perfume write-ups: aftelier

eight samples

I ran across the work of Mandy Aftel, a natural perfume maker, while making a list of perfumes that contain real ambergris. I didn’t think I had the palate to appreciate what she was doing, so I put her work in a mental category labeled “to be sniffed when I am not so stupid.” But then when I was trying to figure out how certain things “actually smelled,” I ended up… back at her work. So here we are.

Natural perfumery is basically what it sounds like: perfume made only from materials derived from plants and animals. Even when an identical synthetic version of a scent molecule exists, natural perfumery will use the version obtained from natural sources.

Aftel has written a few books about perfume. I own two (Essence and Alchemy and Fragrant) and have read one (Essence and Alchemy). Even if you aren’t terribly sympathetic to the motivations behind most natural perfumery (about which, more below), I think Essence and Alchemy is worth a read. Aftel’s own reasons for pursuing natural perfume are, as she makes clear, spiritual and sensual, and have a lot to do with the ways in which she sees perfume as the heir to alchemy:

In alchemy, attaining the absolute meant creating the Elixir, that magical potion to defeat the ravages of time. But the process depended on the marriage of elements the alchemist could not perceive.… The alchemical quest stands for the attempt to create something new and beautiful in the world, through a process that cannot ultimately be reduced to chemistry.

Natural perfume has much less longevity than traditional perfume (on her website, Aftel says not to expect it to last more than three hours) and the eau de parfum format I got most of my samples in seems to have less longevity than the other available formats. I mention this because even though I knew that, I was still surprised at how brief their lifespan could be. I had the best results spraying the perfume around the collarbone region or the backs of my hands—the more traditional pulse points (wrists, neck, etc) sped things up too much.