A Fast History of Perfume

From the ancient Egyptians to Britny Spears, people have been fascinated with fragrance. Technology has changed but noses haven't.

The first perfumes were likely not liquids at all but more like incense. In fact, the very name perfume means "through" (per) "the smoke" (fume). That's because sometimes ancient peoples would scent their skin by burning a substance and then putting a drape over themselves in such a way that the fragrant smoke would cling to their bodies.

The original perfumes used exclusively natural sustances. Flowers, spices, and plants were all used for their fragrances. These early natural perfumes were somewhat unstable but much coveted.

Perfume, in fact, was so valuable that it may have been more of an impetus to Christopher Columbus's exploration of the new world than we thought. Columbus was seeking a short route from Europe to India's legendary Malabar Coast. The Malabar region in southern India was famous (even back in the 15th century) for its exotic, fragrant spices.

The advent of distillation techniques allowed those who pursued the art of perfumery to take flowers and create a concentrated scented product. The very first of these early true perfumes was most likely rose water.

Perfume was always very much valued by the upper classes, who were probably the only ones who could afford it. Because it relied on abundant natural products to create only small amounts of fragrance, perfume was exorbitantly expensive.

In the Middle Ages in Europe, aristocrats sought perfume as a way to navigate an otherwise stinking world. By the early 18th century, perfumed gloves were the rage among the French upper classes, indicating the perfume was used mainly as a way to distract the nose from less appealing ambient aromas.

Perfume was used frequently among royals and aristocrats. In fact, Louis XIV required everyone at his court to wear perfume. Some Europeans had the notion that perfume had medicinal and disinfectant properties.

Around this time, perfumists emerged as an occupational class. While perfumists then and now are those skilled in the blending and creation of pleasing fragrance products, the original perfumists had to be pretty adept about gathering and processing raw materials.

When Catherine de Medici (then the richest woman of the world, one of the last world-stage figures of the Medici dynasty in Italy) married Henri II, king of France, she took her perfumist with her to live in France. Her perfumist was actually skilled in another but perhaps related profession: he was a poison maker. History says that when he arrived in France, he was so taken with new and different botanicals that he dedicated himself to the art of perfume rather than poison. (Also, there probably wasn't much business for a poison-maker in any town where there weren't any Borgias.)

Hungary Water (eau de Hongarie) is often credited as being the first perfume made for Queen Elizabeth of Hungary. Whether or not that is true seems doubtful, but the basic premise is true. Perfumes were created in those early days specifically for royalty. In some cases, we still know the recipes. The museum at Versailles (former home of Marie Antoinette) claims to have recently found the formula for a special perfume made for the Austrian-born French queen who was decapitated during the French Revolution. It plans on working with a French manufacturer to produce the scent commercially next year.

Those early European scents were heavily floral. Plants were the primary ingredient that perfumists had to work with, although spices and other materials (musks, woods) could be used. We know comparatively little about the early perfume work of China and Arabia (by that, we mean "we" don't know it, not that it is not known to human history) other than that both cultures contributed vastly to the art of perfumery.

In fact, Arabian scents were so well known that it has been speculated that Europe's Middle Age obsession with fragrance began after Crusaders to the Holy Land exposed European upper classes to the perfumes available from the Near East.

The rise of an affluent middle class brought with it a cry for the luxuries once afforded only to nobles. The demand for perfume grew strong in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Ordinary women sought out fragrances, and the growing industrialized culture sought to meet that demand.

In 1923, a then relatively unknown French fashion designer named Gabriele Chanel commissioned a Russian-born expatriate living in France to conconct some scents for her to accompany her line of women's fashion. Chanel would soon become one of the most legendary designers in all of history and even then, she had very unusual and highly specific ideas about beauty, fashion, and perfumes. She wanted a fragrance that smelled "completely artificial."

She was, of course, rebelling against the tradition that up till that point had created nothing but flowery perfumes. Everything in the perfume world was utterly natural, like a garden or a walk in the woods. Chanel saw fashion as a contrivance, a creation, and an art. Art was not supposed to be natural. In fact, art was the very antithesis of the natural.

"Coco" Chanel, as she came to be known, got six samples from Ernst Breaux. Breaux was a world-class perfumist (one of his other creations, Evening in Paris, is a personal favorite of mine) but not a poet. He named the perfumes Chanel No. 1, No. 2, and so on. He made six samples and Chanel picked out the fifth one and kept the name. She launched the scent on May 5 and told the story many times that five was her favorite number. That is likely true, since the scent put her on the map. However, like much of what Coco Chanel revealed about herself, it was only true in concept, not specifics.

Chanel did not make a great deal of money from the scent (business dealings deflected the lion's share of earnings to another involveed party) but her name endures to this day because of the scent. Its still a best-seller today.

The artificial quality that Chanel coveted was achieved with a molecule known as an aldehyde. These are odorant or scent molecules that are created in a laboratory. They were very popular in the 1920s and are in use today. Ask a "nose" what they smell like and the closest official description is that they are "sparkly."

Aldehydes and related other artificial scent molecules not only add sparkle to fragrance products, they also allow a scent to modify itself somewhat to an individual's skin chemistry. This means that any heavy aledehyde fragrance (such as Chanel No. 5) can be expected to smell differently on different people.

Chemistry also allows scents to be created in a way that allows a sequential release of elements. In this way, scents have top notes, heart notes, and base notes which emerge (top notes first, base notes last) and blend. This allows a fragrance to change its aroma and character on the skin.

In 1990, Estee Lauder introduced the first monolithic scent with its Tresor, still one of its most popular fragrance lines. Tresor does not have the top, heart, and base note pattern of so many scents on the market today. It smells the just about the same on the skin after an hour as after four hours. Instead, its perfumist created a more panoramic fragrance. The fragrance is complex, but its not a sequential unfolding. It's more like looking at a vast panorama where a lot of different things impress you at once.

Today, there are occasional rumblings about going back to the natural world for scented products, although most perfumists are quite comfortable in the world of science labs. First, artificial scents have proven to be at the very heart of the perfumist's trade and second, natural does not necessarily mean better, at least when it comes to scent. An artificial scent molecule for an orchid does not necessarily smell worse that the actual orchids. Natural products can be of hit-or-miss quality, which is not something most perfumistas tolerate in their perfume.

Today, perfume is more popular than ever. Women adore it, men are using more and more fragrance products, and it's become a very mainstream middle-class product that even young people and kids are using. One amusing trend (we don't find it alarming) is the celebrity fragrance. Today, just about every famous person has a line of fragrance, usually involving multiple scents. It's really not that difference from a designer offering a line of fragrance (Coco Chanel didn't concoct the first No. 5 any more than Calvin Klein brewed up the first batch of Eternity) and the world seems celebrity-obsessed.

Another new trend in perfume today is the variety of scented products. Shower gels, lotions, creams, solid sticks, and other products now all carry scent so that fragrance can be layered on and the daring (and nose-smart) can mix scents by layers.

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