Christmas Reflections on Wood

Even though my Basenotes blog, "Red's Lumberyard", was named on the spur of the moment, it's not much of an accident. I have had a passion for wood for as long as I can remember. I've been attracted to everything about wood. The wonderful colors, for instance. Yes, it's hard for some people to be passionate about brown, but it's hard for me to be passionate about anything else. The textures. From the natural roughness of bark, to the unbelievable smoothness that the skilled woodworker can attain. And when I was old enough to work wood myself - the odors. And even before that. I remember my toddler brother and I grabbing discs of pine that my father would shave off the bottoms of Christmas trees. Perfectly useless, but for the moment, our most prized possessions. Little wonder that when wood-loving insectoids took over Earth in the godawful Bruce Campbell Sci-Fi Original Movie Alien Apocalypse, I had half a mind to root for the hilarious bugs, as they fawned and cooed over all manner of cellulose. You would think they had found vintage Guerlain or something. Yes, they did have a nasty habit of biting off the heads of humans who got uppity on them, but - c'mon - those humans simply didn't understand the importance of wood. If all of the humans would have taken wood shop, like I did, why - we would all be celebrating the arrival of fellow lignophiles.

Not really. But almost.

By this point in my life, I've surrounded myself with wood. For starters, I live in a log house, along with all the critters who want to live with me. Carpenter bees, carpenter ants, woodpeckers, mice, squirrels, and bats all seem to want to live here. We've managed to keep the termites out, but they're patient, and I'm sure they'll keep trying. I keep an old gun over the fireplace. It's neither rare, nor macho, nor even easy on the eye. But what it does have is some nice, antique wood - which I love to oil and polish when the mood hits me.

Normally I don't mind that others don't share my passion for the woody stuff. That's OK with me. But woe unto he who doth profess false love for wood, or who takes its name in vain. Curse wood all you like - you won't catch me minding. But dare ye not to call wood by another name, or to call other things wood, lest the wrath of Red descend upon you.

Now - why on Earth would anybody sin against wood? I'll tell you why - the root of all evil - love of money. That, and sexual dimorphism. Well, polymorphism is more accurate, but the approximation of dimorphism is sufficient for this discussion. Now I don't blame sexual dimorphism, but due to the innocent nature of sexual dimorphism (or polymorphism by my reckoning), love of money hath turned us into liars about wood.

When perfume got genderized at some point in this thing, due to love of money, it clearly wasn't going to be long before there were unintended consequences. And in this case, the victims of the unintended consequences in Perfume Gender Wars were poor, innocent, and completely asexual Perfume Components. Like grade-school kickball teams, Flowers got drafted to Team Barbie, and Wood, of all things, got drafted to the He Man Woman-Haters Club. Yes, we realize that Wood made an excellent Neanderthal Club, but I really think that Wood got off for good behavior a looooong time ago. The association of wood with men simply doesn't seem to make that much sense when you look under the hood.

Well, you can only make so many woody masculine fragrances before you have to start doing something else. Especially if one of the rules of perfumery is that designer perfumes have to smell good to people who hate perfume. Wood's not very good about shutting up. So the more you get into citrus, aquatic, and anything-but-floral freshness (remember - Flowers is on Team Barbie), the more you just have to start leaving Wood out of the equation.

Unfortunately, the lineup on the Guy Team isn't looking like what was advertised, with Wood on the bench. Citrus is a Girly-Man, and the rumor about Aquatic is that he's - you know - do I have to say it? There's a reason Aqua hangs out at the gym, and six-pack abs, and all that stuff and STILL single. So what are we left with? Spice and Wood? Well, I suppose it's possible to work with Spice, but they don't call it OLD SPICE for nothin'. So - if you want Perfume Component Chest Hair that ain't gray right now, your best bet is still Wood.

Yes, I know it doesn't make sense. Yes, I know it's silly and bigoted and all that. But we're committed to the lie. REMEMBER?

