I was not excited when I heard Chanel’s latest addition to the Les Exclusifs collection, Jersey, featured lavender. It is not a favorite note of mine, although I love Guerlain Jicky, and oddly enough, also the first fragrance I thought of when I smelled Jersey, Brin de Réglisse. Like Jersey, Brin de Réglisse is a niche-from-a-mainstream-house sort of thing, in this case from Hermès, and the reason I thought of Brin de Réglisse right away is not because they smell alike, although I suppose perhaps they are the distant-est of distant cousins. No, I thought of it because of the lavender note in Brin de Réglisse, which as you may remember, was a molecular fraction (is that the term? I don’t know the term, and admit I am not very concerned about it either way). I’ll repeat a quote I used then:

[Perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena] asked them to slice natural lavender into 50 distinct groups of molecules, sniffed them all, discarded five and reassembled it. “My lavender had a much purer, cleaner smell,” he says, comparing it with the natural scent. “Then I had to find something to dress it up that would be a little unusual. I chose a touch of licorice.” (via Los Angeles Times, 10/28/2007)

As near as I can tell, they do something similar (presumably using cheaper methods) with many fragrances notes, which is why notes you used to hate — patchouli! — don’t bother you anymore, and why smelling materials in their natural state is no longer necessarily helpful to the budding perfumista…

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