Enlighten your sense of smell

• What is a perfume?
• What is the origin of a perfume?
• A brief history of perfumes.
• Different types of perfumes.
• Hierarchy in perfumes.

Perfume is a mixture of essential oils derived from flowers and spices, which are fragrant and is used predominantly to give us a pleasant fragrance. A human body can completely change the factor of a fragrance because oils in the human skin or epidermis act as ingredients in the perfume, mixing with rest of the elements all ready present in it. Thus the popular fragrance becomes your own fragrance. A fragrance can be derived from a variety of sources as mentioned above flowers or plants, animals and synthetic.

A relatively wrong notion is among many fragrance users is that if they have smelled the perfume or fragrance on someone else it will smell the same way on them? We always advise the customers to try the fragrance on them before buying it.

Origin of perfumes can traced back to early Egyptian civilization. Romans also cultivated the idea of fragrances, mainly used by wealthy and royals to hide bodily odors.  But fragrances were commonly used in ancient China and India in the form of incense and spices thrown in the ritual fires to make the atmosphere fragrant. It was a common practice among royals to bathe in water mixed with rose petals and other flowers. Musk and floral fragrances, spices & dyes were brought from ancient Arabia via trade and during crusades in 11^th and 12^th century. Records going back to 1179 are available in London showing trading of perfumes and spices.

Perfumes contain fixatives and ingredients. There can be hundreds of thousands of ingredients in perfume oil but only a few numbers of fixatives, which bind the composition of a fragrance. Fixatives such as balsam fir, ambergris and secretion from the glands of a young male deer and civet cat from Asia were used in many fragrances. Although these secretions had unpleasant odors there mix within an alcoholic solution was used as a preserving agent and its lifespan lasted for a year.

Musk or mushk was extracted from a male deer and process required the killing of the animal. The young male deer essentially produced musk but hunters never gave a thought and mercilessly killed deer resulting in depletion of deer population. Musk deer is an endangered species in many countries and hunting them is forbidden and is protected under international laws. Due to rarity and high demand of Musk, which is a highly priced commodity, perfume companies use synthetic or man made musk only. 

Hierarchy in fragrances is determined by the amount of oil or extract or purity being used.

1. Parfum or Perfume.

2. Eau de Parfum.

3. Eau de toilette.

4. Cologne or Eau de Cologne.

5. Aftershave.

6. Deodorant.