Amber

The story of amber in perfumery is one of beautiful confusion. The word "amber" derives from the Arabic "anbar," which originally referred to ambergris — the waxy, gray substance produced in the digestive tract of sperm whales and found washed up on beaches from the Arabian Sea to the coasts of New Zealand. Ambergris, with its complex marine, woody, and sweet facets, was among the most prized aromatics in the medieval Islamic world, traded along the same routes as frankincense and myrrh. Over centuries, the term migrated: "amber" came to describe not just the whale-derived substance but also the fossilized tree resin treasured since antiquity and, eventually, the warm resinous accord that dominates perfumery today.

Labdanum, the resinous heart of the modern amber accord, has its own ancient lineage. Herodotus wrote of it in the fifth century BCE, and it appears in Egyptian, Greek, and Roman pharmacopoeias as both a medicine and a fumigant. The Cistus bush was sacred to several Mediterranean cults, and labdanum was burned as incense in temples long before it found its way into perfume bottles. By the early twentieth century, the amber accord had become the defining signature of the oriental fragrance family — Guerlain's Shalimar, launched in 1925, is perhaps the most celebrated example, its amber base of benzoin, vanilla, and labdanum creating a warmth that has defined sensuality in Western perfumery for a century.