New Hermès L'Ambre des Merveilles in 4 Questions (3/4): An Olfactive Convention {Perfume Q & A}
- And yet amber is a smell that we love now more than ever!...
Jean - Claude Ellena - And this is where the power of language, the virtues of semantic shifts, and our capacity for color associations intervene...For the word amber means also, beyond the animalic concretion, a fossil vegetal resin. This resin which smells of nothing is the color of honey, golden, sunny, and preserves everything it withholds during dozens of millions of years...
In perfumes designated by the word "amber", there isn't amber anymore in the original sense but a composition born from the marriage of Chemistry with Nature going back to the end of the 19th century. Perfumers have combined a synthetic material, Vanilline, whose color is white, with a natural material, labdanum, whose color is dark brown, and which is a resin harvested from cistuses. It is one of those rare plants which despite the odds, contain animalic notes...
From this union was born a child the color of honey, an olfactive convention that was given the name amber! This, due to its color of course, but also and especially because its warm, enveloping, nearly aphrodisiac, narcotic aroma, was a signature of Orientalism then.
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Via press release
