Sugandhikar - Perfumery Basics
Olfactory Pyramid
Natural Fragrances vs. Synthetic Fragrances
Aromatic Sources
Aromatics sources: Since ancient times, fragrant plants of all types have been utilized as sources for both essential oils and aromatic mixtures. Even today, they represent the largest resource for fragrant compounds used in perfumery. Perfumes are made of natural materials as well as synthetic. Natural materials can be of plant, animal, and mineral origin while synthetic materials are used to recreate smells that cannot be extracted from natural sources or as sources of new, original odors. Thousands and thousands of materials are used in perfume manufacturing. Here are some of them:
What are the Dilution Classes?
Dilution classes:
Shopping for new perfume can be overwhelming with all of the scents available. Not only are there countless scents available, there are also different fragrance concentrations. Underneath the name of the perfume on a bottle will normally be the fragrance concentration. A fragrance concentration refers to the strength that a fragrance has. Perfumes with a higher fragrance concentration contain more perfume oils and less alcohol. Fragrance concentrations are broken into categories including attars, parfum, eau de parum (EDP), eau de toilette (EDT), eau de cologne (EDC), and eau Fraiche.
What are Fragrances Families?
Olfactive families
Olfactory families are groups in which perfumes can be broadly classified based on the most prominent note in its olfactory pyramid. The grouping of perfumes can never be completely objective or definitive. Many fragrances contain aspects of different families. Even a perfume designated as "single flower" will have subtle undertones of other aromatics. There are hardly any true unitary-scent perfumes consisting of a single aromatic material. The family classification is a starting point to describe a perfume but does not fully characterize it.