Fragrance Facts ??? That’s the question this article seeks to answer. You spritz, dab, lather and wear it on a daily basis. But do you know why your fragrance smells different after lunch? Or that you don’t actually smell with your nose? We swathed ourselves in the intricacies of smell and perfume to bring you facts you never knew about your favorite sniffs.
1. Women have a stronger sense of smell than men – thanks to the female brain having up to 50% more olfactory sensors. So the next time your man sniffs your new perfume and says he can’t smell anything, don’t blame the poor guy.
2. Good scents make you happy. In many scent experiments, it was discovered that smelling a fragrance you know and perceive as pleasant could have significantly positive effects on your mood. The universally sweet scent of vanilla has been accepted as the ‘standard’ happy fragrance most people respond to. For nice and fragrant morning, try dabbing on your skin Versace Crystal Noir or a touch of L’Acquarossa by Fendi for a super fresh and magical day.
3. Everyone has a unique smell-print. Like thumbprints, our sniffing abilities are exclusive. In fact, due to scent blind spots, there are specific odours you just can’t detect. Now you know why your best friend’s new floral perfume just smells saccharine sweet to you.
4.The one scent that smells the same to everyone: citralya, a citrus smell used in perfume.
5. You actually smell with your brain, not your nose. Fragrance facts says the Brain is the Master of smell. Sure, your nose detects scent molecules, but it’s your brain that actually identifies them.
6. The word perfume comes from the Latin words ‘per fume’ which means ‘through smoke’, which makes a lot of sense seeing as the earliest ones were incense-based, and were primarily crafted from spices and herbs such as coriander and frankincense.
7. 10,000 – the number of different odors we can distinguish.
8.The formula of perfume hasn’t changed in centuries.Made up mainly of alcohol and water – with the same type and purity used in beverages – the composition of fragrance has remained the same save for different essential oils used.
9.Your sense of smell gets bored quickly and easily.Have you ever entered a bakery or a florist and gotten overwhelmed with the intriguing aromas, only to not smell anything by the time you’re checking out? “After two breaths, the receptors in your nose sort of switch off,” says Pamela Dalton, a psychologist at Monell Chemical Senses Center who has been studying the phenomenon of nose-blindness for more than 20 years. “The intensity of the smell fades because your brain has perceived the scent as nonthreatening, which means it has no need to pay attention to it.”
10.Scent evokes memories – however, unlike memories created by your other senses, a study conducted by New York Academy of Sciences discovered that all your scent memories are formed within the first ten years of your life.
Image credit: Moirenc Camille | Hemis.fr | Getty
11.You can actually smell fear:This is one of the weird fragrance facts. experiments have shown that through chemical signals produced in sweat, you can detect certain emotions. If it’s your significant other, you can even smell happiness!
12.Iconic perfumer Jean Carles (1892 – 1966) had no sense of smell. Towards his later years, the industry legend lost his olfaction. However, in a truly inspiring turn, he created some of the most successful fragrances in the world simply by remembering the smell of notes and molecules. An example of Jean Carles creations is Dior Miss Dior by Christian Dior
13.The same perfume can smell differently on different people. Perfumers say that your body chemistry ‘pushes’ certain notes in the fragrance more strongly, thanks to genetics or your diet.
14. You can only test three scents at a go. After that magic number, your senses wouldn’t be able to pick up or differentiate between fragrance complexities. Before you resume sniffing, take a walk around outdoors or smell some coffee beans – they cleanse your scent palate.
15. Spraying your perfume on your hair holds it better. Due to your scalp’s natural oiliness, it is a great carrier for perfume. Your fragrance not only lasts longer – because it’s always in motion, it gets diffused easier as well.
16. Celebrity perfumes and lower end designer scents tend to smell sweeter. Nope, it’s not that sweet-smelling ingredients are cheaper, but rather because these scents are marketed at younger people who tend to have a smaller budget. Younger people, especially teenagers, have a poorer sense of smell, so these sweeter scents appeal more to them than they would for a more developed nose.
17. Fragrance ingredients are tested to the same standards of consumer goods like food.
18. Perfumers have to identify at least 250 scents for their first test. Known as Noses, these people have the most coveted job of designing scents. Of course, they have to be really skilled to differentiate between upwards of 250 scents before they qualify, which explains why there are only fifty of them in the world.
19. Colognes have a different PH level. There’s a reason why men have their own scents: their skin is much more acidic as compared to ours. PH levels on the skin causes scents to rest and smell differently from person to person, which is why colognes have their levels tailored for the acidity on men’s skin.
20. Your sense of smell is like a muscle – the more you sniff, the stronger and more discerning it becomes.
