Floral
top note night blooming jasmine,tuberose
Mid note Lavender and sugar
base notes sweet pear and amber
Tropical
Guava,mango,strawberry.Frangipani and coconut.
Spicy\warm
Cinnamon,nutmeg,clove w a rosewood/sandalwood;leather+amber or tobacco+amber base.
Cool\Refreshing.
Sweet mint w sugar and a hint of Phillipine lime and fresh grass.
My very strange two cents on the matter.
Oh and I’m with the other girls on the honey.
I think you wanna be stranger than you actually are.
Those sound good and w/ a lil tweaking would work just fine.
Sweet seems to be a key for a good many
it is probably ISO E Super that is causing the headaches, it is used a lot in perfumes as an intensifier and has been talked a lot on basenotes where people get bad reactions specifically headaches
Iso E Super®
a.k.a. Iso Cyclomene E-Woody amber
a.k.a. 1-(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8-octahydro-2,3,8,8-tetramethyl-2-naphthalenyl)-ethan-1-one (and isomers)
a.k.a. 7-acetyl, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8-octahydro-1,1,6,7-tetramethyl naphthalene
It is not currently subject to fragrance allergen labeling requirements.
I’m not fond of vanilla not in perfume anyway or really otherwise the smell makes me feel ill and a bit woozy.one exception to that rule was a product called cooks vanilla powder which was finely ground vanilla in the consistency of powdered sugar.
lol and on me wanting to be stranger than I am. no, the reason I said strange is because most of the girls I know think my taste in perfume is odd.
I absolutely love jasmine scented things though. A good example is kates magik :moon goddess anointing oil.It’s dead on for Night blooming jasmine and available here and at whole foods if you want to investigate it.
http://www.katesmagik.com/thetemple/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=&products_id=67
My current favorite androtics scent is the grapefruit. So far everything else isn’t really something I’d wear alone and the neroli bothers me.
Ohhhh - got it. In other words your tastes are not of the ‘lemming’ variety.
Should’ve figured that out on my own shouldn’t I ? Afterall you are HERE.
Have used the majority of the oils on the link you provided - mainly for meditation & they are very good. The description of the jasmine tho … may just wanna try that one.
Man, you have a cool name.
Ever smell Flower Bomb, especially the original in 06 or so?
It’s made by one of our perfuming houses and sold by Victor & Rolf. When it was an exclusive at Saks, it smelled highly of jasmine. Quite delightful since it was sold at fairly standard department store pricing at the time. Maybe a little more. I think it might’ve been $75 for a full size vs. $65.
I’ve heard subsequent batches have a much lower dilution, likely due to the pricing needs (i.e., lower wholesale prices) of “alternate sales channels”. They probably couldn’t keep the quality up and the retail price at what you expect at a normal department store.
Read as: what was possible with a direction relationship between Victor & Rolf directly and Saks, is now not possible having to make a pitstop through an additional middleman: the distributors. I don’t mind distributors necessarily, but I do mind when a “business relationship” means lower quality for the end user. That seems to hurt one of your best relationships of all.
I’ve never smelled their stuff, but assuming it’s good, it’s nice to see stores like Kate’s that put the client first, as bad as that might be “for business” in a sense.
You know, supposedly Channel #5 is full of jasmine, too, although something seems to overpower that for me.
When musks I’m not anosmic to are powdery enough, I can’t ever seem to smell much else. It’s like spice in food. When food is hot enough, for some reason my palette can’t pick up on delicate parts. I’m overwhelmed by heat, despite the other
So you like a citrus, just not orange flower? Hmm. Interesting.
Once I complete the development of my our own inhouse diffusion package – be it completely on my own or with the help outside consultants – I don’t think we’ll really need to add much cover scent at all. Not unless the mix contains a bit of androstenone (a small amount of which can be useful for certain goals, in certain contexts, even for women).
Keep in mind the diffusion package will have a scent of it’s own. It won’t be completely “invisible” to the nose since all compounds tend to smell like something, especially the ones used in the frag biz.
My goal is for the diffusion package to not smell like much of anything definable in a concrete way. My most recent design is maybe a bit fresh with animalic undertones. Not much of anything anyone could easily complain about. “Ewww… get that somewhat rrrahr smelling freshness away from me!” is not something you’ll like hear.
Of course, once I get it out there in a test bottle, other people’s noses might smell different things. Women, especially, tend to smell things more strongly and even differently than men.
