Recently, I had a perfumer’s ingredients inspiration strike, after having become fascinated by a product that I had made, out of vanilla beans, for discovering that it greatly soothed my neck and back joint pain, upon application. It was a new discovery, so it was exciting, for me. I started to branch out, in seeking out other vanilla fragrances, and I decided to head over to The Grove, a wonderful Los Angeles landmark outdoor shopping mall, adjacent to Miracle Mile. It features popular shopping destinations such as an Apple Store, a Barnes and Noble book shop, a large farmer’s market, which is one of the most popular draws of the location, with dozens of restaurants and food and snack specialty shops. There’s also a fantastic Nordstrom department store, that I had visited, fondly, several times before. I figured that they would have a good selection of men’s fragrances, that I would enjoy sampling, and I wanted to smell Tom Ford’s Vanilla Sex, knowing that Tom Ford’s fragrances draw a lot of attention and fanfare, and that they also feature fragrance compositions that highlight singular notes of aroma compounds.
As it turns out, the men’s fragrance section at Nordstrom, at The Grove, is very spacious and extensive. It goes far beyond a single rack of colognes, with numerous other racks covering a large space to walk through. I was also on the lookout for a fragrance that I had admired, recently, that I had trouble identifying - a powerful and compelling smoky woods fragrance note, that happens to be Ambrocenide, which is one of the aroma compounds I purchased, this time around, from Perfumer Supply House. I was glad to discover that I had found the ingredient I had been seeking out. Here’s a photo of the ingredients I purchased.
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| My fragrance ingredients haul of 9 items, from Perfumer Supply House, which I’m very pleased with. |
I was pleased to find Ultravanil online, at Perfumer Supply House, which is one of the primary components of Tom Ford’s Vanilla Sex, and I got to smell the fragrance at Nordstrom; it’s very pleasant, and an alluring vanilla scent, that’s quite beautiful. Being that I could purchase Ultravanil, myself, from Perfumer Supply House, I got to looking around the site for other ingredients that sounded compelling, for throwing together a nice vanilla fragrance composition of my own.
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| September 2025 haul from Perfumer Supply House |
After I placed the order, I started thinking about what sorts of fragrances would go with a vanilla-based composition, and I thought about rum, which is another common tropics delight that goes well with vanilla. Perfumer Supply House also happens to carry Rum Extract on Crodamol, and it’s a very lovely rum fragrance ingredient. It smells just right, like rum. I took some influence of tropical and sunny types of fragrances to add, such as Melonal, which is a delightfully refreshing melon note, and Sinensal Natural ex Orange, which is a true-to-form representation of orange. I threw in some light splashes (several drops) of each, in to my fragrance composition, and I put a helping of Tonka Bean Absolute in, as well, which complements vanilla nicely. Periploca is a wonderful vanilla almond gourmand type of fragrance, and it feels very familiar, not too spicy or exotic. The floral ingredients that I had purchased, Jonquille and Narcisse Absolutes, are moderately floral fragrances, with a prominent green character to them. I put in just one drop of the Jonquille. 5 drops of Ambrocenide were very powerful, in the fragrance composition I made, so I doubled the amount of Ultravanil to about 21 drops, which balanced out the composition nicely. Cetalox is a nice, pungent, musky compound, and it goes nicely in the mix.
The fragrance spray bottle I made up turned out to be a very pleasant and fine smelling fragrance, and I feel like I could enjoy this one, rather than buy Vanilla Sex, outright, although the Ultravanil ingredient tip was a good one. It’s a very lovely and powerful vanilla ingredient, and the spray I made smells very nice. The total cost of the ingredients was just over $200 or so, and I feel like this investment is possibly the best selection of ingredients, for the price, out of all of my fragrance ingredients hauls I’ve ever done. This fragrance is very satisfactory. Feel free to try it out, for yourself!
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