Reference
A short glossary of scent
Ten words the cabinet uses daily, defined the way the atelier defines them, which is to say with opinions.
The families, and who lives there
- First Rain — green chypre
- Ink Violet — floral leather
- Midnight Tuberose — white floral
- Amber Vigil — amber oriental
- Cedar Silence — woody aromatic
- Vesper Citrus — hesperidic
- Accord
- A blend of materials that reads as one thing. A rain accord is not rain; it is eleven materials agreeing to impersonate it.
- Base
- The notes that last the longest and decide the memory. The part of the perfume that is still speaking at hour six.
- Blotter
- A paper strip for smelling. An instrument for narrowing a field, and a liar about finalists. The journal has said its piece.
- Heart
- The middle of the scent pyramid, usually florals and spices, arriving after the top burns off and holding for hours.
- Maceration
- The resting period after blending, when concentrate and alcohol get acquainted. Four weeks here, minimum.
- Notes
- Not ingredients: impressions. A perfume with fig leaf "notes" may contain no fig anything, only materials that conspire.
- Opsz
- Short for optical size, a variable-font axis rather than a perfume term, included here because the perfumer collects good type the way she collects iris.
- Sillage
- The trail a perfume leaves behind its wearer. From the French for wake, as in water. Measured here in metaphor, not meters.
- Top
- The first impression, the handshake, gone within minutes. Performed, and never the whole truth.
- Organ
- Not the musical kind: the tiered cabinet of materials a perfumer composes from. Ours holds forty-one and a grudge.