Old scent

Irish podcast and news site Evoke revealed some trivia about the perfume Kiehl’s Original Musk for men and women. It was not newly formulated when it was launched in 2004. Perfumer Prince Karl of Russia had created the scent in the 1920s, it reported.

However, the blend of bergamot, orange blossom, ylang-ylang, neroli and rose was deemed far “too sexy” at the time, so it was hidden away in a vat labeled “Love Potion.”

After 40 years, the son of the New York City skincare store owner, Aaron Morse, discovered it. Morse replaced a few ingredients before launching the risque scent.

But far older are the scents of Future Society, a biotech fragrance company.

Working with biotech firm Ginkgo Bioworks, Future Society created six perfumes out of the more than five million botanical specimens at the Harvard University Herbaria, CNN reported.

“We set out to make scents we’ve never smelled before and fragrances that were previously not possible to make,” Jasmina Aganovic, founder and CEO of Future Society told CNN in an interview.

The process entailed sequencing the DNA of a plant to identify scent molecules and get a profile of its smell. Perfumers then determined if the scent could be recreated in a perfume.

The fragrances developed by Future Society were derived from the Orbexilum stipulatum, a herbaceous, flowering plant that last flowered in 1881; the extinct Leucadendron grandiflorum, which last bloomed in 1960; the Wendlandia angustifolia, which went extinct in 1917 following a drought; and the Hibiscadelphus wilderianus, a hibiscus flower from Hawaii that died out in 1912 due to deforestation.