Yes, even differently. Especially as a woman’s cycle changes. More estrogen tends to increase perception of smell, and put a spotlight on different kinds of scents and odors.
As an example of a “sexually dimorphic” scent (one that smells different to men than it does towomen), some women tend to smell valerian as flowery while men tend to perceive it as a dirty socks.
Of course, it has a lot to do with dilution. Diluted enough, I think it smells flowery, too. Maybe it’s that differing sensitivity thing. Then again, if women are more sensitive to odors, why would I need a dilution to smell any beauty in valerian? I hope I’m not an undercover women, unbeknownst to even me! (or maybe I just got it backwards, and it’s women who are more likely to smell it as dirty socks)
Hmm. I sort of like Iso Super E. Got to really inhale it, and see what happens.
The version I have, incidentally, is actually from IFF. It is NOT a captive or exclusive molecule, though, only the name is exclusive. There are many vendors for this molecule.
That means some perfumers will buy cheaper versions, which can mean they are not synthesized with care. Remember, in America, you don’t just have to worry about your end customer, you have to worry about extensive liability from all 50 states, too. They’re not as penny wise, and pound foolish as some companies I’ve dealt with. IFF tends to go the extra mile in synthesis because they’re deadly afraid of losing their shirts just to save a penny.
I’ve seen versions out from alternate frag suppliers where they claims low as something like 90% purity. That’s a fairly crude synthesis, and it might be from China which doesn’t exactly have a firm set of ethics with chemicals at the moment (read up on the melamine scandal, where they killed innocent seniors and children to save a few cents by poisoning the world’s milk supply).
That means it might be the byproducts of whatever starter material and synthesis route that are at issue. Also, among the B and C class suppliers, the real purity is often lower than claimed. Again, you have that pesky China issue, whereas most of the world’s best chemical synthesis happens in more finicky countries.
That means you have at least 10% of weird byproducts, possibly more, and who knows what they are? In the pheromone realm, even 2% of unknowns from a good chemist can drastically alter the end result of the “active”. I constantly split test nearly identical synthesises of molecules, amazed at the sometimes noticeable differences.
Occasionally, a crude synthesis is better, interestingly. (often due to an as yet unidentified active within the portion called the “impurities”) Mostly, though, they are anything but.
Anyway…
What else have the basenoters been reporting as possible ingredients involved causing toxic reactions?
(and yes, I’ll place an extra effort into seeing how bad Iso Super E can be – due to your mention, I’ll probably even release it here in a “toxicity test pack” of some sort)
Some of these sound like they’d make excellent mixed drinks.
Do you have prototypes or usable versions of these whipped up, btw?
If so, if you’d be so kind, please send me some, and I’ll send them to the perfumers and I’ll see what they can do. I’ll give you a good gift just for caring enough to suggest something. If the perfumers end up going anywhere with it, I’ll give you a ton of it and probably lots of other things you want. If it makes it into a truly commercial product in our next phase of business, I’ll cut you at least a $1000 check as a thank you, to boot.
This goes for everyone else, too, of course. If you’ve got something you love, even if you slapped it together from mixing 5 different commercial products, then send it in. Even if it causes skin irritation in it’s current form, or has toxic effects. Generally the perfumers are pretty good about making versions that cause minimal harm, and when they’re not, I insist. Professional perfumers certainly know how to do this.
Yeah, vanilla is pretty nice.
I have a few different vanilla molecules here. I do tend to like the non-sugary smelling ones myself.
Well, ok… frankly, I love food scents. The more I can smell and not eat delicious foods, especially ones I shouldn’t really eat, the happier and healthier I am.
HOWEVER, this is greatly tempered by the fact that sweet scents may communicate that we are in ill health to others. I mean, who naturally smells sickly sweet without some perfume? That’s right… diabetics!
Healthy people may smell a little sweet, but just a little. After all, our cells due to run on glucose, unless are switch over to a mostly fat burning metabolism and subsist on ketones. Ketones smell… uhh…
Which animal does white musk come from, do you know? I can’t find a definition of it.
Or does it mean a “clean” smelling musk like galaxolide?
Maybe I could figure it out by time frame. I think “white musks” came out in the late 60s or early 70s, right? I know Coty was big on them in the early 80s.
Amber is another tough one, like white musk. I don’t think the smell exists in nature exactly the way it’s described. Amber is solid stuff, fossilized resin, with bugs inside it. It smells a bit, sure, but the smell I think most people are describing is not truly of amber.
