Perfume is Pleasure

If the idea of perfume classics intrigues you, read: Here’s the Hottest Secret in Fragrance: Go Back to the Classics! Johanna McGlaughlin, the author, is a perfume expert with a lovely personality. Johanna is a frequent feature-writer at Perfume Reporter. You may discover that you love the stories behind the scents. If it tickles you to know that the perfumer actually had a name and a personality, that some fragrance rocked the culture, why a particular bottle matches the spirit of the juice so very well, what makes this one or that one a “classic” along with details on specific ingredients of the fragrance, Michael Edwards’ Perfume Legends: French Feminine Fragrances is a book for you.

Consumers express their taste in fragrance with an impoverished vocabulary: “something fresh,” they always say. A sales-clerk will wait on hundreds of customers before realizing that “fresh” is a synonym for “something I like.” Silly girl, she thought you meant the smell of herbs, fresh cut grass, citrus or the ocean. Lo and behold, some heady oriental smells fresh to you. Why? Because fresh is good, this scent smells good and must, therefore, be fresh.

Next time you shop for a fresh scent, perhaps a little soapy to remind you of laundry “fresh” from the dryer, recall this: One of the most popular scents in laundry detergent is musk, a fragrance ingredient formerly obtained from a gland located between the stomach and genitals of the East Asian male musk deer. Musk is used to infuse perfumes with depth and richness while fixing them to the skin and is considered by most to be a sexy smell, not a fresh one.

But the main goal of perfume is pleasure, So if it makes a person happy to say that musk is a fresh smell, why not? I like fresh scents too. Like a nice piece of pizza hot from the oven.