A good fragrance is really a powerful cocktail of memories and emotions quoted Jeffrey Stepakoff, a famous American television writer. An industry that never loses its demand is the fragrance industry. Today, the industry is worth of multibillion dollar and the world’s most expensive perfume, Shumukh which has a stunning combination of Indian agarwood, sandalwood , musk, Turkish rose with other ingredients cost a whopping USD 1.29 million. Looking back to the history, perfume is not a new invention but it has actually evolved together with human. Although, perfume was just formulated using plants and flowers before adding any oil during the ancient time it resembles that chemistry was being studies and applied centuries ago. The Egyptians were famous for producing perfumes. Initially, liquid perfumes used to be a mixture of oils and crushed herbs. Then, perfume was further refined and developed by a renowned physician Al-Shaykh al-Rais. He was among the first people to invent technique of distillation of roses and other plant fragrances. He is the first one to experiment perfumes with roses.

During lab work, as students we might have wondered how distillation is applied in real life.  Here we go! One of the major process of perfume making is distillation. Distillation is a technique of capturing essential oil from flowers or plants using water vapour.  However, not all raw materials in perfumery can be treated with distillation. There are also other methods such as such as maceration and enfleurage. Maceration is a method similar to extraction where essential oils found in certain types of flowers are extracted to be used in fragrances. The essentials oils are extracted by soaking the flowers in water, oil or a solvent.  Enfleurage is two-step process of drawing out a fragrance into a fat or oil base and then extracting it with an alcohol.

The main ingredients of a perfume are ethyl alcohol and essential oils. The concentration of essential oils such as agarwood, sandalwood, cedarwood determines how long it can last on your skin.  A solid perfume has 20-30% essential oil, Eau de Parfum (EDP) has 8-15% and Eau de Toilette (EDT) has 4-8% essential oil. The remaining portion is ethyl alcohol. Descriptions such as EDP and EDT are used to identify the concentration of oil in a fragrance composition.

Down the road, we might have noticed people saying “the perfume smells good on you” when we are wearing a certain perfume. Why do you think perfume is made in a wide range such as woody, citrus and to suit people’s preference?

This is because body chemistry plays a huge role in how fragrance performs on the skin. Each individual has a different body chemistry. For instance, every person has a different body odour.  Fragrance usually last longer on the moist skin compared to a dry skin and that is the reason there is summer and winter perfume. It is usually recommended to apply perfume on the pulse points because these are the locations on the body where the blood vessels are closest to the skin. The heat generated from the pulse points helps to diffuse, magnify and amplify a scent.

Another factor that determines the longevity of the fragrance is the molecules of perfume. As humans are made up of cells, perfumes are made up of molecules. The size of molecule and smell are correlated because the size of molecules determines how fast it oxidizes. The smaller molecules such as light citrus aroma oxidises quickly.

For instance, the molecule of a musk is complex and has a lot more electrons to give away before it disappears. The molecules of some synthetic musks are so large and complex that they literally can last days on your skin.​

Usually, it will take one to two hours to see exactly how it is performing on your skin since every fragrance has three layers which is known as Fragrance Pyramid. The layers are known as top note, middle note, last note and eevaporates as time goes. The rate of evaporation determines the staying power of a scent compound.  The layers are called as fragrance note.

Although, perfume was widely used since ancient time until the mid-19^th century, only wealthy people could afford perfumes as the prices were dictated by their costly ingredients. All thanks to chemists who made perfume affordable for everyone today. Chemist found ways to formulate perfumes with cheaper ingredients which split the market into budget and luxury products. Most importantly they are affordable so everyone can flaunt in their perfumes today regardless age, wealth, education and gender.