpeners. That's what Cedar smells like. It smells like dry pencil shavings. Depending on which cedar wood you use, it's going to vary in the level of dryness. One of the most popular cedar woods that is often used in fragrance is cedar wood from Virginia. Moving on, we have gc wood. Gaya quid is going to be quite unique. Gay quid, it's really interesting because it's witty, but then there's also this aspect about it that is smoky. This smokiness I find to be quite addicting. It reminds me of bacon when you're cooking it in the morning. Lots of people they actually use gay quid to help reconstruct od. D, I'm not going to talk about in this lecture, but basically the thing that you should know about od is that it's quite expensive. A lot of the fragrances that you see out there on the market don't necessarily contain od They're all re comprised, basically reconstructed using different nodes, and Gaya quid is definitely one of them. Gey quid is something that is witty, it is smoky. I guess you can say that it has an atomolic facet to it as well. But overall, it's a really nice scent. It smells like sophisticated. It gives that feeling of sophistication. I really enjoy working with gequid. Now I want to talk about ever and Pachuli. Depending on your nose, you might be more sensitive to one than the other. But Pachuli what I can say is that if you just take a bag of soil and you smell it, that's what Pachuli smells like. Pachuli smells like straight up dirt. The way that we've described this dirt smell is we use the term anamolic. A good way to talk about peculi is that it's woody, it's arfy, it's anamolic. Sometimes it can be mossy as well. But yeah, I'd say there's no other way to put it then it smells like dirt. To me, it just smells straight up like dirt, but it is a beautiful ingredient, and it is a very important component that is used in sheep fragrances. Last but not least we have vetevar. Ve, there are different varieties of vetevr. The one that's most common is vtabar Haiti. A good way to describe vetevar is that it is witty, it's smoky, sometimes it can be dry, but there's also a leathery facet to it. You can say that as leathery or you can say that as anemolic. Overall, it's a really multi dimensional ingredients. A lot of perfumers love to use it in creation, and I personally love it as well. I definitely recommend you guys go and check it out if you can. I believe dry vedibar is available for purchase online. I think I've seen it on Amazon before. If you're able to get your hands on that, then that will be great. Basically for all of the ingredients that I have listed, if you are able to physically get them, I plant form, that is fabulous. That is a great way for you to get to know how they smell like and whatnot. Now, moving on, we have the spices family. For those of you who cook often, this fading is probably going to be very natural for you to remember or to distinguish descent. I'll first talk about the classification of spices within perfumery. How it works is we usually classify them between warm spice and cold spice. The warm spices are going to be the ones that you smell and then it gives your nose like a heating sensation, if that makes sense. Usually, for me, I just get a tingly, a very hot tingly sensation. What we can say as warm spice would be nutmegs, the cinnamon, the pink pepper porn as well. Then as a cold spice, it would be black pepper. So when you smell pink peppercorn, it's going to be I guess I would say it's quite sharp. It's peppery, it's sharp, fresh as well. It can also have a rosy facet. This is why you often see rose and pink pepper commonly used together in fragrances because they really do complement each other. It helps give the fragrance that very nice vibrant sparkling top and opening and freshness to it, and then it links with the rose, that's how you move down to the fragrance structure a lot more smoothly. Now I want to talk about black pepper. Black pepper, indeed, it's peppery. I can also have a turpenic aspect, or we call woody Pine. Star annees is going to be quite different from the group that I have listed in front of you. Star annees in its own, it has a character, which we call sic. It's es, it's sweet, and overall, it's going to be a really interesting ingredients to use in your floral compositions as well as in the woody composition. Now moving on, we have the watery family. When you think about the watery family, I want you to think about the ocean. The ocean, the rivers, the air. It has that aspect. This is the aspect that we call ozonic. When it smells like the air and then there's some moisture in the air. We turn that as ozonic. You can also mention the words as marine, aquatic. You want to think about like seaweed, sea life. If you ever go swimming, you want to be able to really capture those sensations that you feel, the smells that you feel when you're out there in the water. So one of the most popular notes in the watery family is going to be g. C to me, I would say, it reminds me of when I'm walking by the water. For me, I live close to the river and then whenever I walk by there, I can always smell like this aquatic feeling in the air. There's this aquatic ness that's combined by the air. It can be quite pungent sometimes. C is definitely a strong ingredient. You wouldn't want to too much of it just enough depending on what you're trying to make. With these aquatic notes, they're commonly