SCENT AND SEX APPEAL.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20951, 14 February 1930, Page 13

SCENT AND SEX APPEAL.

ONE SMALL BOTTLE OP " IT.” Universal sex appeal—woe on the man, woman, dress design, shop .window, or popular song that hds 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 10 years; why American men spend 60,000,000d0l each year for perfumes and other cosmetics; why women spend six times that much; and why one of the richest women in 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; “ cpme-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 manufacturer who is financing them—well, work out the result. Measuring changes in the emotions with an electrical contrivance called a psychogalvanonieter sounds like tablebut is really quite scientific. And the test wherein the subjects (young men and women 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 Freud and Havelock Ellis already knew. . This rediscovery, the sex lure of perfume and how it can be turned to com-mercial-advantage, has already got under way only within the last 10 years or so. A milestone .was- passed when one perfume firm in particular began to swell itg dividends, eight years ago, by first advertising special types of perfume for special types _of women. This same firm is now planning 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, bo chaste. The Mid-Victorian lady preparing for a ball took a delicatt 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 he wooed. Her granddaughter anoints the back of one ear with a little Passion of bpringtinie, 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 many 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 ™ n a e ’uT P- dlng testing and testing and blending. Like a- musician,,.he composes first on paper, and then when he thinks he has something goo d, he makes tion hrSt ac *" experimental producFirst the chemist puts together a number of synthetic odours—that is, chemical materials which smell sweet. These chemical odours, whose . development is ,? . tec ®t have much greater lasting qualities than odours distilled with Towers, and it is in a large part their discovery, by. German chemists which has rf * rtl “ s »™ rth » f T’o these clerical - combinations , the perfume musician then adds one or-more generally more—flower odours, or aro°d? taken from plants, flowers, or 1.,f ■> T j eSe are called "flower absolutes, and are made in the southern part of France and in Bulgaria. They range in price irom £4O to £2OO a lb. a figure uhich 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 vallev, the only place on earth where roses have been grown with sufficient scent, to make filiation into perfume profitable, uil P rfnfV eqUl / es ? b ,O, ut 50 > 000 rosebuds picked at dawn to yield one ounce of the precious oil, _ ue But flower and synthetic odours are have jessed, not enough! Every perfume must contain a fixative which fixes the odours! toKethcr and makes them last so that when you pay £5 or even £2O for a little bottle of sweetness, you can be ** WIU not evaporate away into Now as to these fixatives. Most Perf,!!?e,s made to-day contain substances which the average person would not walk 1 tl ? e street. Practically all the fixatives that go into modern perfumes re animal in origin. J mes ” re i,» Th ff e - asy j 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 ,t comes from the musk deer? an animal chased over the plains of China and Mongoha. and killed for the sake of a little sack in his body containing less than ounce of musk. This precious stuff nTH mutely finfcjt, war to P " ing table, I'C-christened “Passion Answer,” or something like that JNext m popularity is the “sweat of a wildcat whipped at dawn in other n V ? 4 ’ f 4 } e fai ? ed and rare fixative °f. ta fv 0:rie ntal perfume-maker. Of this said the befte? S ° ttinS * the lesa Last in the pleasant trio is ambergris The origin of ambergris is well known’ though it is not so well known that n hen found floating in the sea or cast upon the beach it has almost no odour at The use of perfume is as old as history though never has it been so cunnnigly conipounded or had such smell-C e\ er qualities as now. It has accomnanied religious ceremonies among many people pv^;t 4 ° P ower to stimulate emotional excitement in one kind or another. ihe Greeks drenched themselves in ner'fume; the Athenian riiiek ’ad one odour f J US i lalr> another for his'face and another for the rest of his body. He even put perfume on his furniture and nof animals The Talmud directs that a brid e ‘ groom shall set apart one-tenth of th» income, the bride brings him for tho SS? ■>' »-"'•»» -I important engagement. “Lure of Mv , h f r . us . ua l Perfume, is not quite fpi to-night—it has too many soft notes What will it be? Ah. tost ‘he thing! Midnight to Dawn,” 3 It -is {o vib ? £