Awakening the senses. Perfumes that reveal sensuality

The alchemical blend of ingredients is also capable of enhancing sensuality and raising the power of seduction. But what makes a fragrance absolutely captivating and irresistible?

Warm, enveloping, opulent, yet soft and velvety. Often the scents that awaken the senses and make you turn your neck, almost unconsciously, to follow their trail, are built around warm, ambery or musky notes, with hints of precious woods, vanilla and spices that enrich compositions based on rich flowers such as rose, jasmine or narcissus.


"For me, a sensual perfume has intense and addictive tones and can fit into almost any olfactory family. It's just a question of contrasts and doesn't have to have an invasive or exaggerated trail," says perfumer Jérôme di Marino.

There is nothing more sensual than one's own skin, something that has obsessed perfumers since time immemorial and which the writer Patrick Süskind captured to the extreme in his bestseller Perfume. Nose fragrances have numerous resources at their disposal to recreate the sensuality of the skin, starting with musk.


Its soft, clean and powdery character makes musk one of the ingredients that most closely resembles the smell of skin. It also has a high binding power, which is why it often appears among the base notes, and gives the perfume a delicate, velvety feel. Musk was originally extracted from musk deer, but today it is obtained synthetically.


The most common is white musk, which has given its name to The Body Shop's legendary White Musk, which has been one of the world's best-selling fragrances since 1981, although it enjoyed its heyday especially in the 1980s and 1990s. In this fragrance, a blend of synthetic musks is combined with an aldehydic floral accord in a cleaner, more transparent interpretation of this ingredient.


Today, there are about 300 synthetic musks that provide purity and a powdery, enveloping nuance, essential to round off most modern perfumery compositions.


To speak of musk is to speak of Narciso Rodriguez, because since the launch of For Her in 2003 by Francis Kurkdjian and Christine Nagel, it is the note around which all his perfumery creations have revolved, to a greater or lesser extent. His fixation with this ingredient began when he discovered that the perfume used by one of his fellow students was a musk brought back from Egypt, and he set out to obtain it by any means necessary. For the designer, this component is the one that "best reproduces the sensation of embrace on the skin".


With musk as the heart note, the original For Her Eau de Parfum is combined with other notes that enhance its sensuality, such as amber, vanilla and patchouli. In All of Me, the latest addition to the Narciso Rodriguez fragrance collection, there is also a touch of musk in its base notes, but this time it does not hog all the limelight and, instead of highlighting its more animalic side, it gives it a balsamic and clean nuance, highlighting the floral accord, but with that touch of skin so characteristic.

Soft, sweet and comforting. Indeed, vanilla is another essential ingredient in the most seductive, ambery or gourmand-tinged fragrances. Classique and Le Male, Jean Paul Gaultier's iconic pair, are an example of the versatility of this raw material. If in the feminine Classique it brings an exquisite sweetness and enveloping depth, in Le Male vanilla is used in an unexpected way in a masculine fragrance, adding an intriguing and sensual dimension to an olfactory pyramid that is built with fresh notes of lavender and mint on the one hand, and warm and spicy, such as cinnamon and amber, on the other.


Vanilla originates from Central America and is extracted from the pods of this fruit. It is prized for its staying power and its ability to enhance or enhance other notes, it is timeless and gives character and personality to any creation. Other fragrances that celebrate vanilla include Un Bois Vanille by Serge Lutens, Vanille Antique by Byredo, La Vie est Belle by Lancôme and Burberry's latest launch, Goddess Eau de Parfum, which incorporates three different types of vanilla extraction to explore all its facets: woody and bright, rich and animalic or darker and more intense to offer a different olfactory experience.


We cannot overlook a classic like Guerlain's Shalimar, a fragrance that pays tribute to vanilla and is part of the history of perfumery, since it was the beginning of the ambery (also known as oriental) family in 1925.

Patchouli, which is extracted from the Asian plant Pogostemon Cablin, is considered an indispensable raw material by perfumers, due to the earthy, woodsy quality it brings to compositions of all kinds, as well as its intensity and durability on the skin and the feeling of warmth and comfort it conveys.


Patchou" may not ring a bell, but it is the name of the scent that Olivier Cresp began working on to create Mugler's Angel (1992), a perfume containing one-quarter patchouli in a short, 26-ingredient formula that also includes vanilla.


The patchouli plus vanilla formula is repeated in many iconic perfumes such as Molinard's Vanille Patchouli, Chanel's Coco Mademoiselle and Yves Saint Laurent's Black Opium.

The use of synthetic molecules is very common, as it allows the perfumer to imitate or enhance the qualities of natural ingredients and even create entirely new scents that do not exist in nature, thus giving them greater creative freedom to experiment and compose original and unique olfactory scores.


Among the molecules most commonly used to give a sensual touch to perfume are:


- Ambroxan: has a scent similar to natural ambergris and is used to add depth, warmth, durability and sensuality to fragrances.

- Cashmeran: Woody, musky and slightly floral. Used to convey a sense of softness, warmth, comfort and well-being.

- Coumarin: somewhat different, but also of organic origin, found in various plants (e.g. tonka bean) and noted for its sweet, almondy aroma, similar to that of freshly cut hay, and is related to the smell of leather.