The Ultimate How-to Guide to making Perfume
The perfume making process can be likened to an artist creating a painting, as it requires the maker to spend time and effort on the nuances of the fragrance in order to create a masterpiece. Top French perfumers spend years training and learning how to blend and create fragrances. Working with the right oil house means that you get all this expertise and know-how. Taking these blended oils and mixing with other ingredients will make learning how to make perfume an easy process. All it takes is some knowledge of how perfume is created and what types of fragrance ingredients are needed. Read on to get a glimpse of how to make your own perfume.
The History of Perfume
Perfume is a product of the extracted oils of plants and flowers with a base solvent, such as alcohol. Loved
from as early as 3 000 BCE, the captivating scents of nature evoke emotions and memories that our other
senses can’t grasp. Our emotional ties to the smells that surround us often make perfume ‘liquid memories.’
The Basics of Fine Fragrance
There are numerous categories within the fragrance wheels, as well as different models of the Fragrance
Wheel. We choose to follow the Michael Edwards Fragrance Wheel, a consultant in the perfume
industry and known as the finest ‘nose’ in the world.
How Perfume is Made
Historically, perfumes were dominantly manufactured from natural resources, such as woods, grasses, gums, resins, fruits, spices and flowers. Flowers are especially important as it is very difficult to create a perfume without a floral heart and floral essences, but not all flowers produce the oils needed for scent. The Lily of the Valley, although heady in flowering aroma, is such a plant. It is estimated that roughly 2,000 of the 250 000 known flowering plant species contain the essential oils needed for perfumes. Perfumes can also be made with animal products, such as musk from male deer in Tibet, castor from beavers in Canada, and ambergris from Sperm whales, which has been outlawed since 1977.
PERFUME MANUFACTURING COURSE
Have you ever looked at your favourite perfume and wondered how it was made? Or wondered what ingredients it took to make such an iconic, beautiful scent?
