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To give you an example, let’s talk about one such ingredient or note - lemon. Lemon is basically a note found in many fragrances and due to its easy extraction process, used quite a lot. But at times you might read some ‘notes’ listed on fragrances, which actually are accords. For instance, leather is an accord. It’s not possible to extract the fragrance of leather from a cow! The fragrance of leather is what one attributes to the smell of the end product after it has gone through the process of tanning and curing the hide of a cow or another animal. If you see leather in a fragrance that means it’s an accord of a bunch of different fragrances that brings about a leather smell. So if you were to smell Tuscan Leather by Tom Ford, the leather effect in there is coming from a bunch of different notes. Similarly if you smell Slow Explosions by Imaginary Author, the saffron, leather and apple are all accords. If you ever see the ‘note’ of Amber, it’s actually an ‘accord’. The note of amber is traditionally supposed to smell or mimic the smell of fossilised amber. And that accord could come from labdanum and vanilla. Actual amber is just a rock and it doesn’t actually have a smell. So amber in a scent is an imaginary accord and it’s very popular and you’ll see it in a lot of fragrances and there’s lots of innovative combinations to get to a particular smell of amber and each one would make that particular fragrance different from another one. LIFESPANS OF NOTES AND ACCORDS Each of these notes and accords have different lifespans on your skin as they have different volatilities. Each note and accord burns off your skin at certain times. So you’ll see fragrance notes like citrus that have a very short lifespan on your skin because they are highly volatile and will burn off your skin quickly. While musk and leather and amber are notes that take a long time to develop over your skin and may last over your skin for hours. So to summarise, notes are individual ingredients while accords are a blend of multiple ingredients to come up with a different type of smell. A very important thing to note about an accord is that everything in an accord, as a whole, has a very harmonious effect. An accord is more than the sum of its parts. “...Everything in an accord, as a whole, has a very harmonious effect. An accord is more than the sum of its parts” P A R F U M P L U S 8