Demeter

The Familiar Fragrances of Demeter

There are many perfumers that offer unique fragrances, but few do it like Demeter. Where most will offer some unusual composition of multi-faceted notes of scent, Demeter strips everything to its most basic – the everyday scents we all encounter every day, the scents that make us happy. For those who like the smell of chocolate chip cookies or fresh brownies, Demeter has a fragrance for those. Cucumber or tomatoes? Those are covered as well. Dirt and grass? Not only are they available, they are wildly popular. There’s something special about Demeter’s amazingly simple idea that keeps it apart from other perfumers.

The Power of Simplicity

Demeter is an American perfume house known for producing scents that are different, to say the least. Cakes, fruits, drinks, flowers, soil, and other unusual essences are used to compose these simple, yet intriguing, fragrances.

The Demeter Fragrance Library, as it’s called, has more than 250 separate fragrances, each one of them inspired by a single note from every day experience. The vast majority of them will be instantly recognizable upon smelling them. There are scents that are not so unusual for perfumes, like honeysuckle or baby powder, and then there are those good smells that people love, but no one ever thought to make into a wearable fragrance before – vanilla cake batter, leather, gin and tonic, and the like. To Demeter, a fragrance should be about experiencing the things that make life so wonderful.

The ‘secret’ to Demeter’s success is its simplicity. They don’t create a complex scent with top, middle, and bottom notes to evoke some kind of emotion. A traditional fragrance embodies a personality or a lifestyle. There is no mistaking a Demeter scent for other than what it is. It is a much more primal and direct sort of fragrance that triggers fond memories in many and tells more about the wearer than more traditional fragrances ever could.

A Library Sampler

Demeter has another distinction: everything they make is made in America, excepting their soaps, which are made in Italy. The scents, however, are universal. The vast majority of them are for both men and women, because they smell the same on anyone, no matter who wears them. Following is just a small sample of what can be found in the Demeter Fragrance Library:

• Banana Flambe: Just like the classic desert. It’s banana, sugar, and a warm overlay of cognac.
• Between the Sheets: This is one of the more complicated scents in the Library, but there’s no denying what it is: a fragrance that smells like the fruity rum drink. It’s easy to smell the mango, guava, passionfruit, orange, lemon, and rum.
• Brownie: Rich chocolate infuses this fragrance.
• Dirt: Just as it says on the bottle. This fragrance smells just like freshly tilled earth.
• Gin & Tonic: Another fragrance from the Happy Hour Collection, which has a number of scents related to cocktail drinks.
• Grass: Like dirt, this is exactly what it sounds like. Anyone who like the smell of freshly cut grass would love this fragrance.
• Jelly Belly Fruit Salad: The popular candy has given Demeter Fragrance Library to produce a number of perfumes based on their product. Fruit Salad is a mix of a number of different flavors, including pear, raspberry, peach, and tangerine.
• Laundromat: Freshly laundered clothing is a delightful smell, and this fragrance reproduces that.
• Leather: This is the fragrance of finely aged leather.
• Orchid: Demeter produces floral fragrances, as well, but like their other scents, they are a single note. This one is just orchid.
• Rain: Many people adore the scent of falling rain. Demeter has bottled it so it can be taken anywhere, even on sunny days. Don’t feel like rain? There is also Snow and Thunderstorm.
• Vanilla Ice Cream: Another entry in the Sweet Delights Collection, inspired by that special treat, vanilla ice cream.

Single Note Genius

Demeter fragrances are produced by what the company calls ‘headspace technology’. They use a sample of the subject, like birthday cake, Hawaiian surf, or brownies, to analyze the air around it, trying to pick out the exact molecules that produce scent.

They have determined that humans can only distinguish 130 separate fragrant molecules. It is the combination of certain of these molecules in differing amounts that produce all the different scents human beings can discern. Demeter uses this knowledge to create their fragrances, finding the perfect components to create that perfect note.