Mother Nature really knows her stuff. All the glorious scents of flowers draw bees, who collect pollen to make honey and in the meantime scatter pollen all over to make more flowers. Perfumes are meant to work in a similar way, except they often have top celebrity names attached to designer perfumes.
Much as men and women enjoy using fragrance, not everyone understands how designer perfumes are created, nor how to use them properly. You know what we mean if you’ve ever been stuck in an elevator with someone who went a little too heavy with their cologne that morning!
Perfume is made by combining plant or animal compounds with alcohol and water to create a scented liquid to wear on the skin. Perfume originally was created to mask the odors of poor hygiene! Although some people still use it that way, many more people are interested in using perfume to mimic the natural human scents known as pheromones. Pheromones are Mother Nature at work again – body odors that animals emit when they’re frightened, angry or looking for love.
Understanding this reality, along with the types of scent, can make it easier to choose the right designer perfume for yourself or someone else.
First, know that the amount of aromatic material that goes into a “perfume” determines what kind it is. It doesn’t matter whether the scent is an essential oil from a botanical source, a musk derived from animal oils or even one of the synthetic scents that have been created from chemicals. The more scent, the more concentrated your designer perfume will be – and the easier it will be to overdo it if you’re not careful!
Most perfume sold today is actually “eau de parfum,” (literally “perfume water”) with 15 to 30 percent aromatic ingredients. True perfume is rarely sold because it is so expensive. Instead, it’s used to create the “eau de parfum” and other categories of scent that you find in designer fragrances. There are also perfume oils, which can be added to beeswax to make solid perfume.
Designer perfumes come in many classifications of fragrance: spicy, woody, floral, musky, herbal or powdery, also termed “chypre.” There’s also a new category of scents derived from aromatherapy called “watery.”
Perfume designers are always experimenting, although this quest for new scents sometimes upsets more traditional perfumers. Recently technology has helped cosmetic companies create new scents by combining herbals and florals, or by extacting the aromatic elements from food such as chocolate, vanilla, coffee and cherry. Fruity and food scents are particular favorites in designer perfumes aimed at young adult markets.
Thanks to technology, certain chemicals now contribute to what have become classic designer perfumes. Aldehydes were first used to create Chanel No. 5. The aldehyde process results in pure chemicals whose odors are designated by letters instead of names. While these may be manmade scents, they have proved riotously popular and attractive and make up the most elegant and sought-after designer fragrances on the market today.
Many designer perfumes are made to work with your own body chemistry, so look for the one that combines with your own pheromones to make your “signature scent.”