So what, exactly, is Wood? Ah. That's the where marketing starts creeping into the equation. You see, wood used to mean something that you sawed through, and it smelled like it, too. Sandalwood. Cedar. Even pine. And now? Well, people are getting a bit fast and loose with what "wood" actually is. Wood means masculine. Same with "woody". So if it smells masculine, it smells woody - right?

WRONG.

Perhaps the greatest offender in this area has to be Hugo Boss. I'm less of a fan than I used to be, although I certainly don't qualify as a hater. I do feel like I was "pushed" into their fragrances back in the day, when real fragrances for men died out in the '90's. My son likes Boss Pure, and I'm partial to Boss Selection, Hugo Element, and Anything Baldessarini. Nevertheless, excuse my French on Christmas Day, but - Christ on a Bicycle! For ANY Hugo Boss fragrance to be described as woody simply defies logic. Chandler Burr has described them as a variety of things, the kindest of which was refrigerant fluid. I give them more credit than that. But by no means does any Hugo Boss fragrance bring to mind any kind of wood. Not even a PICTURE of wood. Not even a picture of a computer screen with a background of a putting green where Tiger Woods once played.

So - how does one lie this badly about wood? Carefully. Very, very, carefully.

Let's take Hugo Element. I actually like that one. I got an early sample, and I liked what I smelled. Oh, it's safe. It's so safe, the name should not even APPEAR on Aromi's blog. There is a giant portion of unsafe smell space that is not used by Hugo Boss fragrances, and this one, like all the others, is not in that space. It is in the safe space that will get you dates with women who say things like "You know, normally I hate it when a guy wears cologne, but whatever you're wearing isn't that bad."

Now, I sat there with my Boss (whoops - I mean Hugo) sample and I not only tested it on skin - I let the original applicator sample dry down in situ to observe the smell. And I can tell you this - over several weeks, I NEVER got a single bit of wood out of it. Yet - believe it or not - the advertising says things like:

Cedarwood

The trail or memory

The base ingredients are the most memorable part of the fragrance.
Their slow evaporation rates give the fragrance staying power.

Yeah. Well, if that's true, then there was simply no cedar in the damn stuff, because I remember it not. I just remember the heart notes, still tooling along, DAYS after it had dried down. WEEKS after it had dried down. Was there cedar in it? And if so, how much? All I know is this - the sample postcard said "woody", but I did not get any wood. So excuse me if I think that "woody" was being used in the sense of "masculine", and had not one thing to do with real wood.

Now it may be that my nose ain't working, and I'm always willing to consider that possibility. But let's consider another fragrance first. I think you'll find this one even more instructive.

Like I said, my son likes his Boss Pure, and I have to admit that it smells pretty good on him. It doesn't blow me away - like when a buddy of mine wears Green Irish Tweed, which smells positively amazing on a cool spring day in the great outdoors. But Boss Pure has its moments. Well, being a chemist, I wanted to see what made it tick. I looked on the website. And, Glory Be, I was surprised as hell to learn that it was also a woody fragrance. My immediate response was - ON WHICH PLANET?

However, a closer reading shows that there is - shockingly - wood in it:

At the heart of BOSS Pure is a bright aquatic accord. It rests on a sensual, woody drydown of massoia and treemoss, conjuring elegance and sophistication.

...and later...

BASE NOTE:

The base is composed of pure wood - massoia - which creates a soft woody and creamy scent, clearly enhancing the fragrance's masculine character.

Hmmm. Wood? Tree moss is really stretching it, I gotta say. Never heard of massoia wood. Well, let's take a look at it....

