The Art of Perfumery and The Perfect Ingredients

A perfume is not very far away from a work of art. There are masterpieces and mediocre pieces; some bad perfumes can be very popular, and some treasures are hidden somewhere, a privilege for few fine connoisseurs.
Like a painting from a master, creating a perfume, or enjoying it requires some abilities, that you acquire wit time and exercise. Similarities could go on forever. Just like a painting is not only a bunch of colors randomly applied on a canvas, a perfume is not a cocktail of fragrances mixed by a bored chemist trying to kill some time. The purpose behind a perfume is to convey a personal emotion. Like any artistic expression, creating a perfume depends on the imagination of the perfume makers, who are often nicknamed “noses” even if the organ they use the most is probably the brain, which is where a professional perfume designer stores a database of 3500 different smells, and most of their combination. So that is where a perfume is born, in the imagination of its designer, the vision before the painting. Trying to reproduce that vision, making it tangible, is where the designers employ all their skills and where the research starts.

Even though synthetic ingredients are widely used in the perfume making industry, natural extracts are still used, as they give a perfume more prestige and sometimes (but not necessarily a better quality). Here below is a summary of the most important natural ingredients for a perfume:
Flowers:

• Jasmine. It’s the main ingredient the greatest perfumes. About 600KG (1300 pounds) of jasmine are necessary to get 1kg (2 lbs) of jasmine extract. This amounts to 5 million flowers. Now, 1 kg is enough to produce a lot of perfume, but 5 million flowers is still a huge number. One of the best examples of perfume made with jasmine extract would be Jo Malone perfume
• Rose: two types are used in perfumery: Bulgarian and May rose. When they are joined together the fragrance is softer
• Orange flower: its essence is called neroli
• Lavender: if gives a fresh and tonic note
• Ylang-Ylang: its name means “flower of lowers”
• Carnation: it gives a slightly spicy note
• Geranium: it gives the perfume a green-pink halo, with a touch of amber and very persistent

Herbs: thyme, rosemary, mint, wormwood
Spices: cardamom, ginger, clove, chili pepper, nutmeg
Citrus: lemon, bergamot (a fine example would be Hermes Perfume Un Jardin), orange, mandarin, citron
Roots: Java Vetiver (which gives a fine and vigorous note of grass), and Iris
Seeds: coriander, anise, vanilla,
Woods and barks: sandalwood, cedar, cinnamon, birch (for the leather notes), rosewood
Leaves: patchouli (for the base notes), petit grain (from the leaves of bitter orange)
Musk: the main ingredient here is the musk taken from the bark of oak from Yugoslavia.