Perfumery

💭 Odor, oftener than any other sense impression, delivers a memory to consciousness little impaired by lapse of time, stripped of irrelevancies of the moment or of the intervening years, apparently alive and all but convincing
— Roy Bedichek

Some history first 📖

The physiological configuration of the sense of smell is a reminder of the primacy it once had for our predecessors, who walked on all fours with their noses close to the ground: the olfactory membrane is the only place in the human body where the central nervous system comes into direct contact with the environment. All other sensory information initially comes in through the thalamus. The sense of smell, however, is first processed in the limbic lobe, one of the oldest parts of the brain and the seat of sexual and emotional impulses. In other words, before we know we are in contact with a smell, we have already received and reacted to it. 🧠

Freud postulated that, as we began to walk upright, we lost our proximity to scent trails and to the olfactory information they provide. At the same time, our field of vision expanded, and sight began to take precedence over smell. Over time, our sense of smell lost its acuity.

This displacement of smell by sight appears to have been a necessary step in the process of human evolution, and perhaps because of that, the status of smell has declined along with its keenness. With the Enlightenment especially, the sense of smell came to be looked upon as a “lower” sense associated with animals and primitive urges, filth and disease. (It didn’t help that the stench of illness was long viewed as the cause of an ailment rather than its symptom.) Immanuel Kant pronounced smell the most unimportant of the senses and unworthy of cultivation 😢. The marginalization of smell became one of the hallmarks of “civilized” man.

Perfume, as a kind of scent, is all of these things. It is also, paradoxically, a product that is essentially worthless, its only function to provide pleasure. Perfume as we know it could not have taken shape without alchemy, the ancient art that undertook to convert raw matter, through a series of transformations, into a perfect and purified form. Often referred to as the “divine” or “sacred” art, alchemy has complex and deep roots that reach back to ancient China, India, and Egypt, but it came into its own in medieval Europe and flourished well into the seventeenth century.

The ways of the alchemists were shrouded in secrecy. They tended to be solo practitioners who maintained their own laboratories and rarely took pupils or associated in societies, even secret ones. They did leave records, however, and they quote one another extensively, for the most part in evident agreement. Agreement as to what is another question. On the one hand, their work, or opus, was practical, resembling a series of chemistry experiments. And indeed the alchemists deserve credit for refining the process of distillation, which was of enormous importance to the evolution of perfumery.

“What is above is as that which is below, and what is below is as that which is above.” 🔄

Alchemical work, from Michelspacher’s Cabala, Augsburg, 1616

As science and reason gained ground, alchemy went into eclipse (although some important scientists, most notably Isaac Newton, practiced it). The practical legacy of the alchemists passed to the chemists, who put it in service of the effort to dissect and analyze the elements of the natural world. The spiritual legacy of the alchemists can be seen as having passed to the psychologists, who strive like alchemists to reconcile dualities 🤔

Perfumery remained chiefly the domain of private solo practitioners—apothecaries, ladies who mixed their own blends at home, and other anonymous souls. It retained traces of its mystical origins in such recipes as a formula for “How to make a woman beautiful forever,” from the 1555 Les Secrets de Maistre Alexys, the earliest French perfumery book known.
But gradually something resembling a perfume business began to take shape. At first it was an outgrowth of the glove industry, owing to the popularity of perfumed gloves in France from the sixteenth century on. They were worn to keep the skin soft; some people even wore them to bed. Catherine de Medici’s perfumer, René, made gloves—and more. When Catherine wished to get rid of her enemies, she turned to him for sorcery, with effective results. Jeanne d’Albret, mother of Henry IV of France, was poisoned after she donned a pair of perfumed gloves presented to her by Catherine.

(The gloves 🔪)

René opened the first perfume shop in Paris, probably the first in France. Soon everyone who was anyone flocked there. On the ground floor he sold perfumes, unguents, and cosmetics to the public, but a select few were invited into the chambers above, where René kept alive the alchemical legacy of his profession.

It was said of Anne of Austria that with fair linen and perfumes one could entice her to Hades. Known for her beautiful hands, Anne was another glove fanatic. She sent to Naples for them, though she is credited with saying that the perfect glove is made of leather prepared in Spain, cut in France, and finished in England. Gloves of mouse skin were fashionable at her court as well. It was Anne’s son Louis XIV who granted a charter to the guild of gantiers‑parfumeurs in 1656 📜.

In the meantime, perfumers were rapidly acquiring a varied palette of natural ingredients and the sophistication to use them imaginatively. Benzoin, cedarwood, costus root, rose, rosemary, sage, juniperwood, frankincense, and cinnamon had been in use since ancient times. Between 1500 and 1540, angelica, anise, cardamom, fennel, caraway, lovage, mace, nutmeg, celery, sandalwood, juniper berries, and black pepper were added to the aromatic repertoire of distilled oils. The years between 1540 and 1589 saw the addition of basil, melissa, thyme, citrus, coriander, dill, oregano, marjoram, galbanum, guaiacwood, chamomile, spearmint, labdanum, lavender, lemon, mint, carrot seed, feverfew, cumin, myrrh, cloves, opoponax, parsley, orange peel, iris, wormwood, and saffron. Drawing upon this burgeoning assortment, in 1725 Johann Farina of Cologne introduced his famous Eau de Cologne, which was based on a mixture of citrus and herbal odors. By 1730 peppermint, ginger, mustard, cypress, bergamot, mugwort, neroli, and bitter almond had further increased the range of possibilities for the perfumer.

