Perfume is a mixture of fragrant essential oils or aroma compounds, fixatives and solvents, all in liquid form. It’s used to give the human body, animals, food, objects and living spaces an agreeable smell.
Originally, perfumes were made by gathering and distilling natural plant extracts. However, in modern times, a perfume’s formula may be composed of from ten to hundreds of ingredients. These include natural aromatic plant extracts, synthetic chemical aromatic chemicals (usually classified by their structural group), blenders, fixatives and solvents.
The main ingredients in perfume are fragrance oils derived from various flowers and other plants (like lily-of-the-valley), spices, herbs, woods, roots, fruits, resins, balsams and leaves. Other scents, like animal secretions and musk, are also widely employed. Synthetic chemicals are also very commonly used to create original fragrances that cannot be found in nature.
A perfume’s scent is usually described as consisting of three sets of smells: top notes, middle notes and base notes. Top notes, also called head notes, are the first smells you perceive when applying a perfume and evaporate the fastest. They give an impression of freshness and are often the most noticeable ingredient in a perfume.
Middle notes are the next scent to be perceived when the perfume is sprayed on and last a little longer than the top notes. They give a fuller, more solid character to the perfume. Common middle notes include lavender and rose.
Base notes are the lingering scents that appear after 30 to 40 minutes and during the perfume’s ‘dry down period’. They are the deepest, strongest and most long-lasting. Common base notes include cedarwood, sandalwood, vanilla and amber.