Ambergris Once Upon A Time

The blurb from a September essay on Longreads caught my eye- Sometimes it takes a touch of darkness to create something alluring. I had to open up the essay by Katy Kelleher, ‘The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Perfume’.

This essay isn’t pushing strongly for animal rights or environmental concerns. It simply lists out facts of how perfume is manufactured through the centuries, and readers tabulate the costs on their own. Of course I still use leather, so I can’t be hypocritical and say I don’t use animal products or attempt to be a vegetarian. But we all have personal biases and prejudices, and will stay away from certain products or ingredients which we don’t agree with.

I use perfume daily. Except when I’m traveling, hiking or exercising, then I swop out to one of those organic natural plant-based spritzes. Perfume uses animal extracts and a ton of chemicals. I don’t know how my skin absorbs and reacts with them. I’ve been using perfume for two decades. It’s rather terrifying when I think about it in detail. That goes for anti-perspirants too. So I’ve switched over to using deodorants. On that note, I really hate the smell of musk, lavender, geranium, jasmine and sandalwood and sandalwood in perfumes and essential oils.

Ethier doesn’t use any synthetics in her perfume, nor does she use animal products, though animal scents are a traditional ingredient in perfumery. Not only are these compounds expensive, but true mammalian products like musk, civet, and ambergris often come at a cruel cost. Whales have been murdered for their oily blubber and concealed stomach bile, civets are caged and prodded for their fear-induced anal gland secretions, and musk is harvested from the glands of slaughtered deer. Many people know that perfumers build their trade on the graves of millions of tiny white flowers, but fewer people realize they also bottle and sell the byproducts of animal pain and suffering. Perfumers who use synthetic materials are exempt, in a sense, as are those who use found or vintage materials. Ethier’s ambergris is “quite old” and reportedly beach-found (“I hope it is,” she says). But even perfumes that use synthetic compounds or salvaged bile carry the whiff of death; the history of the industry is seeped in it, and that smell doesn’t wash out easily. 

There’s a reason perfumers use these notes. They enhance the floral scents, undercutting lightness with a reminder of darkness. Animal products are the antiheroes in this drama — even when you hate them, you still, just a little, love them. That’s how siren songs work, and ambergris sings the loudest. Once, Ethier made a perfume using her most prized ingredients. She mixed 100-year-old sandalwood essence with ambergris tincture and frangipane and boronia absolutes, two flowers native to Central America and Tasmania, respectively. It was the first time she’d used ambergris, and this one-off perfume was so lovely that “it was like gold-washing something.” She remembers wistfully, “It was so beautiful.”