ParfumPlus Arabia

Escentia IRIS. IFYOU TRULY LOVE NATURE... Olimpia Mascolo shares her love for Iris, one of her classic favourites. Let’s find out more about this ingredient that most perfumers seem to love in spite of it not having a scent of its own! THE ‘BEARDED’ IRIS, the type famously painted by Vincent van Gogh, grows widely in Tuscany and has been since the Middle Ages the symbol of Renaissance and the emblem of the city of Florence. Ancient Greeks and Romans bottled it as an elixir, innkeepers scented their linens with it centuries ago, but years must pass before it can be bottled and made into perfume. Fragile, complicated and endangered, this beautiful flower has no scent of its own, yet it gives perfumers one of the most sophisticated absolutes in use and it can cost more than gold. The iris flourishes in May. Seeing all these hectares of farmland turn blue is a marvellous scenery and yet the rhizome, or root, is the only part of the plant that produces a scent. After growing underground for three years, the bulbs are extracted in the hot summer months, washed, strained and shaved, and then dried in 24