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What is olfactory layering and how to do it with perfumes from Florence. Episode 1.

Welcome to the first episode of this captivating SPV series. Given the number of fragrances we have created in our 33 years of activity, I foresee many episodes and perhaps even more than one season!

For some time now, the concept of olfactory layering has been on the lips of perfume enthusiasts for a very simple reason: olfactory layering is fun and creative.

But let’s start from the beginning. In the context of perfumes, olfactory layering refers to the structure of a fragrance and the division of its olfactory notes into different stages of evolution. A well-crafted perfume is often composed of various notes that develop over time, creating a layered and dynamic olfactory experience.

The notes of a perfume can be divided into three main categories:

  • Top notes (or opening notes): These are the first notes perceived upon applying the perfume and they have an immediate impact. Top notes are often light and volatile, lasting for a short period of time, and can include ingredients such as citrus, aromatic herbs, or fresh notes.
  • Heart notes (or middle notes): They emerge after the top notes have dissipated and constitute the core of the perfume. These notes are more stable and long-lasting compared to the top notes. They can include flowers, fruits, or spices, adding personality to the fragrance.
  • Base notes: These are the most persistent and long-lasting notes of the perfume, emerging after the heart notes have settled and providing stability to them over time. Base notes can include ingredients such as woods, moss, amber, or vanilla.

Each olfactory experience is complex and engaging because each phase of a perfume’s note evolution adds a different dimension to the fragrance, creating a unique olfactory harmony and narrative. The creation of a perfume is always driven by this goal and requires extensive knowledge of raw materials and chemistry, professionalism, discipline, and talent.

Olfactory layering can also be achieved by using existing perfumes as the top, heart, or base of a new fragrance, allowing everyone to create their own scent based on their inspiration and creativity, even without being a professional perfumer. It’s a game without rules, where the only thing that matters is personalization. Each individual can create something that speaks of themselves.

Layering can intensify certain olfactory notes present in the original fragrance or enrich a fragrance predominantly featuring a single ingredient. One fragrance born from the experimentation of layering at Spezierie Palazzo Vecchio is KATALEYA, created by layering our PATCHOULI ROSSO and our AMBRA DEL NEPAL.

The fragrance AMBRA DEL NEPAL is a structured fragrance with a slightly aromatic top note of coriander and a base of grey amber, incense, vanilla, and patchouli. It is a fragrance that I define as speaking to the soul, as it directly connects with our spiritual side. Our PATCHOULI ROSSO, on the other hand, is a fragrance predominantly centered around the natural essential oil of patchouli. It is an earthy fragrance that highlights the more grounded, real, and present aspects of our being.

I wanted to intensify the subtle Patchouli present in AMBRA DEL NEPAL to create a fragrance where the earthy and spiritual aspects could be in balance, highlighting our entire being. Thus, to a significant base of AMBRA DEL NEPAL, I added a small percentage of PATCHOULI ROSSO and created KATALEYA,.

I am sharing the creative process behind this perfume because I am confident that it will inspire all of you to unleash your creativity and tell a small piece of your story and essence through fragrance and the beautiful game of olfactory layering.

I could have also done another layering with AMBRA DEL NEPAL, creating a floral, fruity, or spicy fragrance to serve as its heart… but I leave the experimentation to you!

Don’t miss the next episode of this series.

Francesca Di Massimo.

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Chypre or Powdery fragrance? second part

Talc or Powdery? There is no difference, as these are three terms that describe the same facet of fragrance.

The cipriate facet emerged in the early 1900s thanks to Guerlain, who pioneered the trend of cipriate fragrances with a composition of bergamot, rose, jasmine, vanilla, tonka bean, and iris. The powdery note is so named because it evokes the powder of our grandmothers. In 1980, this facet was modernized with the addition of musky notes. Today, synthetic materials such as methylionon, which replicates the aroma of violet that cannot be extracted from flowers, heliotropine, and coumarin, which is an isolate of tonka bean, enrich this facet. Natural cipriate notes include violet leaves, carrot, broom, mimosa, and hay.

What comes to mind and heart when encountering a cipriate fragrance? Silky, precious, soft, noble, powdery, intimate.

My father created cipriate fragrances such as TALCO DELICATO, VIOLETTA DI BOSCO and LA VECCHIA SPEZIERIA. In recent years, I have created cipriate fragrances paired with another facet, such as woody for AMITA and citrus for ASLI.

