AtlasRoot
Orris
Iris pallida
Iris pallida rhizome, aged into a powdery violet heart. Slow, quiet, and one of the central materials of the house.
- Place in the wear
- Heart
- The middle of the wear. Where most of the idea lives.
- Office
- Heart
- Carries the idea of the composition.
- Family
- Root
- Type
- Concrete / butter
- CAS
- 8002-73-1
- Origin
- Italy, from rhizomes aged after the harvest
- Span
- Years. The rhizome smells like almost nothing until it has been dried and aged.
- Odor
- Powder, violet, suede, a cool raspberry, and a faint dough
- Also called
- Orris concrete, Iris butter, Orris root oil, Beurre d'iris
Orris is not a flower oil. The scent is in the rhizome, and only after years of drying, when irones replace the raw, green smell of the fresh root. What you meet is powder, violet, suede, and a cool fruit note that people sometimes call raspberry.
In this house it is a heart: the idea other materials arrange themselves around. It does not shout. It makes rose less jammy, sandalwood less plain, and a musk more like skin. Use it when the composition needs a face, not a louder top.
The atlas follows orris through its other forms. The resinoid is darker and earthier than the butter, the CO2 extract cooler and cleaner, the Florentine extract comes from the white Iris florentina, and the tincture is the oldest and gentlest. Each shows a different face of the same irone violet.
Sources
- Fairamour editorial (site entry)
- Fairamour editorial — citation pending
- Fairamour editorial
- PubChem substance records (12)
- Cited per perfume
- Orris Noir — Ormonde Jayne
- Infusion d'Iris — Prada
- Iris Silver Mist — Serge Lutens
- Fairamour editorial