Simplicity in formulating

Things did not work out the way I supposed. Working for 2 hours on the orange flower mentioned yesterday, I had to realize fast that I was mistaken. This morning I opened the book by Edmond Roudnitska, “Le Parfum” and read the chapter about simplicity again. He says (literally translated from French) “… it needs a lot of talent and education to express things with simplicity which are in itself subtle.” Yepp, this is the key and I always find myself wanting too much at a time, thus confusing things in the end.
Lesson learnt: Keep it simple!
I return to an earlier experiment on orange flower which has aged for a month now. This fragrance is very straightforward structured, but it goes into the right direction: Green touches, orange flower with somewhat spicy undertones, elegant wood with a thrilling touch. At the heart is a straight orange flower, stripped off most of its powdery and narcotic side. The fragrance has a green touch to it, is quite dry (with a somewhat too sweet top) with a beautiful, very powerful woody chorus extending from its heart in the body which should remain mostly as is (it reminds me of drying spruce wood on a very hot summer day, very nice indeed).
So, here we go again.
Head: Bergamot, petitgrain, neroli
Body: Orange flower with a touch jasmine, and lots of cedarwoods
Body: Vetiver, oakmoss, patchouli and cistrose
Now let me try the following:
Bring down the sweetness in the top by reducing the neroli, add more citrus-freshness to it by adding some lavender, linalool and eventually orange oil (bitter orange). Bring the flower out just a little bit more (maybe some anthranilates) and extend the base with some animalic aspects and more volume (castoreum and sandalwood)
Again…. I will keep you posted on that one.