A dark lump of labdanum resin, a piece of benzoin from Laos, a dark brown vanilla pod glossy with oil. These three objects, not a piece of amber stone, are the source of the amber note in perfume. This piece clears up a confusion over a name, then builds an amber blend from vanilla, balsamic resins and a little orange peel.
A stone that is not the source
Amber is fossilised tree resin, some pieces hundreds of millions of years old, honey yellow, sometimes holding a whole insect inside. Rubbed or burned, it gives off a light pine-like smell. In perfume, however, that stone plays almost no role.
In the French of perfumery, the word ambre names an accord, not amber stone and not ambergris, which French calls ambre gris. The classic ambre accord is labdanum, vanilla or vanillin, and benzoin. Three similar words, three quite different things.
In the classification of the French perfumers' society SFP, the Amber family carries the code F, with six subfamilies. The SFP describes it through sweet, powdery, vanillic, labdanum and animalic notes, very pronounced. It is the warmest and densest family in the table.
The confusion between stone and accord is easy to understand. The honey colour of labdanum, benzoin and concentrated vanilla is close to the colour of the stone. But the smell of the accord comes from the resin of living trees, not from resin turned to stone.
Labdanum, benzoin, vanilla
The shrub Cistus ladanifer grows around the Mediterranean, and its leaves secrete a sticky aromatic resin. The resin is gathered by brushing dried leaves or boiling fresh leaves in water, then extracted with solvent. Spain is the main source. Labdanum gives a warm resin with a leathery facet and is the axis of the amber accord.
Benzoin is the dried resin of Styrax trees. There are two commercial streams: Sumatra benzoin and Siam benzoin, the latter from Styrax tonkinensis, largely from the Luang Prabang region of Laos. There is no benzoin oil in the distilled sense; the commercial material is a resin extract, a sticky solid, usually diluted to 50 percent in a solvent to make it usable. It smells sweet, resinous, close to vanilla.
Vanilla is the pod of orchids of the genus Vanilla, killed, sweated and slowly dried until dark brown and fragrant. Vanilla extract holds 1 to 3.5 percent vanillin, with 4 hydroxybenzaldehyde and a few other small molecules. It smells sweet, warm, balsamic, rich and lasting. The extract is thick and dark brown and may leave a faint stain on fabric.
In 1874 Ferdinand Tiemann and Wilhelm Haarmann determined the structure of vanillin and found a way to make it from coniferin, a glucoside in pine bark. Synthetic vanillin made vanilla usable at high dose and low cost, and opened the way to the modern amber family. Around the end of the nineteenth century the house of Georges de Laire released Ambre 83, an amber base built on synthetic vanillin.
From oriental to amber
In 1925 Jacques Guerlain released Shalimar: bergamot at the top, vanilla and balsams in the base. Shalimar has been produced continuously since and is usually regarded as the landmark of the family. The contrast between bright citrus peel and a heavy vanilla base is the structure that the blend below uses too.
Before Shalimar, in 1889, Aimé Guerlain released Jicky with lavender, coumarin and vanillin over a resinous base. Jicky sits on the border between the fougère and amber families; each classification places it differently. That border shows how soon vanillin entered perfume after it was first synthesised.
For most of the twentieth century the family was called oriental, in English and in French. The bottles after Shalimar extended it in several directions: Dana's Tabu of 1932, heavy with resins and spices; Estée Lauder's Youth Dew of 1953, launched as a scented bath oil; Yves Saint Laurent's Opium of 1977, with spices and balsams at high dose.
In 2021 Michael Edwards' Fragrances of the World replaced Oriental with Amber in all its English classifications. The reasons given: Oriental carries a colonial view and does not describe odour. The SFP classification page still keeps both words, naming the family Ambrée with a note that it is sometimes also called orientaux.
The renaming also clarifies something. Amber describes a material and a colour, while oriental only describes a direction on a map drawn by Western eyes. The new word sits closer to what the nose perceives.
Balsamic resins: myrrh and frankincense
Myrrh resin dries into reddish brown lumps; frankincense is lighter in colour. Both belong to the Burseraceae family, and both stand in the base of the amber family according to the library page, beside opopanax and styrax, to add smoke and resin.
Myrrh gives the bitter part: warm, resinous, slightly bitter, balsamic, woody. In an amber accord that is sweet by nature, that bitterness keeps the vanilla from turning cloying. Frankincense gives the bright part: depending on the species it leans towards pine resin, lemon or light smoke.
