The Scent of the Shawls

Patchouli is a bushy aromatic herb of the mint family, Pogostemon cablin, native to tropical Asia, whose leaves yield a dark, heavy, earthy essential oil that grows richer with age. Its scent reached the West in a memorable way: the fine woven shawls of Kashmir and India were packed with dried patchouli leaves to protect them from moths on the long voyage, and the smell became so bound up with the genuine article that European makers of imitation shawls had to scent theirs with patchouli to sell them. The plant's practical use as an insect-repellent is its oldest and plainest virtue.

Patchouli remains a major ingredient of modern perfumery, valued by perfumers precisely for the same heavy, long-lasting base note that once protected Kashmiri shawls, and it appears in a large share of the world's fine fragrances, from nineteenth-century classics to contemporary releases, as a fixative that helps lighter floral and citrus notes last longer on the skin, a technical role in the perfumer's craft quite distinct from its later countercultural reputation. Indonesia now supplies the great majority of the world's patchouli oil, grown and distilled chiefly on the islands of Sumatra and Sulawesi, an agricultural industry that has shifted the plant's commercial centre of gravity from South Asia to Southeast Asia over the past century.