Hacker Frag

Whilst dragnet fishing on the internet I found some Russian Fragrance formulas for very famous fumes. Things like Channel 5, Paris, Eternity etc (I would love to find even a half baked formula for L'eau d'Issey - just to satisfy my curiosity - we know it has a dose of Calone 1951 patented by Pfizer.Methylbenzodioxepinone (for the lover of technical names) or watermelon ketone, for those who like their white bread with peanut butter and jam. I also smell indole and some kind of white flower bot.
WICKI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calone

I decided to dial up the Channel 5 formula courtesy of the Russian space program. I had about 99% of the chems laying around anyway, so why not exercise a little reverse engineering in the name of education? I followed carefully through the list, trying to discern what was top, what was modifier and what was base and what I could see from the numbers, as in weight of materials or ratios of parts.

I imagine that the formula might have got spat out of miles of extra thin glass tubing from some kind of steam punk Gas Chromatograph in the backroom of some woodpanelled snowbound Siberian lab, in some unnamed pine forest.Unscrupulous types would then sell these recreations on Canal Street to unsuspecting tourists as knock offs of the real thing or perhaps they ended up as frags "in the style of...Channel number 5, or functional products, maybe to deodorise Mir etc.

I think some of the quantities of the concentrate seemed a bit off the wall. My source said that an experienced perfumer said they where heading in the right direction but there where too few components. (I like it - a sort of skeleton frag) Maybe it was a toilet spray in the style of channel 5,who knows. I certainly wouldn’t drink the stuff, that’s for sure and aldehydes are not really my thing. One aldehyde I had never heard of is the one signed(woody)but these might be inhouse accords that no one has seen this side of the zone.

What turned up for me was a waxy aldehydey strong lipstick accord. It’s an archetypal smell that makes one instantly think “shiny red lips!!!” - its kind of sexy and clean if you like that sort of thing. Add some synthetic Castorium and you might get lipstick and neoprene rubber; fetish anyone!(Castorium - the non synthetic type is the secretion from a gland near a beavers ass, a whole other kind of fetish, wouldn’t you say !)Humans are very experimental really, who would have thought to use that?

My smell memory of Channel 5 was marginal to say the least. I was in town with a few moments to spare, before meeting up with a friend, so I ripped into a third rate frag-dome full of celebrity crappolla (not J-lo glow on which more refined sensibilities than mine agree is well made. (I always thought it was interesting)
Found a bottle of Channel 5 lying under the rubble and took a whiff.In a microsecond, I recognized my Russian stuff. What I had made was a bit like in that sci-fi movie, where you land on that unnamed planet that looks something like earth for a a moment but it dawns on you pretty quickly that its nothing like it.

Where did I go with it? Too much decoration with acetates and other strange alcohols to try to make it green – back onto the lets make a garden and set it on fire, fragrance. At one stage a ring of light appeared that my friend encourages me to continue to seek!!!

I add here for sake of my faulty memory that the antiseptic note that arrived from the tinkering is I think an interaction between the waxyness of the aldehydes and the smoke from the rectified birchtar. The composition itself has melded and stabilised and my new impression is that the green alchohols and acetates where not as strong as first thought, but still interesting. After about ten minutes the birch tar turned up like somebody entering the room and the difference between the short lived top versus this new middle is like changing channels on the radio. I was thinking maybe this band aid smell might be shifted sideways with something like cinnamic alchohol or eugenol. The bottom notes are pretty piss weak, lipsticky still and faintly musk. The structure is obviously really flawed but all is not lost.

Found formula.

Chanel 5
1. Linalool 5.0
2. Benzylacetate 15.0
3. Woody Type Aldehyde 5.0
4. Aldehyde C11 10% 1.0
5. Aldehyde C12 10% 1.0
6. Aldehyde C12 MNA 10% 1.0
7. Ylang-ylang oil 5.0
8. PhenylEthyl Alcohol 5.0
9. Oakmoss 10% 1.5
10. Galbanum oil 6.0
11. Styrax oil 0.2
12. Aurantine 0.2
13. Labdanum resinoid 1.0
14. Methyl Ionone 3.0
15. Ionone pure 100% 3.0
16. Patchouli oil 0.5
17. coumarin 1.0
18. hydroxycitronellol 5.0
19. isoeugenol 1.0
20. Amyl Cinnamic Aldehyde 5.0
21. Benzylsalicylate 10.0
22. Musk Ambrette 10.0
23. Musk Ketone 5.0
24. Clary sage oil 0.1
25. Dihydromyrcenol 10.0