The story of Perfume - BBC podcast

This BBC radio podcast took a look at perfume from its earliest form to its present day purposes, and finds out how through a combination of art and science has been sold to us as liquid luxury. With my upcoming perfume project, I found this interesting and useful information worth writing about.

It was discussed how perfume can mean so many different things to different people, and how time has also affected its significance. For example, some of the earliest perfume’s where scents such as incense, these of course have a very religious and ritualistic significance. Today’s perfume in a way is still a ritual as it is often part of our routines but has a variety of sometimes very contradicting meanings to religion, such as sex and allure. I found how much perfumes meaning has changed interesting, but in some ways how it has maintained some of its heritage.

Early perfumes, and even some modern day fragrances use animal products as part of the formula. This is something I was aware of, however the podcast defiantly helped me understand this in better detail. Animal products used in perfume are actually often rather unpleasant, in forms of faecal matter and bodily secretion, things that are not commonly associated with beautiful romantic scents which aim to mask bad odours.  It is really intriguing how someone could have once found these scents and used them to do the opposite of what they originally smell of.

Thankfully for a number of reasons, including price and animal cruelty laws, there are now synthetic alternatives to the animal bi-products used to make some of the best scents in perfume. It was these Synthetic/ chemical enhancements (starting in around 1840)  that really made the perfume industry affordable, and therefore successful. Since 1840 we have been imitating and enhancing nature to create innovative and beautiful scents. Nature was describes as the flesh of perfume, and synthetic scents are the bones.

It was th20th century however that was described as making perfume truly what it is today. The 20^th century began to combine creativity and art with science, fields that where both taking off. The century also saw the development of consumer culture, and arguably the most influential part of the perfume industry, the advertisements in advertising and marketing.

A key figure that shaped the perfume industry in the 20^th century was François Coty. Coty was the first perfumer who understood and played on the importance of the bottle rather than just the scent. He was also known for innovative advertisement stunts, such as smashing one of his perfume bottles, drawing the attention of all the surrounding woman.

Perfume was used again to be proven as more than just a scent in 1915. There was a famous example of a play where all the actresses where sprayed with different scents to help them embody the characters. This was a cleaver why of advertising that perfume is relevant and linked to the arts.

I learnt a lot from the podcast from hearing perfume being talked about in such a technical scientific way. The preciseness of chemical and synthetic materials is key, and its interesting how perfume can be both romantic and imaginative, and so scientific and clinical at the same time.

Finally the podcast spoke about how really the way a perfume in the modern day market can come across is as innocence, or experience. Most perfumes need to decide weather they will be soft and fresh (innocence), or strong, dark or even sexual (experience).