The Perfumes Industry Take off

Over the last forty years, the perfume industry has boomed. In 1993, there used to be about one new perfume launch every week. Now, there’s one every day, with each company trying to one-up their competition with expensive, innovative, and glamorous launches. Through the second half of the 20th century, there were many changes in the styles and fragrances of perfumes. It seems that they change in accordance with the dominant lifestyle of the day.

The picture in below , we can see the Grasse Perfume Industry on France.

Synthetic Sources

Most of the modern day’s perfumes has its origin from the synthetic source. Synthetics can provide fragrances which are not found in nature. For example, Orchid are usually not used directly from the plant itself but are instead synthetically created to match the fragrant compounds found in various orchids.

Natural/Aromatics Sources

This category of perfumes has its origin from plants and animal sources. Plants are known as the largest source of fragrant compounds used in the perfumery.

Plant Sources:

• Bark
• Flowers and Blossoms
• Frits
• Leaves and Twings
• Resins
• Roots, Rhizomes and Bulbs
• Seeds
• Woods
  

Animal Sources:

• Ambergris
• Natural Musk
• Civet
• Castor
• Hyraceum
• Honeycomb
  

Other Sources:

• Lichens
• Seaweed

Sources of Perfumes

The art of making perfume is known as “Perfumery”.
Traditionally perfumes were made from the natural sources found in the local areas. It has been revealed from the old records that they have been using herbs and spices to make perfume. The flowers were not used by this time. ‘Avicenna’ a Persian doctor who was also a chemist is known as the father of modern day’s perfume. He started the process of extracting essential oils from the flowers.

Perfumes are made from the constituents taken from both natural as well as synthetic origin. Here in my next features, you will see the detailed information about the aromatic/natural sources and the synthetic sources of the perfumes.

Perfume containers have always been attractive

The Egyptians treated their perfumes with great respect, and believed that only the best containers were good enough to hold them. Every effort was made to produce especially beautiful containers.

Take a look at the bottles and containers that perfumes are sold in today, and you’ll see that this practice hasn’t changed for thousands of years. Today’s perfume bottles are as attractive as they always were. And now, manufacturers are getting very innovative with their bottle designs. Sometimes for attractive containers people attract to buy and use perfume. So this is the most important for the manufacturer to make beautiful perfume bottles. Look at the top of today’s perfume bottles, its alaways been attractive as old bottles.

Concentration

Various sources differ considerably in the definitions of perfume types. The concentration by percent/volume of perfume oil is as follows:
• Perfume extract (Extrait): 15-40% (IFRA: typical 20%) aromatic compounds
• Eau de Parfum (EdP), Parfum de Toilette (PdT): 10-20% (typical ~15%) aromatic compounds. Sometimes listed as "eau de perfume" or "millésime".
• Eau de Toilette (EdT): 5-15% (typical ~10%) aromatic compounds
• Eau de Cologne (EdC): Chypre citrus type perfumes with 3-8% (typical ~5%) aromatic compounds
• Splash and After shave: 1-3% aromatic compounds.

Early Use of Perfumes

Today women have fragrance wardrobes of at least six different perfumes, rather than a single signature perfume, keeping one special perfume for occasion moments. People have used perfume, oils and unguents on their bodies for thousands of years in lesser or greater amounts dependent on fashion whims. The early Egyptians used perfumed balms as part of religious ceremonies and later as part of pre love making preparations. Myrrh and Frankincense were exuded gums from trees used to scent the atmosphere in rituals. Other plants such as rose and peppermint were steeped in oils until a perfumed unguent formed. The unguent was then rubbed into the skin.

History

Perfume is thousands of years old - the word "perfume" comes from the Latin "per fumus", meaning through smoke. One of the oldest uses of perfumes comes from the burning of incense and aromatic herbs used in religious services, often the aromatic gums, frankincense and myrrh, gathered from trees. The earliest use of perfume bottles is Egyptian and dates to around 1000 BC.

The world's first recorded chemist is considered to be a woman named Tapputi, a perfume maker who was mentioned in a cuneiform tablet from the second millennium BC in Mesopotamia.

A major difference between the composition of perfumes in ancient times and the perfumes of today is what was used as a base for the fragrance. Modern perfumes use alcohol while ancient perfumes used oils such as olive oil or others.

The Arabian chemist, Al-Kindi (Alkindus), wrote in the 9th century a book on perfumes which he named Book of the Chemistry of Perfume and Distillations. The book also described 107 methods and recipes for perfume-making and perfume making equipment, such as the alembic.

Introduction

People uses perfume to increase their image to others. It creates our best personality. Sometimes its a habit to collect various types of perfumes for some people. Sometimes people like to change their brands day after day.

Perfume is a mixture of fragrant essential oils and aroma compounds, fixatives, and solvents used to give the human body, animals, objects, and living spaces a pleasant scent. The odoriferous compounds that make up a perfume can be manufactured synthetically or extracted from plant or animal sources.