The color itself of true fossil amber is very suggestive of a scent, for some reason. My best guess is that when you say “amber” what you’re describing it benzoin resin, or another dark, sappy, gooey resin of some sort. Maybe even a bit “honey” or other things that have a similar color as amber.
Most of the pheromones truly useful for women don’t stink much at all. Once I separate out our diffusion package from our “cover scents”, I won’t be using as much of the cover scents at all.
Pink Sugar, if they’re still making it the way they appeared to make last I smelled it, could probably be considered toxic waste in some areas. It smells okay at a distance, but you can smell some seriously antiqued, rough materials in there that I thought were banned a long time ago. I’m a bit of a health freak and am careful about what I’ll put on my skin.
I bet they use a different formulation in Europe where regulations are tighter. I should import some.
I’m assuming that if Pink Sugar was formulated with higher quality versions of materials, from a more modern, less toxic set of compounds, it might be even more acceptable smelling (and thus, popular) even than it seems to be now. (yeah, how much higher can you go from #1? well… there are the clouds I suppose)
What, beyond vanilla, do you smell in Pink Sugar that you rally like, btw?
Please don’t bother with the official “note chart”. Most of those are made by marketing departments that never consulted with the perfumers. They make up combinations of words that sound amazing, yet would seem kind of foreign to the perfumer that made the formula. Heh.
I’m thankful we have women formulating some of these. I think Amy was responsible for the 273. I never would’ve thought of combos like this. I would’ve had to use a “random scent” generator to get there, yet I doubt that’s what Amy did.
Going out to… clothing stores/shopping? Bars (if so, what kind bars)? Grocery stores? With the girls, or out to get the guys (or to get the girls if you lean that way 
)?
I hate to get so specific, but it specificity helps a TON when designing product and providing what people really want. As they say “God is in the details”. Of course, some also say “The devil is in the details”. 
Basically, though, all the good stuff is in the details… somewhere… Might be a needle in a hay stack, sure, but even if it is, I need that hay.
So I can really help develop something good, feel free to give me as much detail as you can. (that goes for everyone) While I’m in my developmental phase, you can’t overwhelm me very easily. I’m very driven to do things right and I will search through whatever feedback you give me.
White musk probably isn’t a pure musk scent. It’s a very soft, and in my opinion, feminine musk, although some male fragrances now have it as a component…quite popular with the middle eastern and mediterrainean men over here in the UK.
White musk…From Wiki;
“White musk, in the perfume industry, refers to a group of synthetic molecules that replaces natural, animal musk. The formulas and the names of these synthesis are varied, like fixolide, habanolide, galaxolide or ambrettolide. The first synthetic musk was discovered around 1890, and there are still new types being created. White musk brings clean, musky, skin notes. It can also be described as notes of blackberry, ambrette or ambergris.”
For me though, the ultimate white musk is this one;
http://100mililitros.com/store/images/P/JovanWhiteMusk-M500.jpg
Obviously for women it’s the womens version…
Yes, I know that amber is a resin and not really a fragrance as such. But I do love the “interpretation” if you wish of amber. To me amber is a rich, golden & resiny scent. Benzoin, creamy caramel is probably a good way of describing it.
On me, Pink Sugar is mainly vanilla, but a very strong and sugary one. It’s sickly sweet, with candy undertones to it, in the beginning. Almost like you’ve taken pink cotton candy and drenched it in vanilla essence. It does mellow on dry down after a while, but the dominant note it definitively vanilla. I don’t get any of the florals or wood that are supposedly there 
Going out for me means prettyfying myself and hitting the night on the town I’m not a nightclub girl, don’t do the stiletto heels and skimpy skirts “out on the prowl for ONS” thing. When I go out with friends it tends to either be a casual affair going to the pub, not overly dressed up, or if I feel like dressing up we usually end up going to wine bars, cocktail bars where you not only find people our age, but where you actually hear what peple are saying…and it’s not a total meat market I tend to go for the heavyer scents…sexy darker musks & resins, rose and violets, stronger vanilla etc.
For work, since I work in healthcare, I can’t wear very strong or overwhelming scents. Any perfume has to be classy and subtle, so the super sweet or heavy florals are a no go. I tend to go for the amber’s and softer musk scents, or very light & subtle florals with undertones of softer powdery vanilla.
