~ Second in a Series of Articles About Perfume ~

Like to wear a little citrus at Christmas? Some neroli with your ravioli? Perhaps a little musk at dusk? The essential oils that represent the crucial element in a perfume come from a variety of natural sources: flowers, herbs, leaves and, until recently, animals. These natural oils are extracted in many ways, such as maceration, cold-pressing and enfleurage (more on those processes in next week's article, Chemistry and Alchemy: Turning the Real Into the Ethereal), but they can also be created synthetically in labs.

Sad but true is the fact that, until fairly recently, many animals were killed for their pleasant scents. Fortunately, many perfumers now replicate animal scents using "synthesis," the process of chemically arranging odor molecules to mimic scents found in nature. Some can be replicated exactly; others are a close approximation of the natural scent. Our noses are sensitive enough to distinguish between a natural and a synthetic oil in a perfume composition, and natural ones are often considered more desirable. However, just the right balance between natural and synthetic oils can yield a perfume with "bloom" and consistency that it might otherwise lack with purely natural oils.

Nearly every odor and color we smell or see has a chemical make-up that can be re-created in a lab by piecing together the molecules that make that odor or color what it is. The dyes used for textiles, for example, are nearly 98% synthetic these days. In the perfume world, synthesis is performed by taking natural plants and animal sources and analyzing their chemical make-up using a gas chromatograph, sometimes called a gas liquid chromatograph, a tool used in odor distillation. Once the components of the odor have been distilled, they can be analyzed using a mass spectrometer, which creates a printout—an EKG for odors. (See Ether Madness: What Goes in that Tiny, One-Ounce Flacon and We're Willing to Pay $200 For It) Therefore, by knowing what goes into these natural odors we can recreate them without killing the animal or plant. But this wasn't always the case. As Jolique has unfortunately learned, beauty has a price, one that until recently, was paid dearly by many animals...

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