HOW TO TELL A GOOD PERFUME.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18937, 6 December 1929, Page 13

HOW TO TELL A GOOD PERFUME.

The Intricacies of Scent-Making

- (Written for the “ Star ” bv

LUCIEN LELONG.)

What makes a good perfume? It is a question I am often asked by my customers nowadays, for women are beginning to take mpre interest in their perfumes and beauty products than they ever did in the past—and incidentally, now that modern chemistry has stepped in to refine the perfumers’ art almost infinitely, there is much more to know about perfume today than there ever was before. A good perfume ? The answer seems simple. It is a scent mixture which smells nice. But actually there is so much more to a good perfume than its agreeable odour that it is worth while to discuss some of the other qualities so that a woman who reads this article may, when choosing a scent for herself, be able to make her own tests and determine for herself whether a perfume has high quality. If all there was to good perfume was nice smell, then every woman could have her own scent, and smart perfumes would be as varied as smart dresses. The experts in any good perfume laboratory could find fifty new and pleasing scent combinations every day, if thev chose. But if they left these new mixtures in test bottles over night, the.chances are that next day not more than half of them would still smell as they did when first mixed. Some would even have developed disagreeable odours. Some of the rest would not smell the same upon two different surfaces, such as the back of one’s hand and the corner of one’s handkerchief. Some would evaporate completely from any surface in a few minutes or hours: others when evaporating might leave a scent that would be unpleasant, and so on. In short, there would not be one chance in a thousand that even one of these fifty mixtures could survive the most rudimentary tests of a good perfume. Even if one did survive, then it would have to face months of testing and observation under laboratory conditions: and the mortality of experimental perfume formule in this stage of the discovery process is terrifically high. It is so high, that though every year a number of new perfumes of fair quality are discovered the perfect scent—-one that satisfies every requirement of the connoisseur—is as rare as a white blackbird. Qualities Which Make Good. Now while the number of definite qaulitip! required to make a good perfume is considerable, there are there primary qualities that everyone can learn to recognise. They are: (1) Fragrance (of course). (2) Constancy. (3) Tenacity. As to odour, something more is re quired than that it be merely a pleasant one. Every perfume is affected to some extent by the personal odour of its wearer. People generally perhaps do not realise that they have personal odours. The perfumer does not, however, doubt it. He meets the fact as a phenomenon in his own calling. He has known the experience of an otherwise good perfume varying in its scent upon the persons of different wearers. It is being affected by these “invisible’' but nevertheless existing personal influences.

Incidentally, the personal influence of an individual upon a perfume is an important poyit for the women of fashion to v understand. Perfumers some times advertise a fine perfume as “exclusive” and some who read the advertisement must; think he is using the word very loosely, for after all, the perfume is on sale and therefore how can it be exclusive if anybody can buy it? But actually, because of the subtle effect of the body of a wearer upon a fine perfume, it is exclusive, in the exact sense of that word. These variations are as y*et little understood, but the fact remains that they exist.' Fine perfume has the quality of adapting itself to the person of the wearer, thus -giving her a scent which is individual and original. The same cannot be said for a poor perfume, which is too harsh and bold in its effects to be influenced by such evanescent factors. The good perfume, however, is so delicate that it will respond to its environment. Must Have Essential Identity. However, the perfume maker does not want this variation to be too wide. The perfume must always have the same essential identity, and thus to find a delicate scent which varies to a minimum degree upon different wearers, offers one of the greatest technical problems in perfume-making. It is a probelm, because if women are To have the advantages of the advance in the art of perfumery, individual perfume mixtures, to be good, must be good also as commercial propositions. Experimentation in perfume is so costly and so speculative that it is out of the question for even a very rich woman to have an exclusive perfume created for her personal use. She must profit with the others by the expermental work of the professionals, who themselves could not afford that experimentation if they did not find marketable commodities. Thus if\a woman finds a perfume in which tnte nuances of variation upon different wearers are unusually subtle and delicate, she may take this as a signpost pointing to the probability that the formula has been well studied, and that other essential qualities are equally good. (Anglo-American N.S.—Copyright.)