Styrax is another resin of this group, flowing when the bark of Liquidambar orientalis in Turkey is cut. Its main constituents are cinnamyl cinnamate and 3 phenylpropyl cinnamate, giving a sweet resin with a rubbery facet. Styrax carries a risk of skin sensitisation; IFRA advises against the raw gum and allows only processed forms at low concentration, and the library gives a 0.6 percent dermal maximum.
Patchouli often stands beside these resins in the base. In 1992 Mugler's Angel, composed by Olivier Cresp, set ethyl maltol, a caramel-like note, over patchouli, opening the style the press calls gourmand. The word gourmand does not appear in the SFP table; Angel-style bottles are usually placed in F1, Sweet Amber.
The Lê Mai amber blend
Eight drops of vanilla, six of labdanum, four of sweet orange, three of benzoin, three of myrrh, three of patchouli, two of frankincense, one of styrax. Thirty drops in a 10 ml bottle, 15 percent in perfumer's alcohol.
Vanilla and labdanum together make up almost half the blend: the sweet axis and the resin axis of the classic ambre accord. Benzoin joins the two with a sweet resin close to vanilla. Myrrh and patchouli hold the dark, bitter part. Frankincense and one drop of styrax add smoke and resin. Sweet orange at the top gives the contrast seen in Shalimar, brightness over a heavy base.
Sweet orange is chosen instead of bergamot for one specific reason. According to the library page, sweet orange oil is not phototoxic, with no bergapten detected in five samples from different sources, while cold-pressed bergamot does contain it. The blend keeps a citrus layer without needing the FCF grade.
The first plan included a trace of Ceylon cinnamon. As the piece on agarwood calculated, cinnamon bark oil has a 0.07 percent dermal maximum, and one drop in a 10 ml bottle is already 0.5 percent. Cinnamon is therefore left out. Benzoin and labdanum are warm enough.
On a blotter, sweet orange opens for a few minutes and then recedes fast. Then comes the resin: labdanum, benzoin, frankincense, sweet and slightly smoky. After a few hours, vanilla and patchouli remain, with the faint bitterness of myrrh. Resins and vanilla evaporate slowly, so this smell holds long on the blotter.
| Essential oil | Drops | Share of blend |
|---|---|---|
| Vanilla | 8 | 27% |
| Labdanum | 6 | 20% |
| Sweet orange | 4 | 13% |
| Benzoin | 3 | 10% |
| Myrrh | 3 | 10% |
| Patchouli | 3 | 10% |
| Frankincense | 2 | 7% |
| Styrax | 1 | 3% |
The limiting oil is styrax: a 0.6 percent dermal maximum on the library page, and IFRA advises against the raw gum. One drop in 30 at 15 percent strength gives about 0.5 percent on skin. Use only processed styrax, and do not raise it.
Benzoin has a 2 percent maximum; here it sits at about 1.5 percent. Vanilla sits at about 4 percent, labdanum at about 3 percent, sweet orange at about 2 percent, myrrh and patchouli at about 1.5 percent, frankincense at about 1 percent; these pages give no specific dermal limit. Sweet orange is not phototoxic. Cinnamon was dropped because of its 0.07 percent limit.
Myrrh is strictly contraindicated in pregnancy and breastfeeding; this blend is not for those situations. Benzoin calls for caution on hypersensitive or damaged skin and for children under two; people sensitive to Peru balsam may cross-react to Siam benzoin. Vanillin and patchouli must be labelled as allergens under EU rules if the blend is sold as a product. Try it on a small patch of skin before wider use.
Sweet amber and dry amber
The same set of resins, two ratios, two ambers. More vanilla and benzoin gives a round, sweet smell, close to pastry. More labdanum, myrrh and frankincense gives a dry smell, with leather and smoke. The SFP divides the family into six subfamilies, from F1 Sweet Amber to F6 Floral Fruity Amber; F3 is fresh citrus over a vanilla base, and Guerlain's Habit Rouge of 1965 is often cited as an example.
To move the blend towards the sweet side, add one drop of vanilla and take one off the myrrh. To move towards the dry side, do the opposite, or add one drop of labdanum. Styrax is not raised, since it is already close to its limit.
Many materials of this family have their own rules. Crude Peru balsam is prohibited by IFRA as a fragrance ingredient; only its extracts and distillates are allowed within limits. The EU allergen list of 2023 adds vanillin, cinnamon bark oil, clove oil and patchouli oil. Coumarin, cinnamal, eugenol, benzyl benzoate and benzyl cinnamate were already named.
The piece on fixatives explains why these heavy resins make a scent stay. The amber family is where they no longer stand behind, and become the scent itself.
A smell named after a stone, built from the resin of living trees.
The name remembers the colour. The nose remembers the resin.