Kenzo Air Men Fragrance

Kenzo Air: a Kenzo fragrance/cologne for men launched in 2003; acclaimed notes of anise, bergamot, Haitian Vetiver, amber and light woods.

Anise Plant

Anise is a aniseed which is a flowering plant. This plant is found in the eastern Mediterranean and Southwest Asia. Its flavor has similarities with other spices. Ring-wood is a aniseed tree that can be found in the Australian rainforest.

The leaves are aromatic and has an essential oil that compares to real aniseed, the leave's are used as bushfood spice and processed for essential oils, and is known as aniseed myrtle or anise myrtle. The essential oil in anise has a chemical known as anethole. Anethole is a  aroma compound that occurs in nature that is used in Kenzo Air/perfumery, in essential oils. It contributes to the distinctive flavor of anise and fennel.

Anethole is only slightly soluble in water but exhibits high solubility in ethanol.

Italian Bergamot Fruit

Bergamot orange, is a fragrant fruit the size of an orange, with a yellow color similar to a lemon. Genetic research into the ancestral origins of extant citrus cultivars found bergamot orange to be a likely hybrid of Citrus limetta and Citrus aurantium. Bergamot peel is used in Kenzo Air cologne for men/perfumery for its ability to combine with an array of scents to form a bouquet of aromas which complement each other. Approximately one third of all men's and about half of women’s perfumes contain bergamot essential oil.

Bergamot essential oil is a cold-pressed essential oil produced by cells inside the rind of a bergamot orange fruit. It is a common top note in perfumes. The first record of bergamot oil as fragrance ingredient is 1714, to be found in the Farina Archive in Cologne Germany. One hundred bergamot oranges will yield about three ounces (85 grams) of bergamot oil. The scent of bergamot essential oil is similar to a sweet light orange peel oil with a floral note.

Haitian Vetiver Grass And Kenzo Air

Haitian Vetiver is used for the fragrant essential oil that is extracted from it's roots. Because of the excellent fixative properties, vetiver is used most of the time in western perfumes. Haiti is one of the major producers. Vetiver processing was introduced to Haiti in the 1940s. 

In 1958, Franck Leger established a plant on the grounds of his father's alcohol distillery. Pierre Leger, the son of Franck took over the in 1984. Pierre expanded the plant to stills, each built to handle one metric ton of vetiver roots. The Total production increased to 20 to 60 tons per year for ten years,  making it the worlds largest producer of Vetiver.

Vetiver oil is extracted by steam distillation. Another major operation in the field is the one owned by the Boucard family. Reunion produces the highest quality of vetiver oil called bourbon vetiver with the next being Haiti and then Java.

Amber Stones

Amber is fossilized tree resin (not sap), which has been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since Neolithic times. Much valued from antiquity to the present as a gemstone, amber is made into a variety of decorative objects. Amber is used as an ingredient in perfumes, as a healing agent in folk medicine, and as jewelry. "Amber" perfumes may be created using combinations of labdanum, benzoin resin, copal (itself a type of tree resin used in incense manufacture), vanilla, Dammara resin and/or synthetic materials.

Labdanum is produced today mainly for the perfume industry. The raw resin is usually extracted by boiling the leaves and twigs. An absolute is also obtained by solvent extraction.  An essential oil is produced by steam distillation.

The raw gum is a black (sometimes dark brown), fragrant mass containing up to 20% or more of water. It is plastic but not pourable, and becomes brittle with age. The absolute is dark amber-green and very thick at room temperature. The fragrance is more refined than the raw resin. The odor is very rich, complex and tenacious.

Labdanum is much valued in perfumery because of its resemblance to ambergris, which has been banned from use in many countries because its precursor originates from the sperm whale, which is an endangered species: although the best-quality ambergris is found free-floating or washed up onshore (long exposure to sunlight, air and water removes offensive-smelling components of the fresh substance), and thus raises no ethical objections, a lower-quality version can also be recovered from some fraction of freshly slaughtered whales, and so may encourage poaching of sperm whales. Labdanum is the main ingredient used when making the scent of amber in perfumery. Labdanum's odor is variously described as amber, animalic, sweet, woody, ambergris, dry musk, or leathery.

Light Woods

Agar wood is a Light wood used in Kenzo Air man fragrance/perfumery, which is also known as oud, oodh or agar, which is a dark heartwood that is found in Aquilaria and Gyrinops. A dark aromatic is produced by the tree, which has a very dense, dark, resin embedded heartwood. The resin embedded wood is commonly called gaharu, jinko, aloes wood, agar wood and or oud.

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