Perfume Chemistry

Why is perfume so diluted? It's not that manufacturers are stingy. The reason is actually aesthetic: Lots
of alcohol spreads out the smells so that you can distinguish them. In a perfume oil, you'd encounter a
jumble of smells. Smelling it would be like hearing an orchestra play all the notes in a symphony at once.
You might register that you're smelling something sweet, but not that it's mango, followed by jasmine,
finished with cherry. Its diluted nature makes the smell enjoyable.
In fact, most perfumes are engineered to have a three-part smell, which unfolds after you apply it to your
skin. You smell top notes within the first 15 minutes of applying. These chemicals first evaporate off your
skin. Designers often put weird, unpleasant or spicy smells in this phase so that they interest you but
don't hang around long enough to offend. Heart notesappear after 3 to 4 hours. The chemicals creating
these smells evaporate more slowly from your skin. They're probably what you remember about the
perfume; if it's a floral perfume, flowery smells go here. Base notes stick stubbornly to your skin. You
smell them within 5 to 8 hours of application [source:Sell]. Musky, watery, mossy and woody chemicals
often go in the base [source: Calkin]. The word note is just perfume jargon for an individual smell.
Knowing that perfumes smell by evaporating, you can take better care in applying them. When applying,
spread the perfume, but don't rub it in vigorously, because the heat you create will evaporate the top
notes and weaken the overall smell.
Chemical reactions can also morph your perfume on the shelf. Visible light has enough energy to bust the
bonds in fragrance molecules, and bright sun will singe your perfume in as little as a week [source: Turin
and Sanchez]. Air can also corrode your fragrance by oxidation -- the same process that turns uncorked
wine into vinegar. Storing your perfume at room temperature, in the dark and in a spray bottle preserves it
well. Then, it will have a shelf life of at least two years [source: Sell].
But what about your chemistry? Your temperature and oiliness seem most important. The top notes will
evaporate faster from warm and dry skin than cool and oily skin. Otherwise, by the time the heart notes
emerge, the perfume smells the same on everyone [source: Turin and Sanchez].
You have learned about your perfume's structure and behavior. You have spread, but not rubbed
vigorously. Next, we'll look at how the fragrance industry produces the stuff.

What Is Perfume?
In liquid perfume, the liquid is a mixture of alcohol, water and molecules that evaporates at room
temperature. "A smell is basically a molecule that's light enough to float in the air, although not every
molecule that's light enough to float in the air has a smell -- carbon monoxide, for example," says Avery
Gilbert, a sensory psychologist who has consulted for the fragrance industry. What creates the fragrance
is that cells in your nose recognize the evaporating molecules and sendelectrical messages to your brain,
which creates a perception. To learn exactly how we smell, readHow Smell Works.

If you've read the French phrases on your perfume bottle, you may know that perfumes come in different
strengths. The most concentrated are perfume oils. They have been pressed out, steamed out or
chemically separated out of a plant, flower or fruit [source: Sell]. In perfume oil, fragrance molecules are
dissolved in 98 percent alcohol and 2 percent water. Everything else is alcohol-diluted perfume oil. From
most to least concentrated, parfum is at least 25 percent perfume oil; eau de parfum is 15 to 18
percent; eau de toilette is 10 percent; and eaux de cologne and body spray are lighter [source: Turin
and Sanchez].
The perfume world also classifies perfumes into scent families. The categories exist because critics and
designers use the terms. There are no groupings that everyone agrees on, nor any rule about
categorization beyond common sense and a perfume belonging if it smells like the last perfume in the
category. Here are some classifications you may have encountered:

Floral: smells like flowers

Fruity: smells like fruit, including citrus

Green: fresh grass or leaves

Herbaceous: like any variety of herbs

Woody: like different types of wood

Amber: like tree resin

Animalic: bodily smells

Musk: like a substance made by the musk deer

Oriental: amber and spice

[source: Turin and Sanchez]
Sometimes perfumes are categorized according to the structure of one of its fragrant molecules:

Aldehydic: fatty but makes other smells radiate

Lactonic: creamy and fruity

Phenolic: smells like tar

Tired of these subjective categories? There are no ambiguities in the chemistry of perfume, except in the
secret ingredients, of course. Read on to learn basic perfume chemistry.

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