THE STORY BEHIND NIGHT STAR

THE STORY BEHIND NIGHT STAR

An altered aromatic sensation based on an exact copy of the aroma of what we called “Rosa Maris”- the rose of the sea; inspired by foundings from German perfumer Adolphe Saalfeld’s bag of perfumes that had been found in the debris field of Titanic. A central theme of the composition is rose - The Rose Jacqueminot.

Scents of Time as a Company started when we originally contacted RMS Titanic in Atlanta after reading in January 2001 that a complete bag of perfumes had been found in the debris field of Titanic and that when the submersible placed the bag on the mother ship it literally smelled of roses! The bag’s story is as follows:

Adolphe Saalfeld originally hailed from near Leipzig in Germany, but settled near Manchester in England. A chemist by trade, he diversified into perfumery, and decided to seek his fortune in America, boarding RMS Titanic with his bag of samples. Adolphe travelled first class return ticket, numbered 19988 and costing thirty pounds and ten shillings for cabin C-106 aboard the White Star liner.

Here is a note from his diary:

“I just had an hour’s roaming about on this wonderful boat. I liked my cabin very much – it’s just like a bed-sitting room and rather large. They are still busy to finish the last things on board.”

And later, on departure from Queenstown (now Cobh) in Ireland:

“Dear Wifey,

After a fair night’s rest and an excellent breakfast I am enjoying a promenade in glorious weather. The wind is fresh and the sea moderate, but on this big boat one hardly notices any movement. I write these lines just before we are getting into Queenstown so that you get them tomorrow morning. I shall not be able to write you again before getting to New York.

Fondest love to all

Adolphe

P S shall write to office on arrival and Eric will no doubt phone you at once”

(When eventually auctioned many years later, the letter was seen to be postmarked “ Manchester 4.30 pm April 12, 1912”) Adolphe survived the sinking of Titanic, and was rescued by the Carpathia some hours later on Lifeboat number three. But his leather bag containing two wallets with over sixty phials of assorted fragrances and essential oils, went two and a half miles down to the Atlantic bottom:

“The Captain and Officers of the Carpathia did all that was possible to make us comfortable and to those that were sick or injured, they gave their tenderest care. The icebergs were huge and the weather extremely rough on the voyage to New York.” Adolphe’s bag plunged to the ocean floor taking over ninety years to be re-discovered. RMS Titanic Inc. were salvaging in the debris field when the claw of the small submersible, which took four hours to gain the ocean floor, grabbed a leather bag to bring to the surface.

Here is the newspaper article of that event:

"April 17, 2001

Dik Barton is a salvage expert working with RMS Titanic Inc. – the company that holds the rights to the ship’s wreckage. He and a diving crew were on a mission last summer to recover personal effects for an exhibition when they came across a small leather pouch. “We didn’t know what we discovered until we hit the surface,” says Barton. “But we knew this was special immediately when we took the pouch from the collection basket [of artifacts] and brought it to the laboratory on the ship. Ascent filled the entire lab with Edwardian perfume.” In a secret warehouse location near Detroit the bag of samples were examined and restored by a team from Eastern Michigan University, and Scents of Time were called in to take over the recovery process by sampling the phials. Many were intact as they were safely kept in aluminum tubes, and since the liquid inside acquired the pressure of the ocean water outside, had not exploded.'

Scents of Time brought this ocean treasure back home to the UK to examine with sophisticated apparatus – gas layer chromatographs and a mass spectrometer. A combination of the nose of an experienced perfumer and the “aroma print” thus captured allowed an exact copy of the aroma of what we called “Rosa Maris”- the rose of the sea., which was tempered a little for modern tastes without altering the aromatic sensation.

And there was something else of interest in the perfume formula. A central theme of the composition is rose. And it may be a particular rose. In 1906, six years before Titanic sailed, Francois Coty brought out a fragrance called La Rose Jacqueminot.

