The Story of Perfume

“Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that the winds were love-sick with them,” Shakespeare wrote. Cleopatra is said to have greeted Marc Antony on a boat with perfumed sails after the assassination of Julius Caesar and became the queen of Egypt. The use of perfume is mainly associated with mystery, fantasy and imagination. We wear perfume to please others, to leave a good impression, to surround ourselves with a pleasing, lingering scent. Although perfume does have a long history, it has not always carried a hint of romance.

Yesterday’s Perfume The word perfume comes from the Latin phrase, “per” meaning “thorough” and “fumus” meaning “smoke”. The French later gave the name “parfum” to the smells produced by burning incense. Indeed, the first form of perfume was incense, first made by the Mesopotamians about 4000 years ago. Ancient cultures burned a variety of resins and wood at their religious ceremonies. Incense made its way to Egypt around 3000 B.C. but until the beginning of Egypt’s Golden Age, perfumes were used only in religious rituals. They became available to all Egyptians as the priests gradually relinquished their exclusive rights. Citizens took elaborate baths and soaked their skin in scented oils for pleasure.

The ancient Greeks can take credit for the first liquid perfume. But it was the development of distillation by the Arabs that made perfume manufacture viable. Perfume enjoyed huge success during the seventeenth century, especially in France. Hygiene in those days was pretty spotty and fragrances were used to mask the unpleasant body odors. In England perfumes were used extensively during the reigns of Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth I. All public places were scented during Elizabeth’s rule because she could not tolerate bad smells.

As with industry and art, perfume was to undergo profound change in the nineteenth century. Changing tastes and the development of chemistry laid the foundations for modern perfumery. At the turn of the century, perfume usually was derived from a single- flower fragrance. Today, perfumes are extremely complex, made up of many natural and synthetic chemicals, often referred to as “notes” or “overtones.” Chanel No5 was the first perfume created by applying modern chemical principles and the first to contain synthetics.

Scientists who experiment with different materials to come up with pleasing fragrances are called perfumers. Just as a good musician needs a good ear, a perfumer needs a good nose! Different companies have different procedures in choosing their perfumers, or as they like to call them, “noses”, but generally, candidates remain apprentices for a minimum of 6 years. Not only do they have to be able to recognize various raw materials by showing a keen olfactory sense, they also have to be imaginative and need a good understanding of chemistry. A good “nose” has to be a meticulous chemist and a creative artist.

Today, both synthetic and natural ingredients are used in perfumery. Natural components include extracts of flowers, leaves, roots and citrus fruit. Animal extracts derived from musk, whales or beaver are also used. Chemists have become very adept at producing synthetic versions of many natural compounds, greatly facilitating perfume manufacture. Fragrances are categorized according to the concentration of essential oils they contain. The most concentrated form, and of course the most expensive, is called parfum. It is the strongest and longest-lasting fragrance and contains 20 to 50 percent perfume compounds by weight. Eau de parfum is an alcoholic perfume solution containing 10 to 15 percent of perfume compounds and eau de toilette (or cologne), 3 to 8 percent.

Source: Office for Science and Society - McGil University