Perfume is a blend of oil and alcohol that is applied to the skin to give it a pleasant, long-lasting fragrance. It is also used in hair care products, soaps and deodorants and to mask unpleasant body odors.
Humans have been using fragrances for thousands of years, burning fragrant spices and herbs to create an odour that rises through smoke (the word perfume is actually derived from the Latin for perfume through smoke). Liquid perfume was invented during the seventeenth century by a French chemist working for Catherine de Medici, with scents like rose, neroli, and bergamot becoming wildly popular.
Early civilizations extracted perfume oils by several methods, including enfleurage, which involves placing flowers or other organic material in fat or oil to extract the scent. One of the most common methods today is steam distillation, which involves heating plant materials in boiling water to release the oils that evaporate into the steam, and then collecting the resulting fragrant liquid. It may take thousands of kilos of plants to make just a small amount of perfume, which helps explain why many perfumes are pricey.
Modern perfumes usually contain a mixture of natural and synthetic chemicals. Among the natural fragrance ingredients are essential oils of flowers and other plants such as ylang-ylang, jasmine, vanilla, and ginger. In addition to the pleasant smells, some of these oils are believed to have aphrodisiac qualities and have been known to trigger intuitive sensual responses, which is why Cleopatra wore jasmine during her romance with Mark Antony.