By Rivka Borochov
Dabbing on a bit of Finjan or Sahleb immediately whisks one away to the Arabian markets in the Old City of Jerusalem. The scent of Zohar might cast a mystical effect, while Yasmin reminds you of spring in Tel Aviv.
Ayala Moriel, an artisanal perfumer from Israel now living in Vancouver, Canada, brings the smell of the Middle East to the West. Moriel’s perfume house creates several lines of products out of 400 or so natural essences made from flowers, trees and spices.
One line is custom-made scents that she blends by hand for clients. Designed to suit their individual tastes, no two private-label scents are alike. The secret recipe is kept under lock and key reserved only for that customer.
Ayala Moriel’s natural perfumes contain rare ingredients. Moriel, 36, will not mimic popular perfumes on the market -- even if she could. The raw materials are very different: “I can’t make something that smells like Gucci or Chanel, because I don’t use synthetics,” she says.
On demand, Moriel also creates white-label scents for companies that want their own in-house perfume, or for products like all-natural cleaning supplies that need the perfect natural smell.
In another direction, Moriel has created a line of about 50 signature ready-to-wear perfumes. The newest one is Orcas, made in part from a rare whale secretion called ambergris.
Other rare ingredients in her special perfumes can include the scent of an iris flower, a plant that can take four years to bloom. There is also agar wood, a smell mentioned in the Bible’s Song of Songs.
A new scent released in time for the Jewish holiday of Succoth 2012 is called Etrog for the unusual citron tree fruit that has a strong fragrance. The etrog is a central symbol of the fall holiday.
A passion for perfume
Moriel’s passion for perfume was awakened in Canada but established in Israel. Although she was born in Montreal, her formative years up until her early 20s all took place in Israel. From the age of one -- when she lived in a cabin in the Galilee -- until her late teens, Moriel was running free in the alternative “hippie” community of Klil in northern Israel. Her mother and stepfather were among the founding families.
She was raised in nature among the wildflowers and thorns, between Arab and Druze villages, and remembers the time fondly.
“It was like heaven for a little girl because we had so much freedom and loved nature and flowers. We could go into nature and play and explore different plants and animals. It was great in that regard. It was also pretty wild because we had no electricity or television.”
In her early 20s, as a newlywed, she packed up and moved to Canada in search of her roots. The birth of a daughter with autism and a failing marriage turned her on to meditation with incense. Moriel loved the powerful meditative effects of incense so much that she tried blending her own.
“At first it was fun, then it became frustrating because as a blend it would smell good, then it would burn and smell like sage or someone smoking ‘weed’ in the house,” she says.
At this point she decided to work with scents that don’t need to be burned to emit their smells. At about age 25, and still in the moderate climate of Canada, her company Ayala Moriel Natural Perfumes was born.
A little more than 10 years later, Moriel stills senses the world through scents. Unlike in Israel, where the humid hot weather is ideal for the growth of fragrant plants, flowers and spices, the scents of nature don’t carry the same way in Canada, where it is much colder.
Bottling the smell of the sea
Even though she lives not far from the sea, there is nothing like the smell of the sea in Israel, she says. There it blends with salt and seaweed and heat. Some of these memories of Israel’s Mediterranean coast are no doubt infused in her scent Orcas. It received a nomination last year in the “indie” category at the Fragrance Foundation‘s FiFi Awards, the Oscars of the perfume world.
While it took a few years to get the business running, Moriel is now operating the company full time. Most of her business is generated by her website, where women who want a signature scent answer an online questionnaire. If you are not sure which scent is right for you, Moriel can send you a sampler in the mail containing a spectrum of the essences you are attracted to.
Zangvil is one of Ayala Moriel’s signature scents. She does not use any artificial musk in her products. Musk made for commercial perfumes can be highly allergenic. While the jury is out on exactly what kind of negative health effects synthetic-based perfumes can cause, Moriel says that she’s into naturals for the aesthetics of them. She likes how they smell, and she likes the layers and dimensions of smells that are released by the wearer.
Her clients tend to be women in the over-30 group. “They are women with an established sense of who they are and what they love. They appreciate art and they want to support someone who does all their stuff by hand,” Moriel says.
She offers one-on-one consultations with clients who are able to meet her in person.
Although traveling to Israel from the west coast of Canada is a bit of an odyssey, Moriel says, she often visits the bit of heaven her parents planted in Klil.