With general just “out & about”… shopping with the girls, going to the grocery store, going to the movies etc. I wear more than I would to work, but not as much of the darker/heavy sexy scents as I would when going out at night. It’s my “in between” with scents…I wear whatever I feel like
Anybody know where the heck Carrie is?
I know she’s been an amateur perfumer for years now. By now, she’s probably not so amateur anymore.
Maybe, if she’s up to it, we could test a few of her creations here… and then license whatever tests the best?
I want to support our own talents here, especially as we split into pieces – a retail unit and a more focused research unit – and we’re setup to handle payments to others. All the infrastructure has been coming into place for more than a year now. Presuming we stick it out and continue on, it’s time to start looking more seriously for some other “flavors”, I reckon.
Send her a PM
You might want to try and have a chat to River too. I know she’s mixed a few oil blend perfumes herself, if I’m not mistaken she “designed” or inspired one or more of the scents at one of the websites where some of us ladies get our perfume oils from (Cleanse Your Soul).
Yeah, that’s one way to do it, but I really want her to jump in on the thread.
I was kinda hopin’ it would be like evoking Beetlejuice, you know?
Carrie … Carrie … Carrie!
then
poof!
(I’m too darn slow to deal with PMs, anyway. The more public I can make something, except for truly personal information or legally restricted information, the better)
I don’t do oils at the moment, it’s hard to evolve mixes and they don’t dose well. Considering that pheromones are in some sense social drugs that you give to people around you, you really need as accurate dosing as possible. Just like aspirin or tylenol. They’re really not the same as perfumes, even though they’re often mixed into perfumes. (actually: necessary counterpoint… I will probably have to eventually convert things to oils for truly hot areas, like Southeast Asia. Bad dosing or not, there’s certain parts of the world where almost nothing else will do)
Nonetheless, if you guys like 'em, I’d love to give them a whiff. Maybe she can do something that would work in a fully dosed spray format.
M … If you’re thinking of utilizing the same mfg who helped create FlowerBomb, maybe include Antidote - the mens version ?
I thought Mike Storer was going to be your perfumer?
yeah whatever happened to him and his project of couplins?
First, I’m not sure Mike is entirely well. We wanted him to develop some custom things, and wanted to license Kadota (or a variation), but apparently after his operation that kicked off the year, he’s been in and out of the hospital. So we’re told, anyway.
Jasmin and Amy know more, since they’re the main points of contact.
Nonetheless, when someone is ill, bringing them paying work – normally something positive – can suddenly be a burden.
At this point, I just hope he’s well, and I’ll certainly offer to help any way I can with that.
Second, we’ve used lots of different perfumers, whether we’ve liked to or not.
Everything we have is from different perfumers, even though they come from key fragrance houses. It’s because, simply enough, these fragrance suppliers have lots of different perfumers on staff, and we didn’t try to choose anything all too similar (actually, I think the next 6 scents come mostly only 2 perfumers)
Lastly, I like seeing different people’s ideas. Seeing how they can add to things in new and unexpected ways.
For Androtics as it is at the moment, obviously, going much beyond what we’ve already done likely would be too much. We have an enormous client base compared to most pheromone stores, sure, but we all we are are hardcore nerds here. Many people here even know about obscure perfumes and colognes, many of which are from the world’s top niche fragrance houses. We are not your average Joe. Or Jane.
Joe & Jane Public, on the other hand, are the real “market”. (which isn’t to denigrate Joe & Jane public; we’re all consumers of something. I don’t “geek out” to grills, or participate on computer mice forums, for instance )
For what I’ve working on more than a year now, it’s quite possible – and I think beneficial – to get as many top quality, paid contributors as possible. Doing that, I can also start to give back to those who’ve honed their skills.
If you’ve ever been to Trader Joes, you can better understand what I’m after.
What we’ve been developing as the “back end” to a commercial launch is pretty much like the TJs “Fearless Flyer”.
However, instead of interesting, unique & top notch food items from around the world, we want interesting and unique perfumes, colognes, and of course, social effects.
I want to source many of these from our top contributors here, offering something like a book royalty for pheromone mixes. Not sure how to work it completely with scents, though, as scents are often part of what a mixer wants to use. i.e., paying the very same royalty twice over on the same product would be kind of high and make doing business difficult.
What we do with normal fragrance houses is just “pay for the juice”. They act like a supplier (well, they are a supplier), and we just buy a large quantity and pay the invoice. Their profit is built into that. They seem mostly to focus on profit from volume.