used in cologne Fuger, mens after shape as well. The next family we're going to be talking about is the Ambri family. Ambri fragrances, they used to be called the oriental family, but now it's changed to the Ambri family. A lot of the ingredients that I have with the here, you will definitely find with an amber fragrances, such as vanilla. When we formulate, we might not exactly use vanilla absolute because vanilla absolute is actually quite expensive. And depending on the budgets that we get for the brief, we may or may not use it. Another substitute for vanilla absolute would definitely be vanilin. Vanelin, it's going to smell exactly like vanilla. It's vanilla, it's balsalic, it's sweet. Sometimes it can be cakey as well. It really depends on how heavy that you want to put into the fragrance as well as what is the concept of your fragrance. Then we have the balsalics or the resins. I wanted to talk about Frankincense first. Frankincense is quite an interesting ingredient. When you first smell Frankincense, you're not going to get that amber facet right away. More so you're going to get a peppery facet. It's very similar to black pepper. But whereas black pepper pretty much stays linear in its peppery note. With frankincense, you're going to get that peppery aspect and then later it's going to smell like more Ambri more resonant has this woody turpenic aspect to it. Labin is going to have a vanilla aspect to it. But you'll definitely be able to tell the difference between abdinin as well as vanilla. Because vanilla, as I mentioned, it's sweet, it's vanilla. With labdinum, it's not so sweet. You'll have to have vanilla character, but it is more ambr and then there's also this leathery note to it. You can say that it's leathery, and you can also term leathery as anamolic. That's a good way to describe abd. It's a lot more deeper, a lot more richer compared to vandla. The Musk, I'm sure many of you if you are active in the fragrance community, you know about these ingredients, and I'm sure many of you love these ingredients. Musk are basically favored for the clean feeling, the clean sization. They are used in Fragrances everywhere. Mainly we use musk as a fixative. With musk here, I have listed musk tea, I have listed galaxal, we have usinoe and muscon. Musk tea, I think the easiest way for me to put it is that it smells like clean t shirt. When you smell it, it's going to be powdery, it's clean, but then there's also it makes me feel like linen. It really makes me feel like I'm smelling like cotton. It has that really comforting clean out of the laundry vibe to it. But then different from musk tea. Glaxoe has like this I wouldn't say it's sweet, but it has this flor powderines to it. I find galaxlite works well. If you have fruiting notes you want to emphasize or if you have floral notes that you want to emphasize. Overall, it's a universal ingredients, but what I would say is the differentiating factor between musk tea and galaxlie, is definitely going to be like that sweet floral powderine that you get with it. So now we also have uenone and uscone. Mucin and use. They are quite expensive to use. If the budget affords, I definitely do recommend you guys play with them. These ingredients, it's going to be quite different. They smell quite different from us tea and galaxol. With these ingredients, to me, they feel powdery, a bit more anamolic, not in a dirty sense, but anamolic as in fur, it smells like fur. If you have a pet, like a cat or a dog, it has that fur sensation to it, but they also work very well in floral fragrances because it provides this blooming effect gives volume to fragrances. Definitely notes that you would want to check out. One thing I wanted to talk about the musk is that in the beginning when you're studying them, it might be really difficult for you to smell because actually these molecules are quite big. Nose blocks them. I think it's a safety measure like a reaction of the body. But once you start smelling them on the constant basis, eventually, you'll start to really smell them, and then you'll be able to differentiate them. The last family is going to be the aldehydes. Some of them, they have a waxy facet. If you think about candle wax, that's what they smell like. Then some aldehydes also have a creamy aspect to it. C 12, C 11, they have more of a violet facet to them, C eight, C nine, C ten, They are usually good to use with like lemons or oranges. But to me, I feel they have a soapy, waxy aspect, and sometimes might even be a fatty aspect. So I think ale hos are really quite interesting. If you're able to get your hands on these, I definitely recommend you try them out to yourself. But why I put them on here is because aldehydes are widely used within perfumery. I think it is important to mention these, and also just to note the different facets that they have. So when you know that it's an aldehyde, you can even say that it's aldehedic, because it exhibits 1 or more of these multiple factors that I have with the 3. Part 2: Evaluation Criteria and Olfactive Pyramid: Okay. Moving on to the second proportion of this lecture. This one, I'm going to start talking about how we evaluate fragrances. Now, some of these words you might have heard. For example, if you watch influencers, we'll talk about fragrances, Cage is usually thrown around, projection is thrown around a lot. But I wanted to talk about it in terms of how