Perfume is a highly personal experience and one that evokes memories of sunny walks in the park, an evening with a loved one or a special holiday. The ancient Egyptians used perfume on their bodies and salves to scent their tombs; the Romans had fountains of rose and jasmine oil flowing in their baths; and the Arabian practice of burning precious wood and incense was a way of introducing a subtle, elegant fragrance into the air.
Fragrance notes are grouped into three layers, which form the olfactory pyramid: top, heart and base notes. The first impression a perfume makes is created by the top notes, which are often light and volatile and fade quickly. These are usually the most fragrant, but they do not linger long enough to reveal the middle and base notes which develop slowly and progressively over time.
For a perfume to be considered sophisticated, the ingredients must create a ‘fragrance accord’ that is not too’synthetic’ and not too ‘natural’. The accord must be a complex blend of ingredients that can be interpreted by the nose as an individual, not just a group of individual fragrances.
Perfumers don’t like to use subjective words such as ‘crisp’, ‘fresh’ and ‘warm’ because they can be misleading, but words like’velvety’ and’soft’ are ideal for describing how a particular note smells on your skin. They are also ideal for contextualising a particular perfume and helping you to recall associations after a brief smell test of the fragrance.