He and the chicks talk about fragrances: How a perfume is developed?

The aim of this article is more understanding the creation of a perfume from raw materials to legislation.

A lot of raw materials could be used to create a perfume, an odour.

Flowers: staple of women’s fragrances. Most commonly used flowers are: rose, jasmine, tuberose, iris, violet, orange blossom, mimosa , narcissus and lavender.

Fruits: Used to give modernity to a fragrance. Most of the fruit used in perfumes are citrus fruits and are a family called citrus scent. Most commonly used fruits (except citrus fruits) are: vanilla, melon, peach and apple.

Woods, plants and herbs: Plant materials also include trees (cinnamon, sandalwood, birch) or resin (frankincense, myrrh, labdanum). The Virginia cedar, pine oil, patchouli, sandalwood and vetiver are among the wood often used in perfumery. Basil, mint and marjoram are specifically used in men's fragrances for they give a fresh, clean and uplifting.

Animals’ raw materials: Six animal species are used in the manufacture of perfumes, mostly now in their synthetic form, for reasons of ethics and regulations: musk, a secretion produced by a male deer called musk deer and from Tibet; castoreum, from the glands of the Canadian beaver; civet, musk secretion of wildcat from Ethiopia; ambergris from the sperm whale, beeswax and hyraceum produced by the Cape Daman, a small mammal of South Africa.

Synthetics raw materials.

Fragrances’ creation

There are different ways to extract fragrances.

At first, the distillation technique:

The substances, thanks to warm, vaporize, and the vapour is harvested to create a liquid.

Flowers or plant we want to distillate are placing on a still full of boiling water.

Thanks to this system, essential oils will be collected and then be used in perfumery.

This is the major technique of traditional perfumery.

The enfleurage process:

It is a process that relies on the power of fat to naturally absorb odours.

There are two types of enfleurage: heat or cold enfleurage.

Heat enfleurage consists on put flowers and leave it to brew in hot oils or fat.

The resulting mixtures are then filtered through tissue to obtain a fragrant ointment.

Cold enfleurage is used especially for fragile flowers (daffodils, jasmine…),and it’s consisting on spread a layer of grease smell on the walls of a glass frame, which is then covered with flowers. The flowers are renewed until the fat is saturated.

Infusion:

It’s for dry matters. The matter is put inside solvents for a long time. But it’s not frequently used because it’s a very expensive technique.

“Espression”:

This technique is frequently used. It’s reserved for the extraction of essential oils in the peels of citrus fruits.

These peels are cold pressed under running water, then filtered . The heat required for the distillation damage the intensity of these oils.

Distillation process

Legislation

In 1966, the fragrance industry has created its own system of regulation: a totally independent laboratory RIFM (Research Institute for Fragrance Material) was created and funded by the industry to determine the safety of fragrance ingredients.

The data produced by the RIFM about the safety and toxicity of fragrance ingredients are used by the International Fragrance Research Association (IFRA) to make recommendations to be followed by perfume creators.

The perfume industry operates in a legislative environment increasingly restrictive.

Animals’ products (as grey amber) are forbidden nowadays.

The recommendations of the IFRA becoming more and more drastic room and legislation perfumers department verifies systematically That Let The products accord with the guidelines of IFRA.

The Vienna Convention on Narcotic precursors is also involved in the profession of perfumer and some aromatic raw materials are considered narcotics.

Local regulations exist too.

In Europe the European Cosmetics Directive existing since 1967 covers all finished cosmetic products.

In the United States, the organization that manages many creative industries perfume is called FDA (Food and Drugs Administration). Australian raw materials are recorded by the AICS.