WOMEN’S PERFUME – Past and Present of Womens Perfume

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The origins of the word perfume and women’s perfume can be traced to the Latin per fumum which means “through smoke”. The actual art of making perfume however is thought to have began in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia and then further refinement was carried out by the Persians and of course the Romans. India too is known to have been very much involved in early perfume making but this was incense based fragrance on the whole.

The first chemist is thought to be a lady called Tapputi and she was at the same time a perfume manufacturer. This was back in the second millennium BC in Mesopotamia. She used distilled flower petals, oils and calamus with a number of other aromatics which were then filtered down to produce what one could call a perfume.

Fairly recently, archaeologists found what is now considered to be the oldest of perfumes in Pyrgos, Cyprus. These date back to more than 4000 years ago and consisted of various herbs and spices such as myrtle, coriander, conifer resin, bergamot, rosemary, almond, thyme and various other herbs and flowers.

The Persian Muslim doctor and chemist Avicenna (also known as Ibn Sina) was the first to introduce the process taking flowers and extracting oils by distillation, which is the procedure that is most commonly used these days. His first experiments it may come as no surprise were carried out using roses. Until his discovery using distillation, liquid perfumes were mixtures of oil and crushed herbs or petals, which made up a strong blend. Rose water was a more delicate and subtle product, and immediately became popular. Both the raw ingredients and the distillation technology has had a significant effect upon western perfumery and scientific developments.

Perfumery and the art of it came to Europe as late as the 14th century in part due to the spread of Islam, although it was the Hungarians who introduced the first “modern” perfume which consisted of scented oils blended with an alcohol based solution. This was produced at Queen Elizabeth of Hungary’s request and was known as Hungary Water.

In Renaissance Italy perfumery became very popular and then in the 16th Century the formula was taken to France where it became major industry and the European center for perfumes. At this time perfume was used by wealthy people to mask their body odors due to their lack of regular bathing. I suspect it can be argued that France remains the world’s capital for perfume production to this day.

If you are interested in learning about the exact formula used in commercial womens perfume, well thats a very well kept secret indeed! However, even if the formulas were to be made public they are so complex to produce exactly, that it would be nigh on impossible for the general consumer to gain the same results.

Nevertheless, the connoisseur of fine perfume can become adept at identifying individual components just as does the connoisseur of fine wine, albeit the difference being that one would not swirl fine perfume around the mouth, hopefully!

The best and most practical way to describe womens perfume depends on the elements used in its manufacture and which family of plants etc they belong to, which affects the overall impression of the perfume from its initial application to the final hint of any smell.