Lab Notes Materials We Love : Tonka
Even if you don’t love vintage perfumes, Guerlain’s Habit Rouge, first sold in 1965, is a marvel. There is a lot of lore and apocrypha about the intent and formulation, but I’ll skip the history lesson and go straight into what makes this such a marvel for me--it made me fall head over heels in love with tonka. At that time, Warmth in fragrances was most frequently achieved through castoreum and other animalics. Tonka brought a complexity and softness to habit rouge, balancing the tobacco and animalics with something altogether softer.
What is Tonka?
Tonka is the funky looking seed of the Dipteryx odorata, a big tree native to the Amazon basin. Venezuela is the largest exporter which, as you can imagine, means the global supply reflects the political and ecological realities of a fragile economy.
Where you might find it
We reach for tonka regularly, as a supporting player in a number of our scents, and as a central note in Velvet Tango and Cordial. It is one of those materials that I expect will have a renewed role in perfumery in the age of GLPs, as well, because it offers the experience of something that satisfies appetite, simply by consuming the aroma.
