Natural Perfumes Blog

Brave New Scents – A Natural Perfumers Guild Project – Enchant Parfum from JoAnne Bassett

October 1st, 2011 by JoAnne Bassett

Enchant? Parfum

In the Brave New Scents project, the Guild perfumers are likened to the members of Huxley?s novel.

With my list of Brave New Scents, that is aromatics introduced after the year 2000, I sat down to create.

My inspiration for my parfum came from this quote:

Brave New World

I want God, I want poetry,
I want danger, I want freedom,
I want goodness, I want sin.?? ~Aldous Huxley

Looking at this quote and my list of ingredients I began to choose the natural oils.? I read the quote over a few times…seeing what resonated with me.? Magically I connected the oils to the lines.? The process began to flow.

My first oil that wanted to jump into the bottle was oud.? Oud or agarwood oil is an unusual one and it sets the tone for the rest of the parfum.? Sandalwood was my next choice and to my dismay it was not on the list.? Ok.

So I already had my one wild card.? No worries.? In the next moment I was putting drops of Rose de Mai absolute into the bottle.? Oh how beautiful that was. Just those three made a mysterious scent that I sighed with pleasure.? Keeping with the spiritual aspect I chose champaca next.? When I was in India the sacred trees were outside of the temples.? I will never forget the fragrance of it in the evening.? It was mesmerizing, just like my new fragrance.

The next few oils to come to mind were yuzu, a citrus and butter co2.? That was quite an exit from the lovely sacred theme I had started with.? The list had oils that I said no to.? They did not feel right.? So continuing with this ?brave? formulating session I began to choose very odd oils. I had no idea what they were going to do to this formula but I said yes and included them.? So ambrette seed, holy basil, davana, pink pepper tree, and high altitude lavender went into the bottle.? Wow what a strange combination!

Reading the quote for more inspiration I added two orange essences, galbanum, jasmine auriculatum,? copaiba balsam, osmanthus, ruh khus vetiver, vanilla tincture, and the final one dark patchouli.? It was almost

effortless.? Everything came together and it felt right.? Smelling the parfum at various stages was an interesting experience in itself.? I formulated Enchant in one afternoon on August 9.? I received another email about the project so I made it.

I am not sure what to classify this unique perfume. Such diverse oils – from oud and incense to a floral gourmand.? It is a temptress.? With 19 different essences the numerology adds up to 1 which is new beginnings.? The number of dropsI used also added up to 1. That confirmed to me that it is a brave new scent. It is resting in organic jojoba oil. It took a while to come up with the name of Enchant.? I wore it and smelled it and one day it became Enchant.

The oils that correspond to the quote are:

I want God: holy basil, oud, champaca,

I want poetry: osmanthus,

I want danger: vetiver, patchouli,

I want freedom: orange essences, yuzu,

I want goodness: rose, jasmine,

I want sin: ambrette seed

Enchant parfum is available at: http://www.joannebassett.com/limited.htm

website: www.JoAnneBassett.com??????????? blog:? www.joannebassett.com/natural_perfumes

JoAnne Bassett, P O Box 932, Cardiff by the Sea, CA? 92007?? 760.309.2571

The participating perfumers are: