Fragrance can be made from any of more than 3,500 chemicals and gives personal care, cleaning, and other products their unique smell. Yet manufacturers aren’t required to disclose what makes up a fragrance, and some fragrance ingredients have been linked to health issues including cancer, reproductive toxicity, allergies, and sensitivities.
Originally, perfumes were alcoholic solutions that were typically mixed with citrus oils, but the development of newer fragrance compounds has enabled perfumers to create more sophisticated scents with much less alcohol. Currently, the most popular types of perfume include eau de parfum, which usually contains 10-25 percent perfume concentrate; toilette water, which has 2-6 percent concentration; and colognes, which are generally lighter than perfume and contain only 1-2 percent perfume concentrate. A newer product category is also gaining popularity: a “perfume mist” that provides a light, continuous spray of the desired scent.
Perfume has three structural components: the head, middle, and base. Head notes are the first impression a person gets from a perfume and evaporate quickly, while middle notes last longer. A middle note may be a single floral scent, such as rose or jasmine, or a woody composition, which is often dominated by sandalwood and cedarwood, or patchouli, with its camphoraceous (balmy, earthy) aroma.
A perfume’s price tag is based on several factors, from the cost of raw materials and the labor involved in producing it to deluxe packaging and the prestige associated with high-end brand names and master perfumers like Maison Francis Kurkdjian. However, the biggest reason a perfume is expensive is the presence of fragrance enhancing chemicals that are synthesized in a laboratory instead of grown in nature. These synthetic odorants are called ‘fragrance molecules,’ and they can mimic the aroma of many natural smells such as green grass or ripe apples.