Eugenol in Chypre and Fougère Styles: What the Limits Changed
You cannot rebuild a mid-century chypre or fougère today and expect the same thing, and the reason is on paper, not in anyone's nostalgia. The International Fragrance Association (IFRA) publishes a numeric ceiling for oakmoss, one for isoeugenol and one for eugenol in every product category, and the three ceilings are far apart. This piece reads those documents against what the two families are made of, so you can judge a vintage-style brief before you spend a bottle on it. We sell one material, eugenol oil, and nothing here is a tested formula.
Verdict first: eugenol was never the load-bearing wall
In the sources we read, neither family is defined by eugenol. The perfume-history account at Bois de Jasmin (2020) gives the standard chypre definition as "citrus, floral, woody/patchouli, mossy and musky facets" and says a chypre needs an inflection of oakmoss or treemoss. It credits the 1917 perfume that named the family with an aroma-chemical, isobutyl quinoline, for the oakmoss effect. For fougère, Froissard et al., Natural Product Communications, 2011 ran GC-MS on solvent extracts of six French ferns, found 77 volatile compounds (about 7.4% coumarin in one species, Phegopteris connectilis), and concluded that coumarin, (E)-2-hexenal, (Z)-3-hexenol and 1-octen-3-ol are the main odour components of fougère-family perfumes. That is a fern-extract study, so its link to finished perfumes is the authors' conclusion, not a measurement of any perfume. Eugenol appears in neither list.
So the honest framing is this: eugenol is a supporting actor here, a spicy carnation shading in a floral heart. What actually changed the genre is the moss and the isoeugenol, and that is where the limits bite.
Where eugenol enters a chypre or fougère heart
You do not have to add eugenol to get eugenol. IFRA's annex of indicative natural contributions (as printed with the 2020 Amendment 49 text) lists typical eugenol levels in naturals: carnation absolute 18%, clove bud oil 82%, clove leaf oil 85.3%, rose absolute 2.3%, rose oil 1.2%, ylang ylang oils 0.5%, jasmine absolute (officinale) 2%. IFRA says to use your own analysis instead where you have it. The IFRA Guidance (2023) adds that a restricted ingredient counts "regardless of whether the restricted substance is added directly or indirectly", including through natural complex substances.
Reasoning from those figures: a rose, jasmine and ylang heart already spends part of the eugenol budget before you add a drop of isolate. Add the eugenol to the budget, not on top of it.
It also helps to know what a carnation actually smells like when it is a flower. Kishimoto et al., Journal of the Japanese Society for Horticultural Science, 2013 compared scents from carnation and wild Dianthus hybrids. They reported that most modern carnation cultivars have weak scents dominated by methyl benzoate, while three wild species emitted eugenol in high amounts, and so did their hybrids. The clove-like "carnation" of perfumery is therefore a built idea, assembled from spice materials, not a photograph of the flower. That is useful when a brief says "carnation": ask which build, because the eugenol share is a design choice. Our sibling pieces cover the building: a step-by-step carnation accord and the vintage soliflore case study.
The three ceilings, side by side
All figures below are the Category 4 maximum acceptable concentration in the finished product, read from IFRA's published Standards this session. IFRA's Guidance places "solid perfume" and hydroalcoholic and non-hydroalcoholic fine fragrance of all types in Category 4.
| Material | Category 4 limit | Standard text read | Earlier publications listed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eugenol | 2.5% | Amendment 51 (2023) | 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2020 |
| Isoeugenol | 0.11% | Amendment 49 (2020), carried in the 51st compilation | 1980, 1998, 2001, 2004, 2007 |
| Oakmoss extracts | 0.10% | Amendment 49 (2020) | 1991, 2001, 2008 |
The oakmoss standard also carries a specification: atranol and chloroatranol each below 100 ppm in the extract, no added treemoss, and no more than 0.1% (1000 ppm) of dehydroabietic acid. Its note box says the category limits "have not been increased" since 2008 because they are tied to keeping atranol and chloroatranol at trace levels in the finished product. For the earlier numbers, the EU's Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety (SCCS opinion 1459/11, adopted June 2012) tabled the IFRA restrictions then current, "based on induction experiments": eugenol 0.5% in perfume and 0.5% in hand cream, 0.2% in deodorant, and isoeugenol 0.02% in perfume. Set against today's Category 4 figures, that is about five-fold higher for both (2.5 / 0.5 and 0.11 / 0.02 = 5.5). The table's "perfume" column may not map exactly onto Category 4, so treat the comparison as approximate. The same opinion quotes an earlier EU committee's view that the quantitative risk assessment model behind such limits was not validated and that it had "no confidence that the levels of skin sensitisers identified by the dermal sensitisation QRA are safe for the consumer". IFRA's 2020 eugenol text lists the QRA2 skin-sensitisation dossier among its references. Two bodies reading the same evidence disagree, and a maker should know the disagreement exists.
