Created
05/18/2022
Aims
Just make something that smells good.
Themes
Floral, green, sweet, herbal.
Strength
7.4% (EDT)
Materials of Interest
Cyclamen Aldehyde - Fresh, floral, green, diffusive
Para Cresyl Acetate - Spicy, animalic.
Ethyl Maltol - Caramelized fruit, spun sugar, strawberry.
Notes
I started building the base notes for Fragrance No. 4 around the material cyclamen aldehyde. CA has a floral-green, fresh n’ clean aroma so it’s a departure from the more woody smelling base materials that I have been experimenting with thus far. I wanted to give this fragrance a resinous quality so I added some ambrettolide and auralva to compliment the CA. At this point I had a very nice, clean scent.
I wanted to spice things up a bit and so I added some methyl diantilis® and para cresyl acetate for their spicy notes. Now this was an interesting combination of notes! The aroma leaned herbal (like black licorice, root beer), floral (like orange blossom) and clean-chemical (like rubber, leather) with a bit of spice. It was rather pleasant but I wanted to give the fragrance a little more nuance so I added habanolide® for some refined musk notes.
Lastly, I added ebanol® for volume, and to really take it to the next level I added just a little bit of ethyl maltol (a little goes a long way). I love how ethyl maltol smells on skin. It is rich with caramel and strawberry notes and it gives fragrances a sexy vibe. It’s pretty much my favorite material to work with at the moment. Turns out I really didn’t like it in this fragrance… it actually kind of ruined it for me. It added a gourmand theme that was not there before and did not fit well with the rest of the materials that I had already used.
To recover the fragrance I added a healthy dose of vanillin crystals, really trying to overpower the chemical aspect of the para cresyl acetate. I also added some benzyl acetate for its diffusive white flower notes. This complimented the vanilla notes nicely. It is also the only top note in the formula.
I decided to stop adding materials here. It felt as thought the notes were starting to run into each other a bit instead of compliment each other. Better to quit while I’m ahead and learn from the experience. I did end up adding this one to what little I had left of No. 3 to make a frankenstein.
Composition
| Fragrance Material | Category | Conc. |
| Cyclamen Aldehyde | Base | 1% |
| Ambrettolide | Base | 1% |
| Methyl Diantilis® | Mid | 1% |
| Habanolide® | Base | 1% |
| Ebanol® | Base | 1% |
| Vanillin | Base | 1% |
| Benzyl Acetate | Top | 1% |
| Auralva | Base | 0.5% |
| Para Cresyl Acetate | Mid | 0.2% |
| Ethyl Maltol | Base | 0.02% |
| Ethyl Alcohol | Carrier | 85.6% |
| Water | Carrier | 4.5% |
| Propylene Glycol | Carrier | 2.4% |
| Isopropyl Myristate | Carrier | 0.2% |