The Rose Jacqueminot was first grown in France in 1853, and has a strong rosaceous aroma. General Jacqueminot had been a revered veteran of the Napoleonic wars and the Rose was named in his honor.

It is known that as a newcomer to the industry Adolphe Saalfeld visited Grasse, European centre of the essential oil business, many times. He modeled some of his fragrances on the best sellers of the day, and La Rose Jacqueminot was one of them.

What makes this story of interest is that in the name of this particular rose we have the two lovers of the recent Titanicmovie – Rose and Jack! Saalfeld was also experimenting with the new chemistry of synthesis from the later 1880’s in using Vanillin, the key aroma ingredient of Vanilla.

Finally, in the form of its essential oil, Mayflower (Hawthorn) too had once again set sail for America. A perfume is composed of up to a few hundred aromas living peacefully together in their container. Any form of energy or chemistry - such as heat or light - and in particular oxygen - can affect the perfume dramatically, which is why Scents of Time always advise that fragrances are kept in the cold and in the dark.

What better proof do we have of this sage advice than those sixty phials of fragrance and oil which rested on the sea bed, in the cold and dark, for nearly one hundred years before being recovered and brought to the surface – most as intact aromatically as the day they were first created.

A description of that fateful night when Titanic sunk was given by passenger Lawrence Beesley: “The night was one of the most beautiful I have ever seen: the sky without a single cloud to mar the perfect brilliance of the stars…and in the place of the ship in which all our interest had been concentrated for so long…in place of Titanic, we had the level sea now stretching in an unbroken expanse to the horizon…with no indication on the surface that the waves had just closed over the most wonderful vessel ever built by man’s hand; the stars looked down just the same way and it was bitterly cold.”

As a research exercise this had been a magnificent achievement. But it stopped there. After all, Titanic’s disaster was less than a hundred years ago, fifteen hundred perished and the experience was still raw in some people’s memories.

We genuinely believed Adolphe would not have approved of a replica fragrance being marketed. Adolphe carried his bag onto RMS Titanic with a tag labeled “Wanted First Class – For baggage room”.

His treasures would travel with him in cabin C106. It is reported that Adolphe moved from Manchester to Twickenham on his return to England, in part to try and get away from the terrible memories of Titanic’s demise. But they never quite left him alone. He had his chauffeur drive him around London at night when he couldn’t sleep.

And there was another probable detractor. From conversations with Elizabeth Dean I felt that she too would not have approved. Millvina (Elizabeth) Dean , the last survivor of that fateful night, died aged 97 on May 31st 2009 near Southampton , England. She was the liner’s youngest passenger just two months old at the time. Her family were third class passengers moving to Kansas. She and her mother and brother survived. Her father did not.

And so the brief was radically changed. Chris Sheldrake, sorcerer’s apprentice to Serge Lutens and now working for Chanel was asked to create a fragrance of the future- NIGHT STAR. For steam ship read star ship. For latitude and longitude read galactic coordinates. And Night Star, a symbol of future hope, would be dedicated to Millvina, who, along with Adolphe, has now joined the night stars above.

There is apparently a planet – the third from its own star, just under twenty one light years away. The planet exists in what NASA term the “goldilocks “ zone. Not too hot, not too cold. it is likely to have water and to support life. What kind of flowers would it have? They would not be green, as the radiation from this star is different from our own sun. And so photosynthesis would not make chlorophyll. What would the perfume of ASTEROSE smell like? It would be composed of the elements of the periodic table, which exist throughout the Universe- Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen and Carbon. The brief on NIGHT STAR was to create a fantasy fragrance based on earthlike aromas which would be both alien in make up, and yet have a comfortable, earthly feel, reflecting Gliese 581d’s potential as our new home.

THE PERFUME NAME

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose. By any other name would smell as sweet. - William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (II,ii)

NIGHT STAR - From the star Gliese, and its planet Gliese 581d - a possible new location for humankind.