Demeter Fragrance Library

Random thoughts on this:

1. People do it all the time: they call it layering. Well, wait. Women do this deliberately, hetero men do this purely by accident. Some notes mix well, others...not so much. It is worth a mention that each one of those scents you've listed is (generally speaking) a composition of other aromachemicals: the fresh hay scent is probably not just straight hay absolute (although I hear it smells great). Dirt, definitely is not dirt absolute, and paperback...(?).

That said, start with a few ingredients and small amounts and see what happens. I know of one person who dumped a bunch of samples into a single bottle and quite liked the effect.

2. I can tell you that Christopher Brosius composed quite a few of Demeter's scents and now has his own line (CB I Hate Perfume). I just received a sample of his "Smoky Tobacco" accord and it is the most true-to-life tobacco scent I have ever smelled from a bottle. Period. It is fantastic. I am not plotting to buy his "old Library" accord.

Ooohh sounds interesting. Let me know how this one turns out. Thomas is right that layering is mostly done by women. See Jo Malone for the best example. The people at Bond are trying to get into "blending" now as well. I think it's for the birds.

Smoky Tobacco is on the long-test list after Tauer Une Rose Chypree, a sample I just received that is utterly, completely, totally gorgeous, so far as I can tell.

re: Layering. Generally a perfume is composed to give a balanced impression on its own. Polo gives a forest feel, John Varvatos is barbershop...etc. etc. In this they have dozens or even hundreds of notes that combine to give the feel. when layering, sometimes these notes combine well, sometimes they overlap, other times, they make a big mess, and there's no resuscitating the scent.

The hazard of layering lies in balancing the constituent components. A fragrance at Sephora (for instance) has been carefully composed by one of the big houses and tested so that it's relatively balanced between the notes. It might still not be very good or even suck, but it's a balanced and easily reproducible kind of suck - you get the same results with each spray.

Layering or combining is pretty well a one-off hope-it-works deal - if you combine into a bottle or vial you're stuck tweaking and testing until you have something you like, and once that batch is done...the next batch will generally not be the same, unless you've taken very precise notes.

From the hobby perfumers I chat with, it's a bear to get the formula just right, and they find that that waste a LOT of time and $$$ in testing blends to get the effect they want. Generally speaking, they do what they do because they love the process of creation, not because they're doing something all that new. Pretty well anything you can want is already made somewhere, it's just a matter of finding it.

In short...it's doable but a big, costly hassle. I'd suggest you try it only if it sounds like fun.

Credit to nsamadi from Basenotes for originally posting this. I've done the "Oceanic Breeze" layering and it's very good. The Demeter frags, as cool as they are evaporate in no time. Laundromat and Pure Soap might work well together, same with Waffles and Earl Grey Tea.

^^Estimated cost of trying all blends... $2000. I don't really layer, as I don't have much colognes, and I like to have a big variety.