SYNTHETIC SCENTS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20181, 25 June 1928, Page 3

SYNTHETIC SCENTS

COAL AND OIL USED BLENDING OF ESSENTIAL OILS. Never before has woman been able to indulge in high-class perfumery with such economy as she can to-day. This is partly due to the modern woman’s preference for quality rather than quantity, which has enabled perfume manufacturers to spend on the actual perfume money that formerly went in excise duty on alcohol. Perfumes are generally divided into two classes: —The bouquet, which are. the result of blending a number of perfumes, and the floral, which are supposed to be simple flower scents. Actually, the scent of most flowers is due to a mixture of a number of different essential oils. Rose perfume (says the Cape Argus) is made up from no fewer than 20 different scents, and is always rather more costly on account of the perfumer’s difficult task. There is discord as well as harmony in perfume, as there is in music, and the effect of mixing two pleasant scents may not be at all pleasing; this makes it impossible to predict what will be the result of blending a number of perfumes. One of the oldest and most famous of these blended perfumes is eau de Cologne. It was first made in Cologne at the end of the seventeenth century. Three firms claim to possess the original secret formulae. Needless to say, these processes are very zealously guarded by their owners, and in the past men have lost their lives trying to steal them. Analysts have discovered, however, that eau de Cologne is a mixture of the essential oils of orange flower, rosemary, lavender, lemon, bergamot, and petit grain. In the finest, qualities only the purest rectified spirits of wine is used to dilute the essences, and when the perfume is made, it is left for many* years to mature. It is difficult to believe that such uncompromising materials as coal, petroleum, and turpentine can nowadays be converted by chemists into scents. Almost every flower perfume has been initated. One of the most important perfumes for blending is the essential oil of the little sweet-smelling heliotrope. It was formerly one of the most expensive also, but it can now be made from pepper at a price a hundred times less than it cost to extract it from the flower. This has reduced the price of bouquet scents, in which it is used, considerably. These so-called synthetic scents are rarely used alone; the most successful perfumes are made by blending the artificial with the natural essences.