Fragrance is a mix of up to 3,500 chemicals that gives personal care and cleaning products their distinctive smell. Manufacturers aren’t required to disclose the ingredients, and many of these fragrance chemicals have been linked to health problems like allergies and hormone disruption.
The perfumer’s art is to create a combination of natural or synthetic (created in a lab) aroma chemicals that captures the essence of a particular flower, tree, plant, animal, or other source. Fragrance can also contain solvents, stabilizers, and preservatives to preserve the scent. Perfumes and colognes are generally alcoholic solutions, containing anywhere from 10-25 percent perfume concentrate, while toilet water and splash colognes are less concentrated and often contain only 2-6 percent perfume concentrate.
A perfume contains a top note, the fresh, volatile odour that is perceived immediately; a middle note, or modifier, providing depth and body; and a base note, the persistent, background aroma that provides the product’s overall character. The perfumer must balance these three components to create a successful perfume.
In the 1700s, Grasse, France’s warm climate and skilled flower farmers made it a perfume capital. But demand for the region’s flowers waned as modern chemistry improved and synthetic replacements became available. In 1921, Coco Chanel’s perfume, Chanel No 5, was the first to use aliphatic aldehydes (created by combining aldehydes) to provide a bright, clean note to a rose and jasmine fragrance. Today, perfumers have thousands of fragrance chemicals to choose from and can be as creative as their customers are.