History How We Fell in Love with Perfume By Catherine Rose The word perfume is derived from the Latin per fumum, meaning ‘through smoke’. This is possibly because the perfumes of ancient civilisations were often incense-based – a dried paste made from herbs, spices, essential oils and fragrant tree resins (including the biblical frankincense and myrrh), which was made to be burned. Today, true perfumes are a distillation of a certain percentage of oils in alcohol, with eau de toilette and eau de cologne being diluted versions. The perfume-making process was described by Pliny the Elder, a well-known Roman philosopher who was born around twenty years after the death of Christ. But although the Romans were wellknown to be very fastidious in their toilet habits, perfume very much pre-dates them. Used significantly across Asian cultures, it is believed perfume may have originated in Arabia – still sometimes described as ‘the land of perfumes’. The perfume formulas of a female Mesopotamian chemist known as Tapputi-Bellatekalim have been translated from a three-thousandyear-old tablet written in ancient cuneiform script. In the ancient world, perfumes were much more than just pleasant smells – they were also revered. The Bible refers to a sacred perfume, only allowed to be used by priests, that was made from myrrh, cinnamon, cassia and sweet cane, and the ancient Egyptians believed perfume was ‘the sweat of the gods’. Ancient Hindu Ayurvedic texts dating back to 3000 BC refer to perfume’s distillation. In India, a variety of fragrances were used in tantric rituals where women would be spiritually anointed with different oils for every part of their body. In 2004, the oldest evidence of perfume was discovered with the remains of a Bronze Age perfume ‘factory’ unearthed in Cyprus. It is thought that 13th century Crusaders brought back perfume from Palestine, and its use was eagerly taken up by Europe’s nobility. The Sun King Louis XIV, who ruled France from 1643-1715, loved perfume so much that his palace became known as ‘the perfume court’. This might have had something to do with the fact that, like most of the nobility at that time, he was loathe to take baths, believing (quite understandably) that water made you ill. King Louis had a different perfume for every day and installed a pavilion that he kept filled with flowers and would visit with his mistresses. He insisted on dousing every palace visitor with scent and the most important had their own signature perfumes. One of his favourite perfumes, used to fragrance his shirts, was called Aqua Angeli (‘water of angels’) and consisted of, amongst other ingredients, nutmeg, cloves, jasmine, orange flowers, musk and aloe wood, all boiled in rose petal water. During this time, France became a force in Europe for the manufacture and supply of fine perfumes, and Grasse in southern France, renowned for its natural variety of flowers, was a leading supplier. In England, where sanitation was also abysmal and disease rife, 74 Log into www.cr5.co.uk your local community website! perfumes were not only worn; they were also kept inside jewellery and the heads of canes to be inhaled by the wearer for health-giving properties and to ward off illness. As well as essential oils from flowers and plants, ingredients for perfume were also derived from animal excretions. Castor was extracted from beavers, musk from male deer and ambergris from the sperm whale. In the 1800s, synthetic fragrances made an appearance, their less expensive ingredients allowing for the first mass marketing of perfumes, thus launching famous companies that are still around today such as Coty and Guerlain. It was discovered, for example, that a mixture of nitric acid and benzene gave off a scent like almonds, so this was consequently used in soap. It is not possible to obtain essential oils from some flowers, lily of the valley for instance, so the development of synthetic scents proved ideal to replicate them. With mass marketing, perfume bottle design became increasingly important and the Art Nouveau period saw the launch of many beautiful styles, some of them designed by the artisans of the era such as Rene Lalique. Then in 1921, Chanel created her signature scent, Chanel No. 5, with the help of Grasse parfumier Ernest Beaux who had made perfumes for the Russian royal family. Under her direction, he gave her numbered samples to choose from – the rest is history. Today our love of perfume remains undiminished and fragrances are popular with both men and women. But one thing hasn’t changed in that, even used daily, perfume is still viewed as a gloriously indulgent and luxury item – pure olfactory pleasure in a bottle.
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