Some Interesting Info About Perfume

-Perfume is a mixture of fragrant essential oils and aroma compounds, fixatives, and solvents used to give the human body, objects, and living spaces a lasting and pleasant smell. The amount and type of solvent mix with the fragrance oil dictates whether a perfume is considered a perfume extract, Eau de parfum, Eau de toilette, or Eau de Cologne.

-Everyone has their own personal aura. Thanks to genes, diet, skin type, medication, stress levels, pore size and perspiration. These factors can affect the warmth of the skin which will in turn affect the scent result. That means, a perfume could smell differently on 2 persons.

-It is impossible to describe a perfume according to its components because the exact formulas are kept secret. Even if the formulas are known, the ingrediants are often too numerous to provide a useful classification. On the other hand, it is possible to group perfumes into olfactive family and describe them through the notes that appear as they slowly evaporate. Perfumes can also be classified according to their concentration.

-Scented ingredients added to perfumes include ginger, grapefruit, musk, peppercorns, mandarin peel, fig leaves, rose, watercress, bamboo, clementine, vanilia, honeysuckle, green tea and the list goes on.

-Never use perfume near pearl or costume jewelry. The alcohol in perfumes can cause pearls to yellow and can strip the coating off jewelry.

-Perfume oils usually contain tens to hundreds of ingredients. Included in the perfume are fixatives, which bind the various fragrances together, include balsams, ambergris, and secretions from the scent glands of civets and musk deer (undiluted, these have unpleasant smells but in alcoholic solution they act as preserving agents). The mixture is normally aged for one year.

-Top notes: Scents that are perceived a few minutes after the application of a perfume. Top notes create the scents that forms a person's initial impression of a perfume. Because of this, they are very important in the selling of a perfume. The scents of this note class are usually described as "fresh", "assertive" or "sharp". The compounds that contribute to top notes are strong in scent, very volatile, and evaporate quickly. Citrus and ginger scents are common top notes.

-Heart notes or Middle notes: The scent of a perfume that emerges after the top notes dissipate. The heart note compounds form the "heart" or main body of a perfume and acts to smooth the sharpness from the initial impression of a perfume caused by the top notes. Not surprisingly, the scent of heart note compounds are usually more mellow and "rounded". Scents from this note class appear anywhere from 10 minutes to 1 hour after the application of a perfume. Lavender and rose scents are typical heart notes.

-Base notes: The scent of a perfume that appears after the departure of the heart notes. Base Notes bring depth and solidness to a perfume. Compounds of this class are usually the fixatives used to hold and boost the strength of the lighter top and heart notes. The compounds of this class of scents are typically rich and "deep" and are usually not perceived until 30 minutes after the application of the perfume or during the period of perfume dry-down. Musk, vetiver and scents of plant resins are commonly used as base notes.