~ First in a Series of Articles About Perfume ~

Jolique puttin' on the spritz...

It's really amazing when you think about it. A woman (and it's mostly women by the way—even when it comes to men's fragrances) may spend hundreds of dollars per year on something as fleeting and intangible as perfume, but cringe at the thought of paying $30 for an oil change. Even more amazing is the fact that those hard-earned dollars are dispensed on something that's mostly alcohol...and not the kind you can drink either! Not that history is any justification, but we've done this for thousands of years. For eons, women have been suckers to clever packaging and ethereal promises. For some, a day's salary is a small price to pay for beauty (Beautiful), joy (Pleasures, Joy, Happy), sex (Obsession), inspiration (Poême, Coup de Foudre), exotic travel (Paris, Shalimar) or forbidden love (Tabu). I mean, it says so right on the bottle, so what's $200 compared to a lifetime of happiness? Or at least as long as the bottle lasts, anyway.

If it makes you feel any better, even Jolique is not above the insanity. She, too, confesses to an expensive arsenal of Chanel No. 5, Shalimar, Cabotine, Allure, Cristalle and Murasaki, to name a few favorites. Even PEZ Candy, Inc. plans to capitalize on this ether madness: it has teamed up with Florida-based Parlux Fragrances to launch a perfume of its own!  Hmmm... 

So what goes into these bottled promises, anyway? Jolique sniffed around to find out...

$200 Recipe for Happiness: Alcohol, Oil and Water???

Yep, that's right. The secret to happiness is an elusive elixir of oils and other additives in a solution that is mostly alcohol (alcohol content typically ranges from 75% to 95%). But what distinguishes a $200-per-ounce bottle of perfume from the $5-per-gallon stuff you might see next to the radiator hoses at Shop-A-Lot, is the fragrance's concentration of essential oil. The costliest form of fragrance is perfume (also called parfum), which has the highest concentration of essential oils, at 22% or greater. Eau de parfum has a 15% to 22% essential oil concentration; eau de toilette has 8% to 15%, and cologne has less than 5%.

But making a perfume isn't as easy as you think. As Jolique discovered in her research, it is very helpful to have a chemistry background when working with perfume, and it is no wonder to her that many perfumers are in fact students of analytic or organic chemistry. It is also no wonder that Jolique failed chemistry. Perfume is a lot more than just jasmine, rose and lavender. It's about hydrocarbons, alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, acids, terpene alcohols, esters, phenols, phenolethers, lactones and sulfides!   Next >>