Fig Leaf

In perfume, fig leaf is the smell of the fig tree rather than the fruit: green, sappy and a little bitter, with a soft, milky sweetness underneath that can come close to coconut. It is also one of the notes perfumers almost always have to build from other materials, because the natural extract of the leaf is no longer allowed.

The tree

The common fig, Ficus carica, belongs to the mulberry family and is native to the Mediterranean and western Asia. It is thought to be among the very first plants people cultivated. Its leaves are large, rough and deeply lobed, and its branches and leaves bleed a white, milky latex when they are cut or broken. Anyone who has picked a fig on a hot afternoon knows the smell that goes with it: bruised leaf, warm bark and that sticky milk on the fingers.

What it smells like

A fig note usually has two sides. The first is sharp and vegetal: a crushed stem, a torn leaf, something close to chlorophyll. The second is creamy and soft, the milk of the sap, with a lactonic sweetness that some people read as coconut. Many fig notes add a third, dry and woody, for the bark of the tree. The fruit itself, jammy and sweet, plays a smaller part than most people expect.

Why fig leaf absolute is not used

An absolute can be extracted from fig leaves, but the leaves and their sap contain furocoumarins, psoralen and bergapten among them, which make skin react to sunlight. Fig leaf absolute is on the IFRA list of prohibited materials, and the European cosmetics regulation, which Britain kept in its own law, lists it among the substances that may not be used as a fragrance ingredient. Bergapten is the same compound that complicates bergamot.

How perfumers build a fig note

So fig in perfume is an accord, assembled from materials that are permitted. The green, stem-like side often comes from an oxime sold as Stemone, which perfumers reach for in fig leaf accords, along with other leafy green notes. The milky side usually comes from gamma-lactones such as gamma-octalactone, the same family that gives coconut its creaminess. Cedar or another dry wood supplies the bark. In a composition, fig leaf tends to bring a milky softness to green notes that might otherwise be too sharp.

In our fragrances

In Henley, a fig leaf note sits at the heart, green and cool, beside a whisper of orange blossom and a clean linen accord that smells of starched shirts drying in the sun. Above it are bergamot, cucumber and garden mint; beneath it, white cedar, ambrette and vetiver. It is the river in the first week of July.

The Drawing Room Candle carries fig wood, with smoked black tea, bergamot and beeswax: the drier, woodier side of the same tree. To try our six eaux de parfum side by side, the Discovery Set holds them all.

All the notes