Here's what actual orris smells like.
reporting live, as I smell it...
I am, comment tu dis? an, euh…orris FREAK. The smell, the texture, the feeling—it’s my favorite perfumery note, and I can sniff it out in most compositions the way I imagine a Lagotto Romagnolo can smell a truffle in the woods.
(And yeah, that is a pic of a Lagotto Romagnolo from my OWN camera roll (ty for asking) that I captured at this year’s annual AKC Meet The Breeds show, or as I like to call it, the K[9]-Hole.)
So imagine my euphoria when Commodity Fragrances and Givaudan invited me to co-host a Fragrance Day orris masterclass with the incomparable Givaudan VP Perfumer Stephen Nilsen. (P.S. different oil houses use different titles, but at Givaudan, VP Perfumer = Master Perfumer.) You likely know Stephen’s work (especially if you’ve indulged in the frisson of celebrity fragrance); he’s the perfumer behind Madonna Truth or Dare, Hilary Duff With Love, Drew Barrymore Cherished Flower and many other popular fragrances including Victoria’s Secret Tease Creme Cloud, Commodity Bergamot, Bond No. 9 Union Square (I could go on…).
This event was special for two reasons. First, IT’S MY LITERAL DREAM (!!). Second, this masterclass was tied to another very special orris moment - the limited return of my favorite discontinued orris perfume from Commodity, aptly named Orris, created by none other than…Stephen Nilsen! (The fragrance, if you’re wondering, is now available year-round exclusively at the Commodity Soho flagship store, and online during limited edition month-long drops, twice a year.)
If you can believe, in all my years of loving orris perfumes, prior to this evening, I’d never actually smelled real orris concrete. Experiencing it for the first time alongside a master perfumer who also happens to be the maker of one of my favorite orris scents, while being able to ask him everything I’ve ever wondered about orris was, as you can imagine, overstimulating a transcendent experience.
Anyway, sometimes we really aren’t meant to meet our heroes, but if Stephen is yours (as he is mine), happy to report, we are!! Stephen is brilliant, engaging, funny, and incredibly generous. In fact, he left me with the most thoughtful parting gift: actual orris concrete (which I have since named ‘Baby Brick’). Plus he let me keep all the drams (industry term for those little bottles your dip blotters into) from the materials he demo’d in the master class, including:
orris butter irone (liquid concentrate of aforementioned brick)
alpha irone (the star odorant molecule of orris root)
carrot seed oil (another member of the powdery floral family, loved for its similar orris-like nuances)
Haitan Vetiver
OH, AND STEPHEN GIFTED ME THE LONGTIME DISCONTINUED ORIGINAL COMMODITY ORRIS CANDLE (PICTURED BELOW) WHICH IS STILL IN ITS ORIGINAL CELLOPHANE WRAPPER AS I AM TYPING THIS (and in caps, no less), AND I AM GOING TO UNWRAP IT AND TELL YOU ABOUT IT AT THE END OF THIS POST AS A SWEET TREAT TO MYSELF FOR FINISHING WRITING THIS AND AS A BONUS REVIEW FOR YOU ❤️.
So now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for, here is my breakdown of what all of these materials actually smell like. 👃
ORRIS BUTTER CONCRETE (Baby Brick).
If velvet had a smell, it would be orris concrete.
Baby Brick (pictured above) is surprisingly industrial in its aroma (compared to what I was expecting). It smells leathery and suede-like in a way that recalls a few scented scenes:
a Bottega Veneta boutique (in that crisp, suede, sterile-but-luxurious way)
a brand new Mercedes (same.)
a sealed-off sterile construction site where the smell of sawdust and fresh-but-dry paint lingers.
the inside of a Type A child’s *clean* (←critical details) softcover lunch box at the end of its day after the ice pack has lost its chill.
It’s suede-like not just in aroma, but in texture too. If velvet had a smell, it would be orris concrete. But it’s more than that; Baby Brick is chewy and unctuous.
Are you familiar with cute aggression — the unwavering urge select individuals get to bite, squeeze, pinch puppies and babies? I get that around orris. I want to squeeze it like Play-doh or sink my teeth into it, until it yields between the clenches of my jaw. (Feel free to diagnose me in the comments. 🤪🤠)
It’s faintly vegetal, very root-y, and a bit nutty. The way people describe vetiver as smelling like the inside of a sack of peanut shells… I get that a bit in orris concrete too. I even get a faint waft of that green pea smell typically associated with galbanum.
