Historic Bases

The hidden stars of your fragrances

In the context of fragrance, base can refer to the far dry down of an odorant (be it a fine fragrance or raw material) or as in the case I will discuss here, a composition of raw materials created to be used by other perfumers in their creations.

Historically, there have been several reasons for creating bases. Some novel raw materials were seen as either too powerful or ‘technical’ smelling to be easily used by perfumers, and they were wrapped in a way to make them more tractable, as is the case for De Laire’s Mousse de Saxe featuring isobutyl quinoline, which to the best of my knowledge, did not contain oakmoss despite the name. In that base, isobutyl quinoline is combined with plenty of methyl ionone, coumarin and an anisic floral bouquet. There is initially a slight bubble gum aspect from benzyl acetate and it is very evident in Caron’s Nuit de Noel which featured the base prominently.

Another reason to create a base is to provide a captive product to customers, without supplying said product pure. This was the case for example for the highly fine quality of alpha-iso-methyl ionone known as Isoraldeine Cetone Alpha which came in the form of bases like Cetonia though the pure product is available today. A captive ambrox product was also long part of Firmenich’s Fixateur base which is an artistic interpretation of ambergris with other flourishes, though less animalic than Firmenich’s Grisambrol which includes ambrinol. In the case of such bases, while sometimes useful, many perfumers would also rather have the pure product that is being featured.

dsm-Firmenich

Wardia

Finally, bases can also offer replacements of either banned or pricey products, e.g. for civet absolute, rose oil, Mysore sandalwood and so on. Sometimes you have a base that is both imitating a natural but also inspired by a captive or possessing an artistic liberty. This is the case with arguably the most widely utilised rose base on the market, the great Wardia from Firmenich which dates back to at least the 1930s but possibly older. Before I go further into Wardia, I want to list some fragrances today that contain it in order to emphasise how prevalent it is: Classique (Jean-Paul Gautier), Promise (Frédéric Malle), Nouveau Monde (Louis Vuitton), Thé Noir (Le Labo), N°5 eau de parfum (Chanel), Poison (Christian Dior), Noir Extreme (Tom Ford), Black Opium (Yves Saint Laurent), Kouros (Yves Saint Laurent), Imitation Man (Amouage).

Wardia has a special place in the palette, not only beautifying most rose accords and giving them greater power, but Wardia can have interesting and enhancing effects in many other accords completely unrelated to rose. There are many times I would rather reach for Wardia than real rose oil, and while not a cheap base, has a greater bang for your buck. It is built from a standard rose accord around the rose alcohols like phenyl ethyl alcohol, citronellol, geraniol and nerol, with many other additional touches including some naturals like chamomile oil and beeswax absolute. Remarkably, it was created before the discovery of the highly diffusive rose ketones almost always used today in rose accords, as well as tea, tobacco and other types due to their occurrences there. Wardia contains zero rose ketones to this day, and is none the worse for it. Sadly despite extensive research and consulting several senior perfumers at Firmenich, I cannot find the original perfumer behind Wardia, though I do know the name is inspired by the Arabic word for rose.

Cassis Base

Firmenich also provides the even more ubiquitous Cassis Base 345B which I promise you have smelt time and time again without knowing it. I will again enumerate some fragrances that use it, just a tiny subset: H24 (Hermès), N°18 (Chanel), Paradoxe (Prada), Matière Noire (Louis Vuitton), You or Someone Like You (Etat Libre d’Orange), Opus XV King Blue (Amouage), Libre (Yves Saint Laurent), Ani (Nishane), Un Jardin sur le Nil (Hermès), Aventus (Creed), L’Eau d’Issey pour Homme (Issey Miyake), La Vie est Belle (Lancôme), Black Orchid (Tom Ford).

It has a juicy, fruity, cassis profile, somewhat sulphurous and floral. The pineapple galbanic material Neobutenone alpha is crucial to the base, as well as the green woody rhubarb like Rhubofix; each of these products are frequently used without the base too. In many fragrances, Cassis Base is absolutely crucial to the signature, such as Tom Ford’s Black Orchid. In other fragrances, it is truly at the core, like Ça Sent Beau (Kenzo) or Ellena’s In Love Again (Yves Saint Laurent). This is obviously partly due to the fact that the base - like Wardia - is a pleasant fragrance in and of itself. Its multiple facets allow it to fit into many accords, though to my taste it is at this point overutilized, and especially in a citrus cologne gives a tiresome sweetening effect.

Iris Abs Synth

That favourite iris note in a fragrance? Yeah, it’s probably Firmenich’s Iris Abs Synth. Notice the pattern also: it is widely held (though not universally of course) that Firmenich has offered the best bases. This artistic interpretation of iris absolute which is prohibitively costly even to be used in traces has featured in many fragrances. It is important for the original Dior Homme (Christian Dior) including the subsequent iterations and flankers, as well as the derivatives on the market it has spawned. We also find it in for example, La Vie est Belle (Lancôme) and Bois d’Argent (Christian Dior) and Gris Charnel (BDK Parfums).

Tubereuse

Firmenich’s Tubereuse base is worth a mention as the virtually de facto replacement for tuberose absolute that apart from being costly perhaps imparts a more polarising dark narcotic effect that is not appreciate by all consumers. The Firmenich base is key to Carnal Flower (Frédéric Malle) and you absolutely smell a difference with and without, despite the prominent nuclear Schiff base based on helional in the composition plus lactones galore. This was the same Schiff base used in Giorgio (Giorgio Beverly Hills).

There are many other bases worth mentioning, and this will undoubtedly become an article series, but I thought I’d start it off with four of the most prominent and still used in modern fragrances today. I do want to emphasise that the use of a base does not necessarily the perfumer (or the client who set the budget) being ‘cheap’ - many of these bases impart effects that cannot be replicated by anything else.