Violet Leaf
Crushed green leaves, cucumber peel, wet grass, and a cool metallic edge.
You may know it from the scent of snapped violet leaves in a garden
Where it comes from
Made from violet leaf extract and widely used synthetic violet-leaf materials.
Worth knowing
It smells green and watery, not like sweet violet flowers.
About violet leaf
Violet leaf absolute is made from the leaves of sweet violet, Viola odorata, and it is a separate material from the flower extract. The leaves go into the extractor fresh, straight away or after a day, and hexane pulls out a concrete. ScenTree gives the yield from fresh leaf as about 0.09%, and adds that violet leaf absolute is restricted under the 51st IFRA amendment.
Egypt's Nile Delta is the cultivation area ScenTree uses as its example. A skincare brand's glossary goes further and says Egypt produces roughly 90% of the world supply. It also says French material from Grasse reads cleaner and grassier, while the Egyptian kind is more intense with a leathery undertone. That is one trade glossary, and sources give different harvest calendars for Egypt.
ScenTree files the odour as green first, then fatty, coumarinic, juicy fruits and leather. Perflavory's supplier data calls it heady, leafy-green and earthy, with woody and candy-violet nuances. The skincare glossary describes a raw, vegetal opening that softens to earthy-woody over hours, and says it smells like soil and chlorophyll.
Its best-known appearance is Dior's Fahrenheit, from 1988. Olfastory and the Olfactive Studio blog both present it as a composition of violet leaf, wood and leather, and Dior's own words, quoted by Olfastory, call the leaf in the heart green, vegetal and barely floral. Olfastory also reports that the original was said to have a very green violet leaf and a leather as if soaked in gasoline. The same site names methyl octynoate, a molecule that smells of violet leaf, among the materials in the perfume, and reports 1.4 million bottles sold in Europe between October and December 1988.
Accords it shows up in
How many of the fragrances listing Violet Leaf in our catalogue also carry each accord. We counted this ourselves.
Often paired with
The notes that appear next to Violet Leaf most often in our catalogue.
Well-known fragrances with Violet Leaf
Fragrances that list it in their notes, most-rated first.
Houses that use it most
Ranked by how many of their well-known fragrances list Violet Leaf.