Although distillation could be used on roses, the fragrances of other flowers, such as jasmine, tuberose, and orange flower, eluded that method. They were not coaxed into surrendering their scents until the nineteenth century, when the Frenchman Jacques Passy, inspired by the observation that jasmine, tuberose, and orange flower continue to produce perfume after they have been cut, developed the technique of enfleurage, in which flower petals render their fragrance into a fatty pomade, from which a powerfully scented oil can be derived 🌸.

Catherine de Medici had encouraged the development of a perfume industry in France, and in her time Grasse, in southeastern France, had emerged as its center. The climate and soil of the surrounding region proved hospitable to orange trees, acacia, roses, and jasmine. Over time, distillation plants and other facilities for processing perfume materials grew up there; some of them are still operating today.

In tandem with these developments, a retail perfume business was gradually emerging in Europe’s larger cities. In early‑eighteenth‑century London, a Mr Perry combined the sale of medicines with that of perfume and cosmetics, along the lines of a modern drugstore; one of the products he advertised was an oil of mustard seed that was guaranteed to cure every disease under the sun. In the 1730s, William Bayley set up a shop selling perfumes under the sign of YE OLDE CIVET CAT—a popular appellation for London perfumeries—where he was patronized by men and women of fashion. But the first true celebrity perfumer was Charles Lillie, whose shop in London’s Strand was a meeting place for the literary and the fashionable. He counted among his friends Jonathan Swift, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, and Alexander Pope. Both Addison and Steele praised him copiously in print, and Steele went so far as to suggest that he “used the force of magical powers to add value to his wares.”

🧪 Industrial Chemistry & the Birth of Modern Perfumery (1868 – 1914)

The synthetic era began when William H. Perkin isolated coumarin (the smell of newly‑mown hay) from coal‑tar in 1868.
Shortly after, chemists unlocked vanillin from conifer bark, giving perfumers reliable access to gourmand sweetness. These breakthroughs did three things:

1. Expanded the palette beyond what nature could provide.
2. Lowered costs and stabilised quality.
3. Triggered brand‑new olfactive ideas—Houbigant’s Fougère Royale (1882) married coumarin, oakmoss, and lavender, inventing the fougère family.

📝 Milestone synthetics

Year	Molecule	Odour profile	First landmark use
1868	Coumarin	Hay, almond, tobacco	Fougère Royale (1882)
1874	Vanillin	Vanilla, ice‑cream	Guerlain Jicky (1889)
1903	Ionones	Violet, raspberry	Après L’Ondée (1906)
1905	Linalyl acetate	Lavender, bergamot	Colognes & soaps
1908	Aldehyde C‑12 MNA	Waxy, metallic citrus	Chanel N° 5 (1921)

✨ The Golden Age (1919 – 1939)

Chanel N° 5 (1921) overdosed on fatty aldehydes to create the first truly abstract scent.
Simultaneously, François Coty systematised marketing: fancy bottles + mass advertising = global desire.

Key houses & releases

• Guerlain – Shalimar (1925) introduced the “oriental” vanilla‑amber accord.
• Jean Patou – Joy (1930) exploited overdose of natural jasmine and rose.
• Caron – Tabac Blond blended isobutyl quinoline for a leathery note, appealing to the new female smoker.

🌍 Innovation & Regulation (1945 – 1990s)

Tools & analytics

• Gas Chromatography–Mass Spectrometry (GC‑MS) (1952) let perfumers peek inside any formula, standardise naturals, and police adulteration.
• Head‑space trapping (1970s) captured living‑flower scents never before bottled (lily‑of‑the‑valley → hydroxycitronellal).

Safety

• IFRA founded 1973; today limits ~200 molecules, enforces allergen labelling, and phases out endocrine disruptors.

New structural families

• Polycyclic musks (Galaxolide 1974) replaced nitro‑musks.
• Calone (1988) kicked off the marine “aquatic” wave (L’Eau d’Issey 1992).

🚀 Perfumery in the 21st Century

Sustainability

• Up‑cycled extracts (e.g., orange‑peel terpenes) valorise food‑industry waste.
• Biotech firms like Firmenich & Amyris bio‑ferment captive molecules (Clearwood™, Dreamwood™) to spare endangered sandalwoods.

Digital & AI

• Machine‑learning models predict note volatility, propose accord substitutes, and mine social‑media for trend forecasting.
• Generative tools (Scentmate™, Carto) let junior perfumers drag‑and‑drop accords while the algorithm keeps IFRA compliance in check.

🌲 The Fragrance Pyramid (Volatility Hierarchy)

🗂️ Olfactive Families Cheat‑Sheet

• Citrus / Hespéridé 🍋 – bergamot, neroli, petitgrain
• Fougère 🌿 – lavender + oakmoss + coumarin
• Chypre 🍂 – bergamot–labdanum–oakmoss triangle
• Floral 🌸 – rose, jasmine, tuberose (soliflores or bouquets)
• Oriental / Ambery 🔥 – vanilla, benzoin, spices
• Woody 🌲 – cedar, vetiver, sandalwood (dry), oud (smoky)
• Leather 🧥 – birch tar, isobutyl quinoline
• Aquatic 🌊 – calone, floralozone
• Gourmand 🍰 – ethyl maltol, caramel, praline accords

🧬 Formula Anatomy

A fine‑fragrance concentrate (“juice”) typically contains:

Rule of thumb: strong top notes ≈ low boiling‑point molecules (C₉ – C₁₂); deep base ≈ high‑molecular‑weight musks & woods (C₁₅+).