Aside from the minimum order requirements of our best supplier, this is actually unusually affordable. The cost of most finished fragrances is unusually inexpensive, especially when I consider the cost of some fine musks. It is insignificant, really, compared to the pheromone content.
Obviously they’re probably not always using what I expect them to use, and now that I know the chemicals better – what I ask them to use. Either that, or they don’t pay $1k to $2.5k per kilo for a truly fine musk, like the rest of us do. Maybe they have secret agreements of some sort with core fragrance chemical suppliers? I just don’t know.
Anyway, I’m still not sure the best way to work with individual perfumers. We have budgets we’ve set up for certain projects, for simple scents or parts of a project, whereby we pay within a certain range for a result.
We paid Mike in cash, for instance, to help research novel fragrance industry chemicals which could be used in a copulin formula.
Right now, I wouldn’t mind paying 1 or 2 people on a paid consulting basis to help with the diffusion project I’m working on myself.
For a full perfume or cologne from an individual perfumer, on the other hand, I always assumed we’d either “buy the juice” at a markup that would make the perfumer happy, as we do at a major frag supplier, or we’d license the formula, formulate it ourselves, and pay some sort of license fee.
Michael has his own license fee, but it’s low enough to not really make much sense until our next phase of operation. I feel we’d need to sell a lot of perfume and cologne at this license fee to make that sort of arrangement worthwhile for him. I just hope he stays health long enough for us to transition to a retail phase, so we could actually work with him on that level.
The book type royalty rates I’ve been working out for mixers, I think make a lot more sense even at lower volumes. I think the mixers who submit and get mixes approved should be happy with that on our projected volume. (and hey, I’ve been studying royalties lately, and book-type royalties are much higher than it’s higher an “inventor’s royalty”)
Unless it ended up being an extremely popular mix, it might not make them rich, but it would still be anywhere from okay feedback with low sales to “great, hey, I’m making some real money here”. Featured mixes might replace their work incomes in some cases.
I expect catlords mix to be part of this (unless he only wants to sell his mix on his own, which is fine, too). Steve, if he wants to monetize some of his mixes. Futurist, definitely, since he already gave us the go ahead to re-release MX101.
It’s just perfumes that provide a sort of a puzzle.
If you know much about how to work best with individual perfumers, we’d be glad to pay you a consulting fee to tell us how. Or even how to best work with you. We try to be as accommodating as we can, but in the freelance market, I’ve found some people just don’t even know what to ask for.
Michael, for one, certainly undervalued himself. We paid him much more than he usually asks for for consulting, and to me, that’s a good thing. I really liked some of his colognes. I feel he has tremendous talent, and has a good heart.
I think a lot of the best ideas will ultimately come from the “free lance” / “free agent” type market, but it’s important to work at a compensation system that’s both realistic for retail needs while being rewarding enough for the actual perfumer.
The fact that the mainstream perfume houses charge the way they do, and have professional sales reps, I feel really complicates the issue. Obviously, while they tend to be less creative, they are they simultaneously easier to work with in a normal business sense. They quote you prices and get you samples right away. Once you like a sample, all you have to do is meet their min order requirements, pay them, and off you go.
Individuals, on the other hand, just don’t seem to know what to charge. In my limited experience with them, they tend to underquote, and we have to tell them something like “We doubt that’s sustainable. You probably like us in the long term, and you might not even like yourself since it was you who gave us an unusually low quote. Here. lets you give more so you can actually eat based on your art. Wouldn’t that be cool?”
It’s sticky situation, since the frag industry itself is kind of complicated and a bit unusual.
I like oil based perfumes for the lasting effect. My est is mixed with oil and is highly effective despite that it also lasts for about 10-12 hours. Five to six foot radius.
I think if it is possible find a balance somewhere between the oil range and perfumers alcohol range perhaps parfum level?
Then you might be onto something.
Because in the long run I think a phero that lasts awhile and smells good but is still effective.
Means less phero used per run,more phero per cost for consumers and more repeat business.
Not saying drop the alcohol line but yes heat&evaporation is a bit of an issue.
Even a slightly higher ratio of oil seems to help with endurance.
The problem with oils is you do not get the sillage that you do get with alcohol based perfumes
So far I’m actually having better results with oils with the exception of the mx335 maybe its body temperature related?
I’m also speaking more of synthetic oils.
Lol I’ve been up too long I’ll come back to this when I’m not exhausted.