Perfume is more than just a smell, it’s what I like to call a message in a bottle. It’s a chemical poem composed by a human being to impart an idea, sensation or emotion to another person. A perfume can be beautiful, funny, surprising, novel, profound—it’s all up to the perfumer’s intent.
Perfumers spend years honing their skills, perfecting their craft and developing a deep understanding of scent. They are constantly pushing boundaries and experimenting with new combinations. Creating a perfume is truly a labor of love.
Most perfumes are made from a blend of natural and synthetic fragrance compounds. They may be derived from essential oils, which are highly concentrated aromatic compounds extracted from plants and flowers. Perfumes can also contain a variety of other ingredients, including fixatives, which help the fragrance last longer by delaying its evaporation.
The earliest perfumes were created from natural oils, such as fruit peels or berries, animal pelts, and resins like ambergris (whale vomit). Today, many modern perfumes are synthetic, although a small percentage still use the traditional method of extraction.
Almost all perfumes contain a high concentration of alcohol, which serves as a fixative and makes the scent last longer on the skin. The alcohol also acts as a solvent, helping the essential oil molecules dissolve into a solution.
Most perfumes are sold in bottles of 30ml or more. If you want to start experimenting with perfume, it’s best to purchase samples first before making any blind purchases. Until you have trained your nose and learned what families of scents you enjoy, it’s hard to know how something will smell on your skin.