There are no less prohibitions in the world than pleasures: perhaps almost any pleasure has been or may become forbidden. The subtle aroma of tobacco is one of them: it was once forbidden to women, and in recent years, many smokers give up cigars and remind themselves of them only with expensive perfume.
European and American full-fledged anti-tobacco companies are at most a decade and a half, but tobacco has been fought before. And above all, it was forbidden to women. Smoking a pipe in the 18th century, cigars or cigarettes in the 19th century, and even cigarettes at the beginning of the 20th century was considered the lot of women, either the elderly (“don't take away the last joy?”), Or declassed (“what can you take from them!”) - such like Carmen, a tobacco factory worker, the passionate and reckless heroine of Merimee's novella and Bizet's opera. High society girls smoked in protest, but did so secretly, or at least not publicly, until the Swinging 20s. The First World War changed a lot and gave women more rights: they began not only to smoke, but also to pose with a cigarette for photographs and advertisements. At the same time, perfume with the scent of tobacco appeared.
“The topic of tobacco has been in perfumery for at least a century,” says Galina Anni, perfumer and perfume expert, founder of the Sweet Sixties perfume club. - The historic Tabac Blond Caron, released in 1919, was a unisex fragrance and featured an emancipated post-war woman with a short haircut. She drove a car, smoked cigars and took control of her life."
The already mentioned Carmen, and at the same time the luxurious Cuban mulatto women (Cuba was already a popular resort for wealthy Americans), rolling cigars on their smooth dark thighs, served as a source of inspiration for the second famous tobacco scent of the first quarter of the last century - Habanita Molinard perfume (1922). A young woman playing with a long mother-of-pearl cigarette holder with a thin cigarette in it, from time to time bringing the mouthpiece to her brightly painted lips has become a symbol of the generation.
Gradually, the number of such fragrances multiplied. “Perfumers were inspired by Turkish smokers, Havana cigars and rum, pipe tobacco, fragrant honey and cherries,” explains Galina Anni. - Depending on the idea of the perfumer, the gourmand aromas of tobacco - this, according to purists, a "legal drug" - created a space of bliss, an atmosphere of seraglio where narghile is smoked and incense is burned, or, on the contrary, the spirit of a closed men's club or a smoked bowling alley with the smell of whiskey ". By the way, honey appeared as a "partner" of tobacco for a reason: it is the first natural sweetness that mankind has known for much longer than sugar, and therefore honey is also perceived as a symbol of bliss, luxury and sin. Honey was used not only for sweetening, but also for skin care procedures, and at the same time for literary allegories and allusions to sin.
Variations on the tobacco theme gave rise to the first fragrances, which are now called "unisex". As the expert explains, “men wore tobacco scents to emphasize their uncompromising masculinity, women - exciting androgyny,” and at the same time - emancipation, the newly acquired status of an equal member of society, independently earning a living and not dependent on a partner or family.
The expensive flavors literally include real tobacco. This is achieved through complex processing of raw materials for perfumery. “Tobacco absolute is obtained by extracting dried tobacco leaves,” says Galina Anni. "It has an earthy, deep, woody, spicy, balsamic scent that serves as a base note in expensive perfumes whose creators can afford such an expensive ingredient."
However, there are ways to get tobacco-honey accords using modern methods of chemical synthesis.“The honey-tobacco note is damascones, or pink ketones, microcomponents of the scent of rose flowers,” explains Matvey Idov, a chemist specializing in aromatic substances. - Damascons have a complex aroma. In addition to literally a rose and a tobacco-honey accord, you can feel dried fruits, apple jam and even hints of mint there."
According to the expert, synthetic substances that reproduce damascones, especially beta-damascenone, of course, are not as expensive as the absolute of dried tobacco leaves, but not to say that they are cheap: it is a technologically complex component. In compositions that combine honey and tobacco, it is adjacent to musks, coumarin (o-hydroxycinnamic acid lactone), which adds a note of vanilla, tonka and almonds to the aroma, as well as ethyl maltol (caramel with a hint of strawberry or raspberry). Everything is sweet as sin.
Sin, as you know, has no gender. And it is tobacco-honey fragrances that, like no others, reflect the concept of a unisex fragrance: they are suitable for both men and women. However, for big perfumers, this division, in fact, never existed, just as it did not exist for clients for a long time: almost until the middle of the last century, fragrances were not divided into male and female, and only the cult of masculinity, which also arose not without connection with world wars, forced perfumers seeking to attract a male clientele to write large-scale sacramental pour homme on bottles.
At the same time, many of the “noses”, for example, Pierre Bourdon, do not hide the fact that, in their opinion, this inscription is the only difference between male and female fragrances. In the 90s, the concept of unisex triumphantly returned with the light hand of Calvin Klein, although few then remembered that the history of the gender of fragrances was very short.
With the same concept, the founder of the By Kilian brand Kilian Hennessy and his longtime co-author, perfumer Calis Becker, approached the creation of their honey tobacco, Back to Black (2006) scent. In this fragrance (named, perhaps not least influenced by the popular soul album of the same name from 2006 by "sinner singer" Amy Winehouse), white honey and tobacco are complemented by the sweetness of gingerbread, vanilla, almonds and set off by the spices of cardamom, coriander and nutmeg. nut. The result is a very bright, sharp, exciting composition, exciting the senses and especially vividly revealed in the cold - on hot skin covered with furs or delicate cashmere.
This material was prepared with the support of Estee Lauder.
