Solar notes

When perfume sends us on vacation! Far more than a mere accessory or aesthetic ornament, perfume evokes childhood scents, gourmand recollections, or sweet memories of vacations in the sun. Solar notes are accords that would not, at first glance, seem linked to the smell of beach, sand, or sea. Solar accords play primarily on our memories, including the very precise memory of a product that was for years the only one used on every beach: Ambre Solaire. Of this bestselling suncare product, we have retained a precise olfactory memory that today reveals itself thanks to the famous benzyl salicylate molecule.

Solar notes in perfumery were born on the beach!

The long-awaited arrival of paid vacation in France created a new need: suncare products. Having the time to tan on a beach became a common privilege, and to protect against sunburn it became necessary to use a suitable product. Eugène Schueller, founder of l'Oréal, then decided to develop a suncare product based on a synthetic molecule already known in the United States for several years: benzyl salicylate. Thus, in 1935, the famous Ambre Solaire was launched, built around this molecule.

Discovering a few years later that benzyl salicylate was in fact not filtering enough against UV rays, l'Oréal decided to remove it from the Ambre Solaire formula. This proved to be a serious mistake! The French were so attached to this particular “sun” scent that Ambre Solaire sales dropped. The group therefore decided to use benzyl salicylate again, no longer as a filter but as a fragrance ingredient. The solar notes that adorn the accords of our perfumes never again left our delicate sense of smell!

Bringing sunshine to our perfumes through solar accords!

The solar note created through benzyl salicylate is composed of ylang-ylang, frangipani, tiare flower, and carnation. Thanks to Ambre Solaire, this note became a staple of our cosmetics and later of our perfumes.

The solar note has the advantage of pairing with numerous fragrances; nevertheless, one of the best-known families of solar perfumes is the floral-salicylate family. The best-known perfume in this floral-solar family is L'Air du Temps by Nina Ricci, released in 1948. While solar accords had already been used previously, for instance by Fleurs de Rocaille by Caron, L'Air du Temps was the very first to exploit solar accords together with floral notes in such a distinctive and clear way.

Perfumes with solar notes clearly still make up a large part of our preferences in fragrance, so much do they evoke the pleasant olfactory memory of vacations and the beach. Although out of favor for a few years, solar and exotic scents have returned more than ever to our skin and our necks, thirsty for sun and distant scents.