The ratios are plain arithmetic: 2.5 divided by 0.11 is about 23, and 2.5 divided by 0.10 is 25. Eugenol's Category 4 ceiling is roughly 23 times isoeugenol's and 25 times oakmoss's. Eugenol's own limit also moved little in the latest revision for this category: the 2020 text we read gives 2.5% for Category 4 as well. Elsewhere it shifted (Category 3 went from 1.4% to 1.0%, Categories 7A and 7B from 1.4% to 2.0%, Category 10A from 4.9% to 4.0%). The 2023 eugenol standard's implementation dates are March 30, 2024 for new creations and October 30, 2025 for existing ones, and those dates apply to fragrance mixtures, not to finished products already on shelves.
What that means for a vintage brief
Worked example, labelled as illustration only. If your perfume is 20% fragrance concentrate in the finished product, a 2.5% finished-product ceiling allows eugenol up to 12.5% of the concentrate (2.5 / 20), isoeugenol up to 0.55% (0.11 / 20) and oakmoss up to 0.5% (0.10 / 20). At 10% concentrate the figures double: 25%, 1.1% and 1.0%. The same SCCS opinion puts fragrance compound at up to 30% in eau de toilette and eau de parfum, where the figures fall to about 8.3%, 0.37% and 0.33%. Reasoning from these numbers, a carnation-and-spice heart built on eugenol has headroom, while a heart that leaned on isoeugenol or a mossy chypre base is squeezed hard. The restriction that reshaped the vintage style is the moss and isoeugenol one, not the eugenol one.
Bois de Jasmin's author says the restrictions forced perfumers to use "a combination of other naturals and synthetics" and points to one modern chypre that uses no oakmoss yet keeps a chypre darkness. That is a perfume writer's judgment, not a measurement, and we have not smelled or compared anything for this article.
- Name the category first. Fine fragrance and solid perfume sit in Category 4 per the Guidance; a lotion-type product sits elsewhere with a lower number (0.64% for Categories 5A to 5C in the 2023 eugenol standard).
- Total the eugenol from every material, using your supplier's analysis where you have it and IFRA's indicative annex where you do not.
- Check any isoeugenol or oakmoss line in the brief against its own standard. Our eugenol versus isoeugenol comparison covers why the two are not interchangeable.
- Check the current IFRA amendment, because limits change; this article was read against Amendments 49 and 51. A regulatory specialist should sign off any product you sell.
Our own IFRA explainer and scent profile go deeper on the numbers and the smell.
Who should skip this
If you want a faithful reproduction of a named historic perfume, this is the wrong route: we found no primary source that documents the formulas of named classics, so we name none. If you need oakmoss, isoeugenol or any other material in this article, note that we sell only eugenol oil.
Our eugenol oil is a refined isolate from clove oil, sold undiluted, so every percentage in a heart like the one above is yours to work out and check. It is not oakmoss, not isoeugenol and not a substitute for either.
Sources & Further Reading
- IFRA, 2024. The complete IFRA Standards up to and including the 51st Amendment (Eugenol, Isoeugenol, Oakmoss extracts, Standards pages). ifra-standards-51st-amendment.pdf
- IFRA, 2022. The complete IFRA Standards up to and including the 50th Amendment (Amendment 49 Eugenol text with Annex of natural contributions). standards-compiled.pdf
- IFRA, 2023. Guidance for the use of IFRA Standards (51st Amendment). ifra-51st-amendment-guidance.pdf
- Froissard D, Fons F, Bessiere JM, Buatois B, Rapior S, 2011. Volatiles of French ferns and "fougere" scent in perfumery. Natural Product Communications. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22224297
- Kishimoto K, et al., 2013. Analysis of scents emitted from flowers of interspecific hybrids between carnation and fragrant wild Dianthus species. J Jpn Soc Hortic Sci. jstage.jst.go.jp/jjshs1/82/145
- SCCS, 2012. Opinion on fragrance allergens in cosmetic products (SCCS/1459/11), section 11 and Table 11-1. sccs_o_102.pdf
- Bois de Jasmin, 2020. Revolutionary Perfume: A Brief History of Chypre. boisdejasmin.com