In the cut-throat world of perfume design and manufacturing, perfume is a complex chemical mixture of essential oils, aroma compounds, fixatives, solvents, beautiful bottles and celebrity-endorsed marketing. For those who wear perfume however, the final product is much more than the sum of its parts: for many, perfume is a much-loved element of personal preparation, as essential as dressing or brushing one’s teeth.
A quick tour of the cosmetics and personal care section of any department store reveals the wide array of perfume available on the market, with many more available exclusively through high-end perfume boutiques or import shops. There are so many choices, in fact, that knowing what to buy can be confusing.
Depending on their chemical composition and ratio of fragrance oil to solvent, scents generally fall into one of the following categories:
Perfume extracts (20%-40% aromatic compounds), eau de perfume (10%-30% aromatic compounds), eau de toilette (5%-20 % aromatic compounds) or eau de cologne (2%-3% aromatic compounds). The more aromatic compound that is used the longer the scent will last. Perfume is made up of dozens of ingredients, so it can be difficult to describe the overall effect as just one scent. However, it is possible to identify different contributing scents, similar to how one who knows wine can taste the varying flavors of its composition.
Perfume fragrances are generally categorized by olfactive families such as floral (self explanatory), Chypre (used to describe scents such as apricot), Foug