Ingredients · Powder · Made in a lab

Violet (flower)

Violet flower oil vanished from trade decades ago; the note comes from ionones, with violet leaf for green.

What it is

A flower that gives no oil worth extracting, so perfumers rebuild its smell from other materials.

How perfumers build it

Alpha-ionone (powder puff)Beta-ionone (powder puff)Methyl ionone, not in Ingredients yetViolet leaf absoluteHeliotropin (heliotrope)

Known in

Après l'Ondée (Guerlain, 1906)

Worth knowing

Some people are genetically about 100 times less sensitive to beta-ionone, the violet molecule.

Named by the house in 15 of the 352 perfumes read so far

Santal 33Le Labo · “violet”LaytonParfums de Marly · “Violet”Suede IbriAmouage · “Violet”Beloved WomanAmouage · “Violet”J'adoreDior · “violet”Mojave GhostByredo · “Violet”

See all 15