The fragrance of a perfume wafting through the air has inspired many a poet to conjure timeless verses about love, friendship, betrayal & other virtues and vices. For centuries, dynasties around the world have taken great pains to preserve, & protect, the secrets of exquisite perfume making.
We bring to you some interesting facts about the subtle soft power – perfume’s fragrance –that has the ability to sprout love, or jealousy, in the stoutest of hearts, or take an old person back down the memory lanes of sensual youth.
1. HEAT ACTIVATED: Perfumes activate with heat. Spraying or dabbing them on your main pulse points, elbows, neck, back of ears, temples etc. ensures the 3 notes (top, heart & base) of perfume produce maximum fragrance. Also, store your perfume bottle away from light, heat and moisture to preserve it longer.
2. APHRODISIAC NATURE: It is very common that you get attracted to someone because of their perfume’s fragrance. Certain types of perfumes contain pheromones which have aphrodisiac properties. No wonder, one gets attracted to people radiating such aphrodisiacs.
3. MEMORY TRIGGER: Fragrances of perfumes can trigger memories. Wearing a particular perfume on a vacation can revive memories of it in later years when the same perfume is come across again. Some people believe that wearing specific perfumes help them to survive the absence of their loved ones as they feel their memories are all around them.
4. TREAT INSOMNIA: You read it right. Perfumes contain essential oils which relax your mind and allow you to slumber peacefully at night. Citrus fruits, floral & winter spice perfumes calm the mind, reduce the stress & soothe the body. For this reason, perfumes are used in aromatherapy.
5. AMBERGRIS: LIQUID GOLD An expensively rare constituent in some perfumes, ambergris is characterized by an amazingly sweet & musky scent that has left many a perfume connoisseur in want of words to describe the exotic fragrance precisely. It is obtained from the biggest mammal on this planet and may cost several thousand dollars for a gram. Liquid gold for a reason!
6. PERFUME STAYS LONGER IN YOUR HAIR: Spraying the perfume in your hair will make the scent stay longer due to the oily nature of your scalp. When sprayed on open skin, the perfume gets decomposed faster and the fragrance is, consequently, lost soon.
7. MUSK, YET NOT MUSK: Musk is a reddish-brown substance obtained from musk deer which is an endangered species which must not be killed. Thus, perfumers make do with ambrette or synthetic raw materials to mimic actual musk. So, it is not MUSK, but ARTIFICIAL MUSK.
8. ONE PERFUME, DIFFERENT PEOPLE, DIFFERENT SCENT: The same perfume may smell differently on different persons. This is because of the ways their bodies react to the perfume’s constituent ingredients, as a result of their individual body chemistry, genetics & diet preferences as well.
9. MORE ASTRONAUTS THAN PERFUMERS: According to BBC, perfumers are such a rare breed that there are more astronauts in the world than there are perfumers! A perfumer is half-artist half-scientist who memorizes smells of hundreds of ingredients, undergoes rigorous training and hones his/her craft over decades to be able to trap sensuality in a liquid and capture it in a bottle for mankind.
10. ESSENTIAL OILS: The manufacture of perfume depends on essential oils. Out of the approximately 250,000 flowering plant species, only around 2000 species are used to harvest essential oils i.e. 8% of the total species. If disease destroys a season’s crop of flowers, it can cause a serious setback to a perfume production house. It takes 800 pounds of jasmine flowers to produce 1 pound of essential oil.
11. PACKAGING LEADS BUYERS PERCEPTION: These days, perfume makers store perfumes in artistically crafted flacons to visually tempt the buyers to make a purchase. Also, consumers associate luxury fragrances with weight of the flacon & quality of the box it comes in.
12. THE MILLION DOLLAR NOSE: The French perfumer Jean Carles, who created scents like Miss Dior, had had his nose insured for a whopping amount of one million dollar. That’d be one proud nose!
