I use in my fixative accord for all my creation. Great addition to boost any fragrances
Amazing Petitgrain! Great enhancer for Neroli as it smells very similar. Never smelled anything like this! Will only buy from frater moving forward!
This perfume was not on my radar nor do I remember smelling a vintage batch. I am really glad I tried this recreation. It is complex enough that you are left more with a feeling than individual notes. This is strong, embodied, and feminine; not like anything worn today. I might like this as much as the lovely No 5 recreation.
I purchase this French Jasmine in 10%. It is more herbal, translucent, and dry; like an idyllic overcast French countryside. I didn't get the magic of it until I used it in overdose in Joy and 1000. Compared to the same formulas with Indian jasmine, the French jasmine gave this incredible transparency without losing the depth of a natural substance.
Due to cost, I make mini batches of formulas. It pairs really beautifully with the French Rose de Mai, Violet leaf, and orris absolute. They are all on the same frequency and bring out the best in each other.
By comparison:
Indian jasmine is sweet, sultry, and dense.
Egyptian jasmine is very indolic, and sits between the 2 others in terms of weight.
I was looking for some magic touch that could bring back the smells of those old days of yore. I still havent found it, but this is the closest I smelled so far.
Best quality ingredients out there right now. Putting my second order soon.
Great way to add impact that won't fade after a few minutes. A little goes a long way.
I smelled several oud perfumes and some oud bases and accords and wasn't really getting what oud is about, what makes it recognisable as oud. Sometimes it's leather (like the Pretty Oud base), sometimes it's smoky, sometimes it's medicinal, sometimes Cypriol, sometimes woody ambers. So I got this to get a better understanding.
To my surprise, one material this is most similar to is Fleur de Cuir (and osmanthus absolute too). It doesn't have the floralcy but the leathery barnyard animalic note is almost identical. There is even a hint of fruitiness (or my mind plays tricks on me).
There is no dry woody harshness that you get from woody ambers. It is much softer and nostalgically cosy and warm, like a warm afternoon in the countryside near a barn. Animalic, yes, but a weird mix of pleasant and unpleasant that is almost addictive. To my nose, the woody backbone only shows after some time and stays in the background.
I tried to wear it on its own because I felt like I could like it that way but it proved to be too much. It needs to be mixed with other things. I bet it's going to be glorious in blends.
Bit of a contradiction to my nose. Lovely, fresh woody-green of a living branch snapped and splintering. Some strong green streaks which remind me a lot of angelica root - rounded and diffuse greens, a little bit warm and a little bit musky.
This angelica green-woody-musky is also to my nose layered with this lovely pale refined wood pencil shaving note I get from from some cedars. Dry, quite literal pencil shaving aspects, cedar type solargolden woods, beautifully entwined with this divine dewy dampness like a recent rain on a dry forest. Dry and pale, but simultaneously clean and fresh and dewy. No idea how this works, but it's gorgeous.
Masculine-ish in the way a pale wood can be, but not at all specific to my mind.
I wear it neat, and get a lot of compliments.
CASCALONE, is an absolute MASTERPIECE that was Invented all the way back in 1966 by Firmenich. This single molecule truly is a masterpiece. Organic chemistry is the background, the very foundation of life - AND - of everything that we do as perfumers. To understand your own creations fully it’s so important to understand the underlying chemistry. To understand the underlying chemistry, is to first acknowledge how absolutely complicated and ultimately unfathomable that chemistry turns out to be. Now, against that backdrop, understand that the chemists at Firminech were manipulating the compound calone. They knew the formula and the placement of the molecules in calone, but they had no idea what a new version of the molecule would smell like. If you add another methyl group or an ethyl group or another OH group? What would it smell like? How do you do it?? What reaction do you run to have that methyl group show up on the third carbon of the ring? AND, after the reaction is run, and cleaned up, how do you know what you have? You can’t look at the molecule. You use gas chromatography, nuclear magnetic resonance, these are the chemists tools, xray-crystallography everything gives you a cryptic answer, like researching a planet 300 light years away! So among many, CASCALONE IS a true miracle. It’s a wonderful powder (in its pure form) and it does have an incredibly compelling aroma. There’s rotting seaweed on my beach - in Florida. If usually stays on the beaches all summer long. You can’t clean it up because turtles are nesting there at night. They come out of the sea by the hundreds. They dig in the sand and drop there clutch. Then they return to the sea. The seaweed, the sea, the turtles… take a deep breath and sample this fine molecule.
This helps make my Orchid accord come to life. This is beautiful scent. Absolutely got to have in a perfume organ.
Some scents make me happy to be alive. It's exactly the aroma I imagine entering the shop of Giuseppe Baldini. Magical.
A beautiful base. Well done Fraterworks! Fast delivery as always.
This is spectacular! Usually honey materials are overly cloying and fake-smelling. Not this. It's rich, gooey, sticky and floral all at once. Finally, a honey note I'll be able to use.
Managing the persistent fecal note (barnyard is too kind) was beyond my abilities. Had to dilute to 1% and blend with orris absolute to make it lovely.
So it seems that I'm only leaving 5 stars on my reviews. This one deserves a 6. Oakmoss is one of my favourite notes in perfumery and this base really smells like the real thing and even looks very similar. It feels like the era that ended when oakmoss was restricted is back again.
Fig is a tricky crossroads of a scent. This base captures the lactones, the coumarinic aspects, the red/raisin fruit aspects, and the green aspects really well. I just topped a cologne I made with this and it rounded it out perfectly.
I've tried a few orange blossom bases and none of them resembles the orange blossom absolute I have at home, but this one does. It's remarkable how similar it is to the real thing.
Compared to Ambre 83, this is less dense, earthy, leathery, and feels radiant, light, and modern in comparison. Really great to have both.
As a lover of green notes, this is great to have on hand. At first I thought it was too close to galbanum to warrant having both, but the cooked green pepper associations make it perfect for creating a chili note. If you like green materials, you need this.
This is soapier compared to Lilac A07, and while it's not what I was looking for, it's still undeniably gorgeous and vintage.
This is the best ambroxan I’ve used, I want to use it in everything