Fougere Workshop

Create the scent of the forrest floor.

There has been some interest amongst a small group of students in doing another Fougere Workshop.  I'm so happy to teach this class again on Sunday, April 12th, 1-4pm.

Fougere is a fragrance family that came into fashion towards the end of the 19th C.  The word means fern, which makes it a fantasy category seeing how ferns don't really have a fragrance.  Fougere's are meant to smell like the forrest floor and, to my understanding, must have three ingredients:  lavender, oakmoss and a coumarin note (found in tonka bean, hay, sweet clover, etc.).  Often herbs like geranium, linalool rich rosewood and more assertive notes like patchouli are added but it's the careful consideration of the other ingredients that makes the fougere your own.

In class we'll explore the genre and sample many perfumes including the original Fougere Royale and Jicky - the vanguards of the classification -  along with samples from some of the best natural perfumers working today. You'll be choosing from materials like tonka bean, sweet clover, concretes of lavender, geranium and clary sage, several lavender absolutes and essential oils, cedarmoss, cassia and ho wood.  You'll have the opportunity to create two perfumes.  $25 extra to make a third, time considering.

Sunday, April 12th, 1-4pm.  You can register here.

You can see the coumarin crystals forming on these tonka beans.

Once oakmoss is harvested it rests for seven years to develop it's wet forrest scent.

Clover also contain coumarins.

Lavender, one of the key ingredients in a fougere, also contains coumarins.