SCENT AND SEX APPEAL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 21, 25 January 1930, Page 10 (Supplement)

SCENT AND SEX APPEAL.

ONE SMALL BOTTLE OF "IT." CONTAINS 200 INGREDIENTS. '* ______ * £50,000 ROSEBUDS TO AN OUNCE OF " PRECIOUS OIL! Universal sex appeal—woe- on the man, woman, dress design, shop window or popular song ..that' has not got it! Indeed, there are very -few industries to-day which, have- to 'sell to a large general public of the adolescent age or older whose sales department's" personnel are not racking their brains trying to think out some new way to give sex appeal.to their products.' The . fact that the perfume-makers solved the problem several years ago explains why the best known of them made recently the biggest net earnings in its history; why the total cosmetic output of the whole world has multiplied six times in the last ten years; why American men spend 60,000,000 dollars" each year for perfumes and other cosmetics; why women spend six times that much; and why erne of the richest women in the U.S.A., is a dusky lady who reached her present financial position by manufacturing a- line of toilet articles; for Afro-Americans and teaching them a special method of beauty treatment. Nor is this all. The. gentle art "of dabbing a little come-hither under the ear or on the upper lip threatens to acquire academic honours in Europe and America. The laboratories of Columbia University are conducting a series of experiments to find out which odours arouse what kind of emotions in whom— and how violently. When these experiments are completed and their findings are broadcast by the perfume-manufac-turer who. is financing,them—well, work out the result. i . Emotion Measuring-meter. Measuring changes in the emotions with an electrical contrivance called a psychogalvanometer sounds like tabletapping, but is really quite scientific. And the test wherein the subjects (young men and wo,nien between the ages of 20 and 30): sit with their eyes closed while perfume-soaked cotton is put under their noses has been 100 per cent successful; it never failed to bring its emotional reaction in'varying degrees of intensity. Thus", masculine science in its painstaking way steps in to "discover" what women .and nature and' Ereud and Havelock Ellis already knew. » ( Capture by Perfume. This rediscovery, the sex lure of perfume and how it can be turned to commercial advantage, has really got under way only within the v ~ last ten years or so.: A milestone was passed when one perfume firm in particular began to swell its.dividends, eight/years ago, by first advertising special types of perfume for special types of women! This same firm is now-planning to add to its glory by putting out special types of perfume to

catch special types" of men. Thus does the age of specialisation reach its fullest flower! \ Forty years ago perfume was not perfume; it was "scent," and it was oh, so chaste. The mid-Victorian lady, preparing for a ball took a delicate little handkerchief,, and along the edge she. placed a delicate little amount of lilac,- lily-of-the-valley, violet, or trailing arbutus. Thus flimsily equipped she sallied forth to be wooed. Her granddaughter anoints the back of one ear with- a little Passion of Springtime, rubs her chin with Kiss of the Night, pours down her back a liberal amount of My Sin, and sallies forth to woo. The modern perfume is a highly elaborate thing, a.symphony of scent, and may contain as many as 200 different ingredients. It is the masterpiece of some chemist who has worked in his laboratory," perhaps for, months at?,, a" time, blending and testing and testing and blending. Like a musician, he composes first on paper, and then when he thinks he has something good, he-makes hi* first actual experimental production. »._,'-' ""'..'.'■" First the. chemist puts together a number of synthetic odours—that is, chemical materials which smell sweet. These chemical odours, whose development is quite recent, have much greater lasting qualities than . odours distilled from flowers, and it is in a large part their discovery by German chemists which has -made possible the startling growth of the perfume industry. " » Valley of Million Roses. * To these chemical combinations the perfume musician then adds one or more—generally more—flower odours, or aromatic oils taken from plants, flowers or trees. These are called "flower absolutes," and are made in the southern •part of France and in Bulgaria. They range in price from £40 to £200 a lb, a figure which does not seem so unreasonable when we realise that the world's entire supply of attar of roses, for instance, comes from an 80-mile long Bulgarian valley, the only- place on earth where roses have been grown with Sufficient scent to make their distillation into perfume profitable, and that it requires about 50,000 rosebuds picked at dawn to yield one ounce of the precious oil. But flower and synthetic odours are, as you may have guessed, not enough. Every perfume must contain a fixative, that is, something which fixes the odours, binds them together and makes them last, so that when you pay £5 or even .£2O for a little bottle of sweetness, you can be sure that it will not evaporate away into nothing. Now as to these fixatives. Most- perfumes made to-day contain substances which' the average person would not walk around in the street. Practically all the fixatives that go into modern perfumes are animal in origin. Animal Fixatives. The easy favourite is musk. It may be obtained from several different animals, including the crocodile, and it is worth more than its weight in gold. Most of it comes from the musk deer,' an animal chased over the plains of Chinaand Mongolia and killed for the sake

of a" little' sack 'in his : body containing less than an ounce of musk. This precious stuff - ultimately - finds its way to " "my -lady*l dressing' table," fechristened "Passion's Answer," ov something like that. ■ ; ; , ; q i .'.'. ; ;' .■.; :-< ■ Next in popularity is the "sweat of a wildcat whipped at dawn"- 1 --!, other words, civet, the famed and rare fixative of the Oriental perfume-maker. Of this and tfie methods of getting it the less said the better. ' : Last in the pleasant trio' is ambergris. The origin of ambergris is well known, though it is, not so well known that when found floating in the sea or cast upon the beach it has ; almost no odour 1 at'.all. !, ■ • .;•"<« ' s •■ ■■" ■ ■ > '.''. The.use-of perfume is as. old as history, though never has it been so cunningly compounded or had 'such smellforever qualities as-now. It has accompanied religious ceremonies among-many due to its power to stimulate emotional excitement of one kind or another. • .'; A Scent for Each Mood. . The ' Greeks ) drenched themselves; in perfume;, the Athenian sheik . had. one odour for his hair, another, for _is ; face and another for \ the. rest; of his body. He even put perfume on, his; furniture and pet animals. The Talmud. directs that a bridegroom shall set apart, onetenth of the income the bride brings him for' the purchase of perfumes and precious essences. . ' Perfume now must be adaptable to the mood of the moment.- Milady has an important engagement. "Lure of My Life," her usual perfume, is not quite right for to-night —it has too many soft notes. What will it be ? Ah, just the thing! "Midnight to Dawn." It is strong and vibrant, with an intoxicating note. So "Midnight to Dawn" is deftly dashed on and Milady begins to vibrate. A.A. and N.S. Copyright.