The recent movie “Perfume” set in 19th century Paris has sparked a lot of curiosity in the history and making of perfume fragrance, That history is long and decorated with the evocative names of famous scents and their creators stretching back all the way to Egypt and Mesopotamia in the second millennium BC.

The Early days of Perfume Fragrance

The first recorded maker of perfume fragrances was a lady chemist called Tapputi, who worked for a Mesopotamian royal family. She made her perfume fragrances from fresh picked flowers, brought swiftly into her laboratory each morning, before the dew left the ground. Peeping into her busy factory, you would see huge vats heating water to capture the essence of ingredients like cypress, myrrh, and balsam that she mixed with the distilled flower scents to create some of the earliest perfume fragrances known to man.

Perfume Fragrances in 18th Century France

Perfume fragrance production became a big business in France in the 18th century, as the Grasse region planted fields of flowers just to male it. With regular bathing still some decades away, citizens in 18th Paris were in need of as many bottles of perfume fragrances as they could get their hands on. Anyone producing a good new scent which covered the nasty street smells when applied to a hanky and held to the nose was instantly famous and could become very rich from it. Perfumers worked in studies surrounded by high shelves housing a fascinating collection of bottles of all shapes, colours and sizes. These held the basic ingredients of perfume fragrances, the flowers, woods, chemical compounds and resins that were blended drop by drop then used to fill hand blown glass bottles.

The Early 20th Century

English lavender was one of the most popular perfume fragrances in the early 20th century. It was more valuable than that grown in France because of its rather delicate scent. Surrey, Suffolk and Kent all had huge fields, some of which were converted to grow food during the war. Lavender was the perfume fragrance of choice for ordinary folks who loved its fresh, soothing scent, along with its ability to calm fevers and banish headaches.

During the war, perfume fragrances became part of the black market economy in Europe as luxury goods were scare and commanded huge prices. Along with chocolate, nylons and cigarettes, perfume fragrances were more easily available to US troops stationed in the UK who used them to impress and influence local girls hungry for a touch of luxury in those bleak days.

Perfume Fragrance Today

From the stars of the perfume fragrance business, like Channel No.5 to the latest offerings from Revlon, available in high street shops, there is a perfume fragrance that suits every individual and occasion. The technological advances in production of perfume fragrances have brought even the most exotic scents within the reach of everybody. Men and women alike have a huge range of perfume fragrance to choose from, with scents following the latest fashion trends.

This may seem odd, but to pick a perfume fragrance that suits you it can be vital to comprehend your own scent (or “smell”). This is because if you can recognise how your body smells as it will assist you in determining the nature or style of the perfume fragrance you choose, or indeed, the quantity of perfume oil you suit (i.e. the concentration).

Your skin (and body) has its own unique smell – similar to a fingerprint, voice check or a model of your DNA. Indeed some go as far as to suggest that our doubts, hopes, requirements, our food preferences, physical fitness, are strongly influenced by the actual smell of our own body.

This is borne out in interesting anecdotes surrounding the antics of detectives and secret agents who were able to identify thieves or potential targets by their body odor alone. It has also been proposed by various researchers that the smell of our body has a strong affect upon our brain.

Purchasing Perfume Fragrance

All of this means that we go out to purchase a perfume fragrance we conciously or subconciously are drawn to those perfume fragrances that somehow seem more acceptable and actually provide a better “blend” with the very smell of our skin. You see, the perfume fragrance you put on your skin interacts with the smell your skin and can be said to actually create a new perfume fragrance.

Thus it is claimed that if you properly understand the smell of your body, purchase and make use of perfumes properly, it can have a positive impact in your personal and professional life.

Determining your own Fragrance

The best way to determine the nature of your own personal smell is to avoid having a shower post-workout (or other period of high acitivty), making sure that you avoid rinsing your hair or using body spray. Wait a couple of hours (apologising to your partner if necessary!) and then note down what you discovered about your own smell.

Repeat this process after taking a bath to “feel” your scent, and to observe the difference in smell.

Together these two steps will assist you in determining the fundamenal scent of your body. Once you ignore all the artificial smells that you introduce to your body on a daily basis, you will be in a position to better observe the exact smell of your body.

You are looking for different levels of smell – what is it first like, how does it develop and then what is the overal impact. If you are not familiar with describing scents, try to use a language you are familiar with (i.e. food or wine).

Finding a Perfume Fragrance to suit you

Once you are able to recognise the scent of your body, it is now time to try out your skills on perfume of different fragrances. Spend some time in a perfume fragrance shop – ask for fresh sample cards (the ones that are left out are almost always contaminated with other scents), take three or four different scents and smell them in turn, writing down (or mentally noting if you are too embarassed to write things down in a store) what the three stages of the perfume fragrance scent is like. Again try to use the same “language” that you used in identifying your own scent.

Keep those sample cards for those that you think contain complimentary smells and repeat until you have three fragrances that suit you and your scent – these will now form your core perfume fragrances. Also bear in mind that the strength of a perfume fragrance can be altered the concentration, so do bear this in mind (although note that price will probably be a factor as higher concentrations like parfum and extract are very expensive).