The difference between orris and the two aforementioned materials is that orris has this crystalline sweetness to it, one that to me feels like the olfactive equivalent of a mouse squeak.
If I *had* to classify the sweetness, I’d call it fruity, with an aroma that most closely matches the smell of strawberry jello. Perhaps with a bit of cacao powder dusted on top. Or maybe chocolate covered jelly rings. Still though, this sweetness is faint.
It’s dusty too—like opening up an old filing cabinet full of 30-year-old Manila folders, or sniffing your way through a vintage Merriam Webster at your parents’ house.
Other more generic words I wrote down were, “round, waxy, and ‘piercing but tethered.’” It’s interesting trying to analyze my own analysis because tethered = rooted, and orris is… a root.
IRONE ALPHA (Givaudan’s alpha-irone)
It’s Joyva Jell Rings, in a ‘Little Twin Stars’ font.
Alpha-irone: orris concrete as hedione: jasmine (to me, at least) in that it’s an odorant constituent of natural orris that highlights its most polite and charming characteristics, leaving its more unruly bits at the door.
(Quick refresher: odorant constituents are just the many odorant molecules that naturally occur in any aromatic natural material (flowers, resins, leaves, bark, etc.). While these isolated molecules are typically lab-made, and thus synthetic by definition, they occur in nature.)
Irone Alpha is the odorant molecule responsible for orris’ signature violet-like, makeup-y smell, so while it’s only one piece of a complex olfactory puzzle, it’s a crucial one.
That fruity mouse squeak in orris concrete is a full-on bird song in Irone Alpha. Here, it’s decidedly chocolate-covered jelly rings (the classic raspberry-filled ones, in case that’s unclear).
Except it’s more pastel than this box would suggest. It’s Joyva Jell Rings, in a Little Twin Stars font.
Similarly suede-like, Irone Alpha feels more sparkling, luminescent, and sweeter than orris concrete. It strips away orris’ nuttier, earthier qualities in favor of its more characteristic candied violet, makeup powder/lipstick aspects. And though, as I mentioned, Irone Alpha has that same leathery/suede characteristic of orris butter, in the former, the bitterness feels as though it’s been sifted and smoothed out.
It sits at a higher register.
The best analogy I can think to make is that orris butter is crunchy peanut butter (not chunky—important distinction), while Irone Alpha is creamy.
CARROT SEED OIL (an olfactive homonym)
Where Irone Alpha goes glossy magazine, carrot seed oil goes newspaper.
Carrot seed oil is so cool. It’s kind of like Irone Alpha’s fraternal twin. From far away the resemblance seems obvious, but up close, their unique differences are revealed.
There’s a spiciness in carrot seed oil that’s absent in Irone Alpha. The way that Burt’s Bee Carrot Cream is spicy, so too, is carrot seed oil. And where Irone Alpha goes more berry, carrot seed oil goes stone fruit. Less raspberry jelly, more apricot jam.
And it’s peppery, in both a pink pepper and black pepper way. In fact, I’d call it papery even. Where Irone Alpha goes glossy magazine, carrot seed oil goes newspaper. It’s altogether…scratchier.
Also, I get this sharp medicinal nuance, one that reminds me specifically of Calamine lotion — it’s equal parts waxy, camphorous and chalky.
ORRIS BUTTER IRONE (natural orris oil)
Orris butter irone is just a concentrated fraction of the orris butter (high in irones), which makes sense. It smells like an in-between of orris concrete and alpha-irone (though much closer on the spectrum to orris concrete).
It smells faintly smoother and sweeter than Baby Brick, but ultimately VERY similar.
WE DID IT. TIME FOR MY SWEET TREAT.
When Stephen gave me this candle, I told him it felt like memorabilia and I didn’t even want to open it. He insisted I should, that it was meant to be enjoyed, and suggested that the cold throw alone (from his own recollection), would be enough if I couldn’t bring myself to light it.
He was right.
What a cold throw.
An overdosed version of everything I love about the perfume. That smooth, make-up sheen of alpha-irone, balanced with dewy tea, lush, verdant florals, atop a familiar comforting bar of soap (waxy but sudsy). Clean, fresh, luminous, LIPSTICK.
Joy. 💄
What beautifully stated olfactory notes, I really appreciated how precisely you tried to use language to describe things that language is inherently so woefully inadequate to explain.
this is so so cool! love the way you describe scents. it's such a subjective thing but the way you write makes the smell come alive