How to choose the right perfume

We cannot say with certainty, when man first decided to wear a fragrance. But essential oils and essences have always had an important role in religious rituals as well as the (let’s call it) worldly art of seduction. Throughout the centuries, tradesmen and queens have tried to uncover the secrets of Italian and French perfume masters. The entire human history and culture for almost seven millennia has been enveloped in perfume. It’s role has always had double meaning, religious and worldly: the word originates from the Latin phrase per fumum, literally meaning “through the smoke”, because the first perfumes were incense, lighted as an offering to gods and ancestors. We often don’t know all the secrets about choosing a perfume or to make the most of it for seduction. When choosing, we must take metabolism into account as well as the time when we wear a fragrance, and for women the time of month, because the same perfume can change so much depending on skin acidity, that it becomes unrecognisable. In order for perfume to develop its scent properly, what matters most is warmth: you should apply it to the inner side of your wrists, earlobes, back of the neck, temples, between the breasts, in the elbow and knee creases, where blood flows right underneath the skin, making these parts the warmest.

Image source: www.bestproducts.com

Image source: www.bestproducts.com

Perfumes positively affect the way we feel and have a healing effect, because some essences actually work as antidepressants, they may even have a smoothing or stimulating effect. It has been proven that attraction has more to do with smell than looks. While visual stimulants are strong and important, this is only true in the beginning. Then it’s the nostrils‘ turn: a scent can turn something that is attractive into something repulsive. Attraction is supposedly conditioned by certain genes on the short span of the sixth chromosome responsible for the sense of smell. Even so, we can still smell an exquisite scent as either pleasant or unpleasant, because we almost always link it to specific experience and smell experiences from the past.

Image source: www.bestproducts.com

Creating a perfume is a very demanding task, which goes through defined and predetermined phases and has nothing to do with fads. Just think of the iconic Chanel Nr. 5, which was created in the previous century and to this day remains unchanged. Lots of fashion houses keep scents in their archives that have made history and remain eternal. So what is the secret to perfumes? Patrick Süskind wrote in his renowned novel The Perfume that no words can be used to describe the world of scents. We are all partial to one or more scents that are a part of our deeply personal emotions, because they remind us of a beloved person or a truly memorable moment. Smells are closely linked to our memories and emotional experiences; remember Proust’s famous experience with Madeleines. We all save memories of the smells from our childhood, which are eventually joined by scents, linked to strong emotions from later in life.

Image source: www.bestproducts.com

Image source: www.bestproducts.com

It’s a perfume’s responsibility to create and accompany these emotions and embrace us in another skin in a manner of speaking, a sensual skin. The sense of smell generally has a significant role in the communication between males and females. The perfume master, called The Nose, tries to recreate a certain emotion, sensation or a place. He uses series of scents he has adapted to recognise and endeavours to recreate an environment (such as a field of lavender, where crickets chirp) or a certain feeling (like the magic of a moment).

Image source: www.bestproducts.com