TALCO DELICATO is our quintessential cipriate fragrance, composed of Sicilian Lemon, Coumarin, Sweet Woods, Honey, and Cream. This fragrance is a sweet childhood memory, the taste of limoncello, a captivating fragrance that exudes retro elegance and settles on the skin like a soft kiss on the neck. A drop of honey falls into the bottle, and Woods fall asleep on a bed of blooming violets, in the shade of a lemon tree. The violet, a symbol of simplicity and humility, often goes unnoticed, possessing not only a striking color but an even more magical scent. According to French legend, the face of a loved one can be seen in the petals of this flower. An enchantment straight out of a fairytale.

Francesca Di Massimo

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Is this scent Chypre or Powdery?

If you don’t know the difference between a Chypre perfume and a Cypriot one, know that you’re in good company. Nevertheless, there is a difference and it lies in the reference raw materials that define the two facets. Today we will talk about the Chypre facet, while we will dedicate the next article to the Powdery facet.

The Chypre accord is a historic accord named after the island of Cyprus, which inspired Francois Coty in 1917 to create his perfume named “Chypre”. It was built on a base accord of Bergamot, Rose, Jasmine, Patchouli, Labdanum, and Oakmoss.

It had such great success that from that moment on, perfumes based on the same base accord were called Chypre. Today’s modern Chypre has replaced natural oakmoss, which is banned in perfumery, with Evernyl, a synthetic molecule that reproduces it fairly faithfully. Jasmine has been replaced by its isolated form, Hedione, and rose is usually also reproduced from natural molecules. Labdanum has been replaced by white musks, synthetic ones that smell clean.

What goes through my mind and heart when I smell a Chypre fragrance? Velvet, intense, deep Bordeaux, determined, solid, mysterious, provocative.

LA NOTTE DI ANGELICA

Our Chypre perfume is LA NOTTE DI ANGELICA. This fragrance is built on the historic accord and contains natural Bergamot, Patchouli, and Labdanum, while Rose and Jasmine are two reconstructed bases. In addition to the base accord, this wonderfully feminine and intense perfume contains honey, beeswax, and natural essential oils such as Elemi, Benzoin, Guaiac wood, Mandarin, Lime, Ebony and Cedarwood.

LA NOTTE DI ANGELICA is a perfume suitable from dusk onwards, it wants the darkness and mystery that only the night can give.

Francesca Di Massimo

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NEW CREATIONS WITH OUD

Symbio studio,  an American film production company has realized   ITALY MADE WITH LOVE a documentary on some Italian artisan realities . For niche perfumery he chose SPEZEIRIE PALAZZO VECCHIO and for this we are very proud and grateful. Today this video is an opportunity to tell you about the two new fragrances we have been working on for several months now in which we experimented with a new raw material for us: oud.

Agarwood, or oud is the dark aromatic resin that forms in Aquilaria and Gyrinops trees that are native to Southeast Asia, when they are infected by a particular type of mold. It is a woody, animal, sweet, balsamic raw material. It is also very expensive due to the reduction of natural resources to produce oud. For this reason, today perfumeries, with a view to sustainability, create bases that reproduce oud starting from natural extracts and synthetic molecules and using natural oud in very small parts.

The perfumes we are creating therefore use an Oud base which has precisely these characteristics and that is, it is woody, sweet and balsamic and not very animal. we made this choice because it is closer to our formulation style.

HAIKU, based on Peony and Oud is a perfume that is positioned between dream and reality. Inspired by an imaginary world full of colors surrounded by nature. Reality and imagination mix in a dreamlike vision. It represents the enchanting lightness of being that cannot do without passion and spirituality.
OLFACTORY PYRAMID
Peach, pear, bergamot accord
Warm heart accord (tuberose and rose), peony
Oud, Amber and Vanilla

KERALA, based on black pepper and Oud is a masculine fragrance in which I mixed the sweet and woody baslamic resin of oud with the strong freshness of mint and cardamom, immersed in a pungent concrete heart of geranium and black pepper. Head and heart then rely on a sweet base of amber and coumarin. KERALA is the name of the region where black pepper comes from.

RAW MATERIAL
Spearmint, cardamom, bergamot
Bourbon geranium, jasmine, black pepper, cloves
Oud, Ambergris (Iso and Super), Tobacco, Coumarin

These two fragrances are now in maceration in alcohol, the first long maceration of 4 weeks. after bottling and labelling, they will finally be on our physical and virtual shelves.

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But why is this vanilla so special!

We at Spezierie Palazzo Vecchio have always loved vanilla, it was its founder Dr. Di Massimo, my father, who fell in love with her when this raw material had not yet gained the limelight.