It turns out that there is a wood that grows in New Guinea, and you can read all about it - including the chemical constituents - HERE. Between the bark, heartwood, and fruit, there are only a few significant constituents, in strongly different amounts, however, depending upon location. The fruit oil is 68% benzyl benzoate, and the bark 13% of it. Benzyl benzoate is a common fragrance component, with a weak, sweet-balsamic odor, according to Surburg and Panten in Common Fragrance and Flavor Materials. It is the main component of Peru balsam oil. I have that particular stuff, and I don't really think of it as woody, but if balsamic is woody, then I guess this is woody. Don't mind that it's in damn near everything, and is used mostly as a fixative. Technically, it's woody. And speaking of appearing in everything, you will notice that it's a listed component on the backs of fragrance boxes. Including the one for Boss Pure. So we know that this stuff is definitely in it.

So what are the other major massoia compounds? Well, they are all delta lactones, and the three major ones are called C-10, C-12, and C-14 massoia lactone - depending upon a minor detail, the length of a sidechain. And if you take the C-10 version and turn its double bond into a single bond, you get delta-decalactone. You can read more about these lactones in the link above, or on Wikipedia or Leffingwell. The important part is the odor. Let's look at these:

• delta-decalactone: creamy-coconut, peach-like, sweet, creamy, milky, nut
• C10-massoia lactone: sweet, coconut meat, lactonic, creamy, milky and waxy
• hydrogenated C-12 and C-14: more of the same - creamy and coconut, etc.

Well, creamy and coconut don't exactly mean wood to me. True, coconut husks are damn woody and hard to saw. But we're getting into some pretty exotic woods here, if we're going to use the word.
So, is this what passes for wood in Boss Pure? A fixative and something described as "powerful coconut odor"? Let's be blunt - coconut and cream are simply not woods to most people. It's just a wee bit misleading to say so, frankly. Well, we could hang up our hats and say that there ain't beans for wood in Boss Pure, but there is one last out. What if they used real massoia wood oil? How about that? Maybe there's some minor constituent that donates a true woody smell, technically, even though we don't smell it. Well, it gets even more complicated.
Because, you see, both massoia oil and massoia lactone are now banned by IFRA. Which makes sense. You see, it turns out that there are ants which live in the massoia trees, and they actually use massoia lactone as part of their chemical defense.
So - how do you feel about IFRA now? They do seem a bit overzealous when they go after vanilla, but I have to say - keeping tropical ant chemical defenses out of my armpits sounds like a really good idea. And it's ecological, too. According to Wikipedia, harvesting of natural massoia oil was threatening the trees (and presumably the ants as well), and there has been a switch to synthetics. To those of us who love wood - and by extension trees - probably not a bad idea.
As for the synthetics being used - my money rides on delta-decalactone, which not only is a valid component of the wood, and smells similar to the real main component - it's not banned by IFRA, either. Maybe delta-dodecalactone and the like as well.
The problem is just this. The lie about fragrance gender is basically causing downstream errors - making people tell further lies. Boss Pure is a perfectly passable fragrance with a kind of interesting but nondescript scent. It's a very singular, blended mix of floral, aquatic, and lightly gourmand notes that basically smells like clean clothes and good soap. There's just a bit of an herbal or spicy edge - enough to make it interesting. That's it. You could call it woody because of the coconutty lactone, but you could also call it boozy because it's in alcohol. Sorry - the spin stops here. We all know the truth. The real reason it's called woody is to make it guy-friendly. Same with all the kin. They ain't woody.
And stop right there, Mister Hugo Boss Apologist. Don't make any excuses. The ultimate test is simply a reality check with the nose. We ALL know of woody aquatic fragrances, which 99% of those who sniff will call woody. No WAY are these fragrances going to join that group. No way.
It's OK for perfumes to lie to me a little bit. Lie to me about all the women and casinos and limousines and other stuff that we know ain't gonna happen. Lie to me about the six-pack abs that I never had, even when I was thin. Lie to me about the fresh air and sunny skies and deserts and beaches and magical stuff that pops out when I put on your juice. Go ahead. Lie to me about all that stuff.
But don't lie to Red about wood. In the Lumberyard - heck - even outside the Lumberyard - wood is special.