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Solar notes in perfumery are born on the beach!
The long-awaited arrival in France of paid holidays creates a new need: solar products. Having the time to sunbathe on a beach becomes a common privilege and to protect yourself from sunburn it is necessary to protect yourself from it with a suitable product. Eugène Schueller, founder of L'Oréal, decided to develop a sunscreen product based on a synthetic molecule already known in the United States for several years: benzyl salicylate. Thus in 1935 came the famous Ambre Solaire designed around this molecule.
Discovering a few years later that in reality benzyl salicylate was not sufficiently filtering for UV rays, L'Oréal decided to remove it from the Amber Sun formula. Which was a big mistake! The French were so addicted to this so particular perfume of sun that sales of Ambre Solaire fell. The group therefore decided to use benzyl salicylate again, no longer as a filter but as a perfuming agent. The solar notes that adorn the accords of our perfumes never left our delicate smells!
Give sunshine to our perfumes thanks to solar accords!
The solar note created thanks to the benzyl salicylate, is composed of ylang ylang, frangipani, tiare and carnation. Thanks to Ambre Solaire, this note has become an essential part of our cosmetics and subsequently of our perfumes.
The solar note has the advantage of agreeing with many fragrances, nevertheless one of the most famous families of solar fragrances is the floral-salycilates family. The best-known fragrance of this floral-solar family is l'Air du Temps by Nina Ricci, released in 1948. If solar accords had already been used before by Fleurs de Rocaille by Caron for example, L 'Air du Temps' was the very first to have exploited solar chords with flowery notes in such a singular and clear way.
Obviously, fragrances with solar notes still make up a large part of our fragrance preferences as it evokes the pleasant olfactory memory of vacations and the beach. Although fallen out of favor for a few years, solar and exotic scents have returned more than ever to our skin and necks thirsty for sun and distant scents.
