It takes somewhere between six and eight thousand kilos of tuberose flowers to make a single kilo of the absolute.
That figure explains most of what is odd about this note. Tuberose is not a rose and not a lily. Botanists moved it to Agave amica in 2017, after the name Polianthes tuberosa had stood for two centuries. It sits in the asparagus family, Asparagaceae, which makes it a relative of the agave rather than anything in a bouquet. It came originally from Mexico and reached Europe and Asia on 16th and 17th century trade routes.
Here is the technical problem. Steam distillation destroys the smell and yields almost nothing usable, so there is no such thing as tuberose essential oil. Anything sold under that name is either an absolute or a blend.
For centuries the workaround was enfleurage. Flowers were laid by hand onto trays of odourless fat, left for around three days until the fat had drawn the scent out, then swapped for fresh ones and the process repeated until the fat was saturated. Slow, expensive, and mostly a Grasse curiosity now. Modern production uses hexane to pull a waxy concrete from the flowers, then alcohol to wash out the absolute.
What it smells like is why people bother. Tuberose is green and slightly rubbery at the start, then goes creamy and milky through its lactones, then heavy and almost narcotic. It is loud. It has been called the most indecent flower in perfumery for a reason, and there is no such thing as a shy tuberose fragrance.
That price has a consequence. Very little of the tuberose you smell on a shelf is the absolute. Most is reconstructed from lactones and other materials that hit the same creamy, green, heady effect at a workable cost. This is normal practice, not a shortcut, and the best tuberose scents are built this way on purpose.
Carolina Herrera's Good Girl is the mainstream example. The house lists tuberose in the heart next to jasmine sambac, over tonka bean and cocoa, with almond on top. Perfumers Louise Turner and Quentin Bisch built it, and it launched in 2016.
Ours is Baddie, our take on Good Girl, a UK made spray at 35% concentration. Read the best Good Girl dupes in the UK or browse the best perfume dupes in the UK.
