Composing Perfumes

The Perfumer

The task of composing perfumes that will sell is to enhance an expert on perfume composition or known in the fragrance industry as the perfumer. They are also sometimes referred to as "The Nose" due to their fine sense of smell and skill in smell composition. The perfumer is effectively an artist who is trained in depth on the concepts of fragrance aesthetics and who is capable of conveying abstract concepts and moods with their fragrance compositions.

A perfumer must have knowledge of a large variety of fragrance ingredients and smell. They must be able to distinguish each of the fragrance ingredients whether alone or in combination with other fragrances. As well, they must know how each ingredient reveals itself through time when mixed with other ingredients.

The composition of a perfume begins when the perfumer’s employer’s are given a brief which will contain the specifications for the desired perfume that the organisation is trying to achieve. The employees are given several tasks to complete. They are expected to describe what the perfume smells like, their feelings after smelling the perfume, when the perfume should be worn, also the price of the perfume oil concentrate. This will determine what aromatics and fragrance ingredients can/will be used in the perfume composition.

This process is an in depth and tedious task but it is essential. The perfumer will then start a process of blending various perfume mixtures and try to achieve the outcome the brief. This process can take several months or years. Once all the information is gathered the perfume composition may be used as a fragrance enhancement in shampoos, make-up, detergents, etc or it may be marketed and sold directly to the public as a fine fragrance.

Technique

Perfume oils usually contain tens to hundreds of ingredients. These ingredients can be roughly grouped into four groups: primary scents, modifiers, blenders and fixatives (refer notes below).

Instead of building a perfume from "ground up", many modern perfumes and colognes are made using fragrance bases, which are essential oils and aromatic chemicals. The effort used in developing bases by fragrance companies or individual perfumers may equal that of a marketed perfume, since they are useful in that they are reusable.

The perfume's fragrance oils are then blended with ethyl alcohol and water, aged in tanks for a minimum of 14 days and filtered through processing equipment to remove any sediment and particles before the solution can be filled into the perfume bottles.

Notes:

• Primary scents: Can consist of one or a few main ingredients for a certain concept, such a "rose". Alternatively, multiple ingredients can be used together to create an "abstract" primary scent that does not bear a resemblance to a natural ingredient. For instance, jasmine and rose scents are commonly blends for abstract floral fragrances. Cola flavourant is a good example of an abstract primary scent.
• Modifiers: These ingredients alter the primary scent to give the perfume a certain desired character: for instance, fruit esters may be included in a floral primary to create a fruity floral; calone and citrus scents can be added to create a "fresher" floral. The cherry scent in cherry cola can be considered a modifier.
• Blenders: A large group of ingredients that smooth out the transitions of a perfume between different "layers" or bases. Common blending ingredients include linalool and hydroxycitronellol.
• Fixatives: Used to support the primary scent by bolstering it. Many resins and wood scents, and amber bases are used for fixative purposes.