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  Fragrance Tips

For a long-lasting effect, fragrance should be layered all over the body, starting with toilet water or eau de parfum, next in strength to perfume, to build the fragrance foundation. Because fragrance rises, spray or smooth fragrance onto skin from the feet to the shoulders. If fragrance is applied only behind the ears, it will eventually rise and disappear.

  Fragrance Tips

Skin type will also affect the way a fragrance smells on a person. Fragrance wearers with oilier skin should remember that fragrances interact with the oils in their skin to create a more intense scent. Dry skin does not retain fragrance as long as oily skin, requiring the wearer to re-apply the fragrance more often.
 

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Perfume / Fragrance / Cologne Information:

Different forms of fragrance

Perfume

Perfume is a mixture of fragrant essential oils and aroma compounds, fixatives, and solvents used to give the human body, objects, and living spaces a pleasant smell. The amount and type of solvent mix with the fragrance oil dictates whether a perfume is considered a perfume extract, Eau de parfum, Eau de toilette, or Eau de Cologne.

Description of a perfume

It is impossible to describe a perfume according to its components because the formulas are kept secret. Even if the formulas are known, the ingredients are often too numerous to provide a useful classification. Cognoscenti can, however, generally get a handle on the principal ingredients. On the other hand, it is possible to group perfumes into olfactive families and describe them through the notes that appear as they slowly evaporate. Perfumes can also be classified according to their concentration.

Olfactive families

Fragrances can be classified into several olfactive families, by the themes, or accords, of these fragrances.

* Floral: Fragrances that are dominated by the scent of one or more types of flowers. When only one flower is used, it is called a soliflore (as in Dior's Diorissimo, with lily of the valley).
* Chypre: Fragrances built on a similar accord consisting of bergamot, oak moss, pachouli, and labdanum. This family of fragrances is named after a perfume by François Coty by the same name. Meaning Cyprus in French, the term alludes to the inspiration behind the original creation.
* Aldehydic: Fragrances that incorporate the family of chemicals known as aldehydes. Chanel No 5 was the first aldehydic perfume (created by the French perfumer Ernest Beaux in 1921). Others include Je Reviens and Arpege. Aldehydic perfumes have the characteristic "piquant" note produced by materials like Aldehyde C12 MNA.
* Fougère: Fragrances built on a base of lavender, coumarin and oak moss. Many men's fragrances belong to this family of fragrances, which is characterized by its sharp herbaceous and woody scent.
* Leather: A family of fragrances which features the scents honey, tobacco, wood, and wood tars in its middle or base notes and a scent that alludes to leather.
* Woody: Fragrances that are dominated by the woody scents, typically of sandalwood and cedar. Patchouli, with its camphoraceous smell, is commonly found in these perfumes.
* Orientals or ambers: A large fragrance class featuring the scents of vanilla and animal scents together with flowers and woods. Can be enhanced by camphorous oils and incense resins, which bring to mind Victorian era imagery of the Middle East and Far East.
* Citrus: An old fragrance family that until recently consisted mainly of "freshening" eau de colognes due to the low tenacity of citrus scents. Development of newer fragrance compounds has allowed for the creation of primarily citrus fragrances.

Fragrance Notes

A mixture of alcohol and water is used as the solvent for the aromatics. On application, body heat causes the solvent to quickly disperse, leaving the fragrance to evaporate gradually over several hours. The rate of evaporation (vapor pressure) and the odor strength of the compound partly determine the tenacity of the compound and determine its perfume note classification.

* Top notes: Scents that are perceived immediately on application of a perfume. Top notes create the scents that form a person's initial impression of a perfume. Because of this, they are very important in the selling of a perfume. The scents of this note class are usually described as "fresh," "assertive" or "sharp." The compounds that contribute to top notes are strong in scent, very volatile, and evaporate quickly. Citrus and ginger scents are common top notes.

* Heart notes or Middle notes: The scent of a perfume that emerges after the top notes dissipate. The heart note compounds form the "heart" or main body of a perfume and act to mask the often unpleasant initial impression of base notes, which become more pleasant with time. Not surprisingly, the scent of heart note compounds is usually more mellow and "rounded." Scents from this note class appear anywhere from 2 minutes to 1 hour after the application of a perfume. Lavender and rose scents are typical heart notes. Top notes and heart notes are sometimes described together as head notes.

* Base notes: The scent of a perfume that appears after the departure of the top notes. The base and middle notes together are the main theme of a perfume. Base notes bring depth and solidness to a perfume. Compounds of this class are often the fixatives used to hold and boost the strength of the lighter top and heart notes. The compounds of this class of scents are typically rich and "deep" and are usually not perceived until 30 minutes after the application of the perfume or during the period of perfume dry-down. Musk, vetiver and scents of plant resins are commonly used as base notes.

Concentration and composition

Perfumes oils, or the "juice" of [perfume] composition, are diluted with a suitable solvent to make the perfume more usable. This is done because undiluted oils (natural or synthetic) contain high concentrations of volatile components that will likely result in allergic reactions and possibly injury when applied directly to skin or clothing.

Although dilutions of the perfume oil can be done using solvents such as jojoba, fractionated coconut oil, and wax, the most common solvents for perfume oil dilution is ethanol or a mixture of ethanol and water. The percent of perfume oil by volume in a perfume is listed as follows:

* Perfume extract: 20%-40% aromatic compounds
* Eau de parfum: 10-30% aromatic compounds
* Eau de toilette: 5-20% aromatic compounds
* Eau de cologne: 2-3% aromatic compounds

As the percentage of aromatic compounds decreases, the intensity and longevity of the scent decrease. It should be noted that different perfumeries or perfume houses assign different amounts of oils to each of their perfumes. As such, although the oil concentration of a perfume in eau de parfum (EDP) dilution will necessarily be higher than the same perfume in eau de toilette (EDT) form, the same trends may not necessarily apply to different perfume compositions much less across different perfume houses.

To complicate matters more, some fragrances with the same product name but having a different concentration name may not only differ in their dilutions, but actually use different perfume oil mixtures altogether. For instance, in order to make the EDT version of a fragrance brighter and fresher than its EDP, the EDT oil may be "tweaked" to contain slightly more top notes or less base notes. In some cases, words such as "extreme" or "concentrate" appended to fragrance names might indicate completely different fragrances that relates only because of a similar perfume accord. An instance of this would be Chanel‘s Pour Monsieur and Pour Monsieur Concentrate.

more on the history and make-up of perfume

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