Wool

Note Profile

Animal

About

Wool is keratin fibre coated in lanolin, and the lanolin is the smell. Crude lanolin is 5-25% of the weight of a freshly shorn fleece, it is a wax secreted by sebaceous glands, and it is the closest animal product to human sebum in composition - which is why a wool jumper smells faintly of a person. Purified lanolin is odourless, so the smell lives in the free fatty acids and the matter the fleece has absorbed, not in the esters that make up its bulk.

Scent Profile

Waxy is the dominant facet and it is the literal one: lanolin is wool grease, a wax, and crude lanolin is 5-25% of the weight of a freshly shorn fleece. Animalic sits second - sheepy, faintly human, and frankly wet-dog when the fibre is damp. A warm clean-musk skin quality runs under both, because lanolin and sebum are close in composition. Under those a sour edge that is real chemistry: the sources name short-chain fatty acids, which is exactly the rancid volatile acidity the sour facet was added for.

ScentWheel

Breadthfocused

EnvelopeBase · ~12h lasting

Family Waxy & Fatty, Amber · Musk · Leather

Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.

Origin

Sheep, Ovis aries, and specifically the grease on the fibre rather than the fibre itself. Lanolin is recovered by scouring raw wool in hot water with detergent, which also strips dirt and suint - the dried sweat salts - and the recovered grease goes to cosmetics, not to fragrance. No perfumery extraction of wool exists, so the note is reconstructed from animalic musks, waxy lanolin-adjacent materials and warm skin bases.

Usage in Perfumery

A base modifier for textile warmth with an animalic undertone. It is the dirty member of the fabric notes: linen, cotton-flower and clean-musk are all built on clean musk and aldehydes, and wool is defined against them as less clean than cotton and more textured than cashmere. Used to make a composition feel lived-in and worn rather than laundered.