Since then most of our perfumes contain vanilla even maybe a small percentage. Vanilla is a base note, very persistent and with a medium intensity. Our VANIGLIA DEL MADAGASCAR perfume was already on the shelf on the day of the opening of our herbal shop on December 8, 1990. Together with perfumes based on raw materials that were very fashionable at the time such as Lily of the Valley, Honeysuckle and our Caterina de ‘ Medici, the VANIGLIA DEL MADAGASCAR, a Gourmand perfume, was an absolute novelty for niche perfumery. The term Gourmand in fact entered the language only in 1992.

Our Vanilla was thus born from an idea of my father who chose to use only natural vanillin by mixing Madagascar vanilla with Mexican vanilla, the first fatter and softer with delicate and floral aromas and the second hotter, more powerful and strongly chocolaty. Combined with creamy and white floral notes, it is today our best-selling perfume in the world, mentioned in various perfume books, reviewed in dozens of videos as one of the most persistent and pleasantly edible vanilla scents.

And that’s why we can’t stop creating new vanilla scented products. The VANIGLIA DEL MADAGASCAR body lotion and shower gelV have long been part of the collection. But from today we also have the new LIP GLOSS VANIGLIA DEL MADAGASCAR: an all-natural product based on castor seed oil and glittery beeswax for a super bright effect and delicately scented with vanilla.

And soon a new scented bag for wardrobes and drawers will arrive with our unmistakable Vanilla aroma.

To crown it all, the oil painting on canvas “Vanilla Orchid” by Paulina Jakubiuk that we bought two years ago, on display in our shop in Florence and that we have reproduced on all the cases.

In short, vanilla lovers can have an olfactory feast here!

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CLOTHES and PERFUMES: the sensory strategy

THE POMANDERS PURSE

The sensory strategy that leads us to combine a perfume with a particular outfit has its roots in the habits of women of the 1400s who had many ways to insert perfumes into their outfits, these were solid perfumes that were inserted into gloves, necklaces, belts and bags. Used above all to leave the house in times when the streets of the cities were a bit smelly. The effluvia of their perfumes followed and surrounded them throughout the walk. The perfumes all had an abundance of base notes which made them even more persistent.

Pomander-purses, or sweet-bags, date back to the second half of the 16th century and the first half of the 17th century and appear to be a typically English object. They are small bags, square or almost square, embroidered on both sides, in colored silks and metallic threads, often with a floral design. Some feature gold, pearls and expensive fabrics. Tassels often decorate the bottom corners and edges. Many feature a long braided ring as well as a cord, suggesting that they were designed to be worn hanging from a belt. The bag was often worn around the person and carried herbs and scented essences to drive away the bad smells of everyday life.

VANILLA AND GINGER

Soon Spezierie Palazzo Vecchio will create this bag that you can choose to contain the products you buy and then use it as you wish. The first perfume available will be VANILLA AND GINGER: Sweet scent like Vanilla from Madagascar, but made more prickly by small drops of cypress, cloves and ginger. Fresh, spicy, exotic, ginger accompanies the bitterness and sourness of Calabrian citrus. A perfume created to remember the rough lands of Southern Italy

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It’s easy to say DISCOVERY KIT!

“.. I am still using the samples taken with the other Discovery Kits, many I have also given away, because beauty must be shared …, I am buying I Fiori del Cielo for my mother as it is now her love perfume.”  Stefany Giovanetti

A DISCOVERY KITis just that:

a long journey, an experience that does not end in a few days after the arrival of the perfumes, the possibility of dressing different fragrances according to the moment or emotions

an opportunity to share and give an emotion or a memory through a smell

Perfume has the superpower of awakening emotions, memories, moments of life and letting others perceive us with an extra sense, the sense of smell.

Almost all the creators of perfumes and fragrances sooner or later create a discovery kit, that is a set of perfumes bottled in very small bottles of a few ml so that their creations can be smelled even by those who, before choosing a perfume, want to smell it and cannot or doesn’t want to go to a physical store.

But why is the DISCOVERY KITby Spezierie Palazzo Vecchio different from the others?

You choose the perfumes of our DISCOVERY KITamong the many niche fragrances we have been creating for more than thirty years! Go to our site and read the stories and descriptions, the raw materials we used and choose which ones you want to hear.

However, we do our bit by adding, to the eight chosen by you, two perfumes which, based on your choices and our knowledge of our fragrances, we believe may be fragrances you will love.

In this way you will be able to NAME YOUR SCENT

DISCOVERY KIT: 8 perfume samples of 1,5 ml

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