Perfume creation |
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The decision to create and market a new perfume is necessarily a matter of hard commercial practicalities, usually based on market research. Whether the perfume is to be made for a perfume company or for a fashion house or other such concern which will sell it as a supplement to the main business, basic problems of type and cost must be settled at an early stage. A maximum price for the perfume must be determined, and a ceiling set on the cost of making and marketing it. The design of the bottle and packaging must reflect not only the type of fragrance and its brand name, but also the image which the company launching it wishes to convey about itself. It is within these considerations that the 'nose', or creative perfumer (also sometimes called a blender), will be engaged to start devising the new fragrance In particular, it must be known from the very beginning how much money can be spent on materials. If the perfume is to sell to a mass market at a low retail price, rare and costly ingredients cannot be put into it. The ingredients available to a perfumer come from the essential oils (and their concretes and absolutes) of about 400 different fragrant plant parts, together with a choice of some 4000 or more synthetic fragrances, which are chemicals either extracted from plant parts, and therefore intrinsically of natural origin, or manufactured from substances such as coal or crude oil. The yield of some essential oils, and especially of their concretes and absolutes, may be very low, and where this coincides with labour-intensive picking and collection the resultant perfume ingredient may be extremely expensive; tuberose absolute, for example, now costs more than its weight in gold. But the manufacturing process by which some of the synthetics are obtained can also be expensive, so that in perfumery 'synthetic' does not signify cheapness. Neither does 'synthetic' indicate something inferior to a natural product. Aldehydes, indeed, are used to sharpen and improve natural fragrances. While some of the very highest quality perfumes (e.g. 'Amouage' and 'Bal a Versailles') are created almost entirely out of costly natural oils and attars, or extracts from such oils and attars, the majority of high-quality modern perfumes use a liberal range of chemicals, together with natural materials, to obtain their effect. Without synthetics production of perfume on a mass scale to meet the demands of modern limes would be impossible, because supplies of many ingredients would be insufficient and their cost prohibitive. In the case of some of the animal perfume materials, moreover, synthetics now enable perfumers to use substitutes which are not subject to criticism on ecological or 'animal rights' grounds. Similarly, several oils are now chemically modified, or even synthesized, to replace natural oils for safety or environmental reasons (e.g. because the original oil has been found to contain a trace of some toxic substance). The perfumer has to ensure that materials to be used meet internationally laid down standards in this respect. Oils now generally so replaced include balsam of Peru, bergamot, bitter orange, cassia, cinnamon, costus, lime, rue and styrax, together with some early chemically extracted or synthetic materials such as citral, musk ambrette, musk ketone and musk xylene. Sitting at their organs, with shelves full of bottles of essential oils and synthetic preparations ranged around, perfumers will attempt by degrees to build up a composite fragrance which meets the specifications imposed. It requires years of experience to get to know and distinguish the hundreds of different fragrances which can be chosen from; the perfumers have had to learn what effect one fragrance may have on another when they are mixed together, how to smooth or sharpen a fragrance, how to bring odours to a common standard of strength so that one ingredient will not overwhelm another, how to achieve the effect of high, middle and low notes, and how to fix a perfume so that it will last. Thev must also know what ingredients will be available in the quantity required for manufacture of the perfume in bulk, for there is clearly no point in using something of which there is an inadequate supply. They must be skilled chemists.
Relying on a highly trained sense of smell, perfumers will test their compositions as they progress with fragrance blotters, small wands of blotting paper which are dipped into the mixture and allowed to.dry before being sniffed. However, the olfactory nerve quickly tires, making the process a very slow one, and, with nuances of aroma to decide between, it may >\-ell be decided to wait for another day before going any further. As the composition develops, probably built up from the base notes, the perfumer will from time to time need to discuss it with the sponsor: an luutte couture designer who has commissioned the fragrance may have very strong personal views about the nature of what is being prepared, and modifications may have to be made in the light of what such a sponsor says. Testing is also necessary over lengthy periods to ensure, for example, that the aroma will last the required amount of time when worn, that it will remain constant in different temperatures and climates, that it will remain consistent after being kept in a bottle for months. For these and other reasons a perfume may well take two or three years to develop. Francois Coly took live years to perfect 'L'Aimant'; the creation of Guerlain's 'Chant d'Aromes' lasted for seven years; Caron's 'Infini' was fifteen years in the making.
Most perfumes will contain 50 to 100 different ingredients, many of them considerably more . They must all harmonize perfectly with each other. Having finally achieved what is required by the perfumer and the sponsor, the perfumer will list the ingredients in a formula showing the exact strengths and quantities of everything the perfume contains, sometimes expressed in portions which add up to 1000. This formula, a valuable and highly confidential document, is the basis on which the perfume will then be manufactured. Liquid perfumes provide the would-be home perfume markers with rather more problems, as will be apparent from the entry above on Perfume Creation. They cannot hope to simulate the quality fragrances produced by commercial perfumeries, which may contain several hundred ingredients, including many chemicals, and they can realistically aim only at very simple constructions. They will have to be' prepared to purchase all their essential oils, some of which may be quite expensive. For a start a base will be needed on which the perfume can be built. This can either be an alcohol (vodka is sometimes used) or an oil; jojoba oil is regarded as a good, neutral, stable base oil, or, following the perfume makers of ancient Egypt and Greece, sesame oil could be used. The base should be prepared by the addition of such base notes as may be required, including fixatives, adding them drop by drop. The main body of the fragrance is then inserted, the chosen oils once again being added drop by drop. Ten drops of essential oils added to about half a pint of alcohol will produce a weak cologne-strength fragrance; for a stronger perfume a smaller amount of alcohol or base oil should be used (or, conversely, more essential oils). The mixture should be kept in a scaled container for at least a week in order to blend properly before it can be used. Home perfumers can experiment with the introduction of top notes as well (which should be added last); the evaporation rates mentioned in Poucher's table, referred to under Perfume, Classification of Fragrances, may assist in this, as will a study of which ingredients are used lor which notes in the descriptions of perfumes contained
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