we actually use this to evaluate a fragrance before it goes onto the market. The first time we're going to be talking about is sage. Sage is going to be the trail that the person leaves behind. If you can think about the last time, maybe you were next to someone and then they walked past you or they brushed past you and then you smelled their fragrance. I was like flying off of their skin. That is what sage is. You measure it by how it is leaving a trail. Projection, I think, a good way to describe this word is to think about aura. It's different from Cage where Cage is like a trail like the trail you leave behind. Projection is more of like the aura. When you're standing next to someone, can you smell the fragrance? Is it emanating from their body, is coming out. These are really important. And I think now more and more, a lot of people they want to be able to have that sage in their fragrance, they want to be able to smell their fragrance, they want their fragrance to project to emanate. Balance, we usually You don't really see it talked about in the fragrance community amongst influencers because this is something like a term that is really used within the creational aspect of perfumery. For those of you who are creating fragrances are interested in creating your own fragrances, balance is all about the harmony of your ingredients. For example, if your them is to create a rosy cedar wood fragrance, you want to make sure that we smell the rose and we smell the cedar. So when something is off balance, it usually means that the proportions aren't correct in your formula, or there is one or two ingredients that are being covered, or you can't smell your concept or your concept is like muddled. It is really important in fragrance to have a really balanced formula. Fragrance is as much as it's in art as it is a chemistry, and there's a lot of technical components behind that. A fragrance, it's more like baking than it is cooking. Because when you bake, it's important to have all your measurements correct because that's the difference between your cake flopping and rising in the oven. That's the same way with fragrance. When you modify your formula and you go through trial after trial, For example, if you add ingredients or you takeaway, you always have to rebalance the proportions, it's never going to be the same. Right here on the screen, you'll see that I have this little pyramid. We can call it the fragrance pyramid, the fact of pyramid. But it's basically is the structure of a fragrance. You have your top notes, your middle or heart nodes, and then the bottom and the base. How this works is, the top notes are always going to be your citruss, your spices, the more volatile ingredients. Top ingredients, they are not intended to last the whole entire day. Some of them only last a few minutes. Others last for a little bit, maybe like 3 hours or so, maybe one to 3 hours, it really depends, and then you get into the heart aspect. The heart aspect of the fragrance, this is going to be your watery notes, your green notes, your floral notes. If it's a woody fragrance, you can have some woody aspects in the middle as well. So this is really going to be the meat of your fragrance, the main idea of the fragrance. Whereas the top is like the show opener, the middle is like the show, it is the show. Then when you look at the bottom and the base nose, these are most often always going to be the woody and the must because this space is safe for more of the heavier ingredients. For example, with woody fragrances or In general fragrances that use wood. It's going to be heavily focused on the bottom notes. You cedar wood, your sandalwood, your peculi your vtabra. These they don't really fly out of the fragrance, they stay near the bottom or between the middle and the base. Then you have your must. As I mentioned, the musts are your fixatives, so they will always be at the bottom of your fragrance. I do have some advice on how you can wear your fragrances for quite some long time or to enjoy your fragrance a bit longer. It's to not only spray it on your skin, but also spray it on your clothes. Because with the skin, sometimes you move around or you wash your hands or you're changing your environment. But then with the clothes, I feel like a lot of the fragrance molecules, they do tend to stick well onto the clothing to the fabric. For sure, you're going to have fragrances that's still going to smell like the next day or maybe like a whole week, depending on the structure. I definitely do recommend spraying not only on your skin, but also on your clothes. 4. Outro and Final Project Remarks: Thank you so much for disproportion of the lecture. I hope this master class has been helpful to you. If you have any questions or feedback, definitely, you guys can start a chat in the discussion board. I also have a mini project prepare for the end of this class, which is basically, I want you guys to talk about one of your fragrances that you have. You can try to describe it. Try to find which family it belongs to without looking. On the website for info, but just try to do it for fun, try to do this exercise and make it fun. Try to describe it. If you don't have a fragrance, you can take a fruit, take a flower, anything that has a sense, and just try to group it into a family and try to give it some descriptors. I look forward to seeing you guys in the next class. Thank you so much.