Summer By Kenzo Women's Fragrance

Summer by Kenzo: a Kenzo perfume for women launched in 2006 with  surprising notes of citron, bergamot, violet, mimosa, musk, styrax and amber.

Citron Fruit

Citron is a fragrant citrus fruit. The designation medica was given by Linnaeus is apparently derived from the ancient name "Median or Persian apple" that was reported by Theophrastus, who believed it was native to Persia or the land of the Medes;  Theophrastus notes its smooth sharp thorns, like those of a pear, the fragrant but inedible 'apple', which is known to keep moths from clothes, and the fact that it bears its 'apples' all season; for when some have been gathered, the flower of others is on the tree and it is ripening others.... This tree, grows in Persia and Media. Citron was the first of the citrus fruits to appear in the Mediterranean Basin. The essential oil of the flavedo (the outermost layer of rind) was also known to be an antibiotic. The juice from Citron with wine was considered an effective antidote to poison, as reported by Theophrastus.

Today citron is used for the fragrance that is found in Summer by Kenzo perfume or zest of its flavedo, but the most important part is still the inner rind.

Bergamot Orange Tree

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 Summer by Kenzo fragrance/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.

Violet Plant

Violet/Viola is a genus of flowering plants in the violet family Violaceae. It is the largest genus in the family, containing between 525 and 600 species. Most species are found in the temperate Northern Hemisphere, however some are also found in widely divergent areas such as Hawaii, Australasia, and the Andes. Some Viola species are perennial plants, some are annual plants, and a few are small shrubs.  A large number of species, varieties and cultivars are grown in gardens for their ornamental flowers and in ladies perfume/Summer by Kenzo perfume.

In horticulture the term "pansy" is normally used for those multi-colored, large-flowered cultivars which are raised annually or biennially from seed and used extensively in bedding. The terms "viola" and "violet" are normally reserved for small-flowered annuals or perennials, including the species. Viola odorata is used as a source for scents in the perfume industry. Violet is known to have a 'flirty' scent as its fragrance comes and goes.

Ionone is present in the flowers, which turn off the ability for humans to smell the fragrant compound for moments at a time.

Mimosa Acacia Plant

Mimosoideae are a subfamily of the flowering plant family Fabaceae (Leguminosae) characterized by flowers with small petals and numerous prominent stamens. This subfamily is subdivided into four tribes: Acacieae, Ingeae, Mimoseae, and Mimozygantheae. Some classification systems, for example the Cronquist system, treat Fabaceae in a narrow sense, raising Mimisoideae to the rank of family as Mimosaceae. The Angiosperm Phylogeny Group treats Fabaceae in the broad sense.

Acacia, known commonly as acacia, thorntree, whistling thorn, or wattle, is a genus of shrubs and trees belonging to the subfamily Mimosoideae of the family Fabaceae, described by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1773 based on the African species Acacia nilotica. Many non-Australian species tend to be thorny, where as the majority of Australian acacias are not. All species are pod-bearing, with sap and leaves often bearing large amounts of tannins and condensed tannins that historically found use as pharmaceuticals and preservatives. The generic name derives from (akakia), the name given by early Greek botanist-physician Pedanius Dioscorides (middle to late first century) to the medicinal tree A. nilotica in his book Materia Medica.

This name derives from the Greek word for its characteristic thorns, (akis; "thorn"). The species name nilotica was given by Linnaeus from this tree's best-known range along the Nile river. The genus Acacia previously contained roughly 1,300 species, about 960 of them native to Australia, with the remainder spread around the tropical to warm-temperate regions of both hemispheres, including Europe, Africa, southern Asia, and the Americas. However, in 2005, the genus was divided into five separate genera under the tribe "Acacieae". The genus Acacia was retained for the majority of the Australian species and a few in tropical Asia, Madagascar, and Pacific Islands.

Most of the species outside Australia, and a small number of Australian species, were reclassified into Vachellia and Senegalia. The two final genera, Acaciella and Mariosousa, each contains about a dozen species from the Americas. Vachellia farnesiana is used in the perfume industry due to its strong fragrance. The use of acacia as a fragrance dates back centuries.

Summer By Kenzo

Siberian Musk Deer

Musk is a class of aromatic substances commonly used as base notes in Summer by Kenzo/perfumery. They include glandular secretions from animals such as the musk deer, numerous plants emitting similar fragrances, and artificial substances with similar odors. Musk was a name originally given to a substance with a penetrating odor obtained from a gland of the male musk deer. The substance has been used as a popular perfume fixative since ancient times and is one of the more expensive animal products in the world.

The name originates from the Sanskrit word for "testicle", and has come to encompass a wide variety of aromatic substances with similar odors despite their often differing chemical structures. Until the late 19th century, natural musk was used extensively in perfumery until economic and ethical motives led to the adoption of synthetic musk, which is now used almost exclusively. The organic compound primarily responsible for the characteristic odor of musk is muscone.

Summer By Kenzo

Strax Plant And Summer By Kenzo

Styrax is a species of large shrubs or small trees in the family Styracaceae, mostly native to warm temperate to tropical regions of the Northern Hemisphere, with the majority in eastern and southeastern Asia, but also crossing the equator in South America. Common names include styrax, or the more ambiguous storax, snowbell, and benzoin. The genus Pamphilia, sometimes regarded as distinct, is now included within Styrax based on analysis of morphological and DNA sequence data. The spicebush is a different plant, in the family Lauraceae.

Styrax trees grow to 2–14 m tall, and have alternate, deciduous or evergreen simple ovate leaves 1–18 cm long and 2–10 cm broad. The flowers are pendulous, with a white 5-10-lobed corolla, produced 3-30 together on open or dense panicles 5–25 cm long. The fruit is an oblong dry drupe, smooth and lacking ribs or narrow wings, unlike the fruit of the related snowdrop trees (Halesia) and epaulette trees. Benzoin resin, a dried exudation from pierced bark, is currently produced from various Styrax species native to Sumatra, Java, and Thailand.

Commonly traded are the resins of S. tonkinensis, S. benzoin, and S. benzoides. The name "benzoin" is probably derived from Arabic lubān jāwī  ("Javan frankincense"); compare the obsolete terms "gum benjamin" and "benjoin". This incidentally shows that the Arabs were aware of the origin of these resins, and that by the late Middle Ages at latest international trade in them was probably of major importance.The chemical benzoin, despite the apparent similarity of the name, is not contained in benzoin resin in measurable quantities.

However, benzoin resin does contain small amounts of the hydrocarbon styrene, named however for Levant styrax, from which it was first isolated, and not for the genus Styrax itself; industrially produced styrene is now used to produce polystyrene plastics, including Styrofoam. Since Antiquity, styrax resin has been used in Summer by Kenzo perfume/perfumery, certain types of incense, and medicines.

                                                                                                               Summer By Kenzo

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 Summer by Kenzo/perfumery.

Labdanum's odor is variously described as amber, animalic, sweet, woody, ambergris, dry musk, or leathery.

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