Lifestyle Choices

Scientists have been working for generations trying to understand how our noses distinguish one smell from another, to find a classification for scents, and perhaps to develop some kind of notation system for their description. So far without much success. One of the most interesting theories about the sense of smell comes from J. E. Moore, a British chemist. He claims that there are seven primary odors, under which all smells can be classified. Each of these, he says, has a distinctive molecular shape, which the olfactory cells in our nose recognize and react to. And this reaction is not only chemical, as you might expect. According to Moore (and several American researchers agree with him) these special-shaped molecules slot into submicroscopic pores of differing sizes and shapes in the receptor cells. The researchers claim that any change in odor is the result of a change in the overall shape of the molecule. But just how a fragrance affects the nervous system and brings about many-layered emotional responses remains yet another unsolved mystery.

The Making of a Perfume

Each good perfume is like a carefully gathered bouquet of flowers or a Bach fugue. It is intricately and exquisitely constructed from a number

of components: the essential oils of plants, notes from animal ingredients, and synthetic chemicals in alcohol or perhaps in one of the newer emollient bases. And a fine scent, like a piece of fine music, is far greater than the sum of its parts.

There are several thousand natural and man-made odorous materials that can be used to make a perfume. Most perfumers (in the business they are called “noses”) work with about two thousand of them, of which, by smell alone, they can recognize between six and eight hundred. A fine perfume is a blend of between twenty and a hundred and fifty ingredients. Until fifty years ago, the ingredients were almost entirely taken from plants and flowers, with the exception of a few remarkable animal notes such as musk from a Tibetan deer, civet from the glands of the civet cat, and ambergris from the sperm whale. This century, chemists have developed a wide variety of synthetic materials called aromatics, which have new smells. Some of the best scents rely heavily on them. The beautiful Chanel No. 5, for instance, takes its special character from a group of aromatics called the aldehydes. Just because a perfume contains a large number of synthetic chemicals doesn’t mean that it is second-rate or “cheap” compared to one that is predominantly essential oils. But it is also true that there is something special about the true plant essences in perfumes too. They seem to give a depth and richness that most of the man-mades lack. Ideally, a good perfume should make use of both: the natural plant and animal notes for character and body, and some of the synthetics for a special unique individuality and modernness which the naturals cannot offer.

Grasse, in southern France, is still the world’s capital of fine scent. It has been since the beginning of the fourteenth century, when scent as an industry was born, although the raw materials of perfume now come from all over the world. There and nearby the ground is covered with small fields of all kinds of odorous plants and flowers: roses and jasmine, tuberose, violet, lavender, narcissus, and carnations. In the factories the flowers, herbs, and woods are each carefully processed by distillation, enfleurage, or extraction to trap and preserve the valuable essences that will eventually be treated and mixed to make fragrances. Each flower is handled differently, and each essential oil produced from it has its own individual smell. Some sell for as little as a few dollars a pound. Others, like rose and jasmine, require hundreds of pounds of flowers to make even a few ounces of the precious essential oil, which may then sell on the open market for thousands of dollars a pint.

It is far more than a figure of speech when one likens a fine scent to a piece of fine music. So close to music in composition is the art of creating perfumes that perfumes and composers use many of the same words to speak about the two processes. For as musical notes and chords are the raw materials for music, so these essential oils, along with the aromatic chemicals and animal substances, make up the individual notes of scent.

And each good scent is composed like a piece of orchestral music, a blend of various ingredients striking various notes and eliciting various emotional responses from the nose smelling them.

The base notes of a fragrance are profound and long-lasting. They are made up of the heavier-smelling substances, many of which are even unpleasant alone. They form the foundation of the scent, giving it richness and lasting ability. The base notes make a scent reverberate hour after hour. Many animal substances are used in constructing a base, as are oak, moss, patchouli, and vetiver.

A perfume’s middle notes don’t last quite as long as the base, but they give the scent breadth and variety. Common middle notes come from Bulgarian rose, iris, jasmine, thyme, and ylang-ylang. The middle notes give a perfume its warming, diffuse glow as it develops on the skin.

The top notes of a perfume are the most immediately apparent when you first put it on. They produce scent’s first impression. They also add brilliance to the blend, giving it clarity of statement, much as a flute adds simple purity to an orchestra. These top notes are highly volatile substances, often drawn from citrus or spicy materials: neroli, lemon, coriander, bergamot. The perfumer carefully blends and reblends base, middle, and top notes in a kind of harmonious composition that not only smells complete when it is first encountered but has depth and dimensions that continue to speak as it changes on your skin. The difference between a fine scent and a poor one is unmistakable to a discerning nose. And anyone’s nose can be made discerning simply by being exposed to good perfumes.

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