Vegetable section – Style – Kommersant

Seeds of carrots, pumpkins, cauliflower or tomatoes are not only suitable for seedlings. How perfumers manage them, Kommersant Style finds out.

Fruity and floral notes have already become a well-known and widely used base in the world of perfumery, but vegetable ingredients are still part of a curious and little-studied universe. The world of vegetables has become the starting point for the creation of new intriguing flavors – we see that they use the entire garden range in their composition: from carrot seeds to cucumber, pumpkin and cauliflower. Yaroslav Simonov, Fakoshima perfumer, believes that vegetable notes are a logical development of the global gourmet trend that emerged with the release of Angel Mugler. “True, at that moment, “edible” was only sweet, but as we see, this idea is constantly evolving,” he says.

Until recently, the vegetable “exercises” of perfumers remained separate challenges to public taste.

Independent perfume expert Bogdan Zyryanov talks about the most iconic fragrances. “In 2019, Comme des Garons, the main supplier of the avant-garde in luxury perfumery, launched radish vetiver (Radish Vetiver) and carrot greens with sunscreen (Copper), and a year later, beetroot with incense (Rouge). Most often, tomato leaves and carrots are played in fragrances, but you should not be afraid of vegetable notes in the description of a perfume – these are just aspects of the sound of the same fragrant substances that perfumers have been using for many years, ”he notes.

Perfume “about leaves” is a reflection of the recently popular desire for a healthy lifestyle, nature, conciseness, a rethinking of the concept of gender in both fashion and perfumery (and such fragrances, as a rule, belong to the “unisex” category). All this can be called the reasons that gave impetus to the development of this theme, as well as the desire of perfumers to stand out, to come up with something unique. There is no need to be afraid of the apparent simplicity of sound: cabbage in combination with orange or musk can give interesting combinations, and the fragrance will eventually turn out to be unusual in a good way, different from the mainstream. And this is exactly what we expect from perfumery, isn’t it?

Irina Kirienko