Perfume en Herbe
The discovery of drugs in scent
It was 1977 and God Save the Queen was N°2 in the charts.
While Punks were emerging from their basement lairs that were booming three minute thrash, Yves Saint Laurent were pushing their fantasy of Dope and the Other in the shape of Opium.
The two scenes couldn’t have been farther apart.
But like the model Opium was just kidding, this wasn’t the slow train to oblivion.
The way they sold it was for real though. The advertising annoyed both the Chinese, and the moral majority with it’s fake debauchery but it was all about the image, when it came to the scent there was little narcotic about it; it didn’t walk the walk. That’s not to say it was bad — it was excellent.
A spicy Amber with a citrus head, its appeal was so intense it set perfumers off on a new path, away from the green Chypre of stockings and tweed and toward the bombastic Florals of the 80’s.
~~~ ~~~ ~~~
Meanwhile a new generation takes the stage…
~~~ ~~~ ~~~
In 2002, loose canon Pierre Guillaume launched a scent called Cozé 02.
It was low key and didn’t look much but the bottle contained hemp seed oil, patchouli and decorative notes; ‘a seemingly one dimensional concept rendered as a multifaceted experience’. [Thanks to alexmate on Basenotes for that]
Cozé was in the classic mold of an innovator; it had a new idea and used a new material. But, looking at it from another point of view, it was nothing but old hat dressed as nouvelle chapellerie - a perfumer’s take on the old hippy trick of dabbing patchouli to hide the smell of pot.
~~~ ~~~ ~~~
Dope took a while to get going, but perfumers did catch and seven years later Alessandro Gualtieri released Black Afgano. As brutally direct and strong as it sounds, the scent is based on the odor of Afghan Black : a ‘dark, resiny hash; oily — a bitter green smell; herbaceous and amber facets, and above all that, a thin aromatic overtone’.
It makes a fist of the smell of black, but has an unnatural feel that keeps it on the perfumey side of realism. This lets the perfumer develop an artistic response to the smell of hash and not just relate the olfactory facts.
~~~ ~~~ ~~~
For realism, Smoke for the Soul was the one to beat. As far as being life-like, or even hyper-realist, I’ll just quote my review : ‘Don’t wear it to the airport!’
It was a clever trick, and an impressive piece of trompe le nez, but the question comes to mind — Why? You could just dilute hash in vodka and wear that…
~~~ ~~~ ~~~
Since then, several names have got in on the cannabis act with varied results; some are realistic, others are perfumistic; the Parfumo database lists 349 scents with a cannabis note.
It got that mainstream that Axe put Ganja into Vibes in 2020, a ‘mood booster’ that uses hemp seed oil in the juice and a weed leaf on the can.
~~~ ~~~
The market is divided into those who like the buzz of dried bud and those who rock the heaviness of hash.
There are two broad ways to treat the material — the realist and the fantasist.
The realist aims for this sort of thing:
fantasists will do this or the like:
both have their merits.
~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~
To sum up then: Opium and Cannabis perfumes were just flirting with “Dope”. Opium did’t smell like the drug it just used the name; Smoke for the Soul copied a hash smell for kicks. But they weren’t dismissed. The cannabis craze that arose in the twenty teen’s is still going strong today; 30 new perfumes were released in the ten months to October 2024.
More significantly, these fake marijuana scents seem to have been spreading the word beyond the realms of perfume. Cannabis scents were around before CBD and the synthetic THC that took the jails by storm Spice were things. Medical marijuana is now legal in some states, and cannabis has been decriminalized in several countries. Who says life doesn’t imitate art?
great article
One of my favourite perfumes is Margiela's Music Festival. It has a real weed funk that sometimes I can smell and sometimes I can't. Of course, it's now discontinued...