A love for scent and fragrance...perfume;

The very scented Christmas lilies.

Perfume is a mixture of fragrant essential oils and aroma compounds, fixatives, and solvents used to give the human body, animals, objects, and living spaces a pleasant scent.

Chanel Bois des Iles was my very first perfume I received a life time ago from my elegant and worldly Godmother.

Bois des Iles, was launched in 1926,

The perfume concentration is richer and sweeter, while eau de toilette is quite lighter, but magnificent. The top notes are composed of aldehydes, bergamot, neroli and peach, the heart composition consists of jasmine, rose, lily of the valley, woody iris and ylang-ylang, and the base of vetiver, sandalwood, benzoin and musk.

Gardenia a flower for the perfume production.

Always liked Arpege;

Arpège is a 1927 perfume by Lanvin. Along with Chanel's Chanel No. 5 and Patou's Joy, it is one of the three best known perfumes in the world

Perfumers André Fraysse and Paul Vacher had created the perfume for Jeanne Lanvin, one story relates that she offered it to her daughter Marguerite as a thirteenth birthday present, and asked her to name it. Lanvin's daughter, already an accomplished musician, called it "Arpège" ("arpeggio").

Lavin Arpege Eau De Parfum - Ladies Fragrance. An exquisite & mystical fragrance for women Provides a truly classical French perfume Top notes: Bergamot, Orange Blossom, Honeysuckle & Rose Middle notes: Jasmine, Iris Blossom, Ylang-Ylang Base notes: Sandalwood, Patchouli, Vetiver & Vanilla.

Orange flowers have a wonderful scent;

Green Tea (Elizabeth Arden) has a fresh citrus fragrance, nice to wear on hot summer days;

Fragrance compounds in perfumes will degrade or break down if improperly stored in the presence of:

Heat

Light

Oxygen

Extraneous organic materials

Proper preservation of perfumes involve keeping them away from sources of heat and storing them where they will not be exposed to light. An opened bottle will keep its aroma intact for several years, as long as it is well stored. However the presence of oxygen in the head space of the bottle and environmental factors will in the long run alter the smell of the fragrance.

Perfumes are best preserved when kept in their original packaging when not in use, and refrigerated to relatively low temperatures: between 3-7 degrees Celsius (37-45 degrees Fahrenheit). Although it is difficult to completely remove oxygen from the headspace of a stored flask of fragrance, opting for spray dispensers instead of rollers and "open" bottles will minimize oxygen exposure. Sprays also have the advantage of isolating fragrance inside a bottle and preventing it from mixing with dust, skin, and detritus, which would degrade and alter the quality of a perfume.

Pollution

Synthetic musks are pleasant in smell and relatively inexpensive, as such they are often employed in large quantities to cover the unpleasant scent of laundry detergents and many personal cleaning products. Due to their large scale use, several types of synthetic musks have been found in human fat and milk, as well as in the sediments and waters of lakes.

Perfume composed of largely natural materials are usually much more expensive.

Synthetic sources

Main article: Aroma compound

Many modern perfumes contain synthesized odorants. Synthetics can provide fragrances which are not found in nature. For instance, Calone, a compound of synthetic origin, imparts a fresh ozonous metallic marine scent that is widely used in contemporary perfumes. Synthetic aromatics are often used as an alternate source of compounds that are not easily obtained from natural sources. For example, linalool and coumarin are both naturally occurring compounds that can be inexpensively synthesized from terpenes. Orchid scents (typicallysalicylates) are usually not obtained directly from the plant itself but are instead synthetically created to match the fragrant compounds found in various orchids.

The majority of the world's synthetic aromatics are created by relatively few companies. They include:

International Flavors and Fragrances (IFF)

Givaudan

Firmenich

Takasago

Symrise

Each of these companies patents several processes for the production of aromatic synthetics annually.

Animal sources

Ambergris: Lumps of oxidized fatty compounds, whose precursors were secreted

and expelled by the sperm whale. Ambergris is commonly referred to as "amber" in perfumery and should not be confused with yellow amber, which is used in jewelry. Because the harvesting of ambergris involves no harm to its animal source, it remains one of the few animalic fragrancing agents around which little controversy now exists.

Castoreum: Obtained from the odorous sacs of the North American beaver.

Civet: Also called Civet Musk, this is obtained from the odorous sacs of the civets, animals in the family Viverridae, related to the mongoose. The World Society for the Protection of Animals investigated African civets caught for this purpose.

Hyraceum: Commonly known as "Africa Stone", is the petrified excrement of the Rock Hyrax.

Honeycomb: From the honeycomb of the honeybee. Both beeswax and honey can be solvent extracted to produce an absolute. Beeswax is extracted with ethanol and the ethanol evaporated to produce beeswax absolute.

Musk: Originally derived from the musk sacs from the Asian musk deer, it has now been replaced by the use of synthetic musks sometimes known as "white musk".

Other natural sources

Lichens: Commonly used lichens include oakmoss and treemoss thalli.

"Seaweed": Distillates are sometimes used as essential oil in perfumes. An example of a commonly used seaweed is Fucus vesiculosus, which is commonly referred to as bladder wrack. Natural seaweed fragrances are rarely used due to their higher cost and lower potency than synthetics.

Plant sources

Plants have long been used in perfumery as a source of essential oils and aroma compounds. These aromatics are usually secondary metabolites produced by plants as protection against herbivores, infections, as well as to attract pollinators. Plants are by far the largest source of fragrant compounds used in perfumery. The sources of these compounds may be derived from various parts of a plant. A plant can offer more than one source of aromatics, for instance the aerial portions and seeds of coriander have remarkably different odors from each other. Orange leaves, blossoms, and fruit zest are the respective sources of petitgrain, neroli, and orange oils.

Bark: Commonly used barks includes cinnamon and cascarilla. The fragrant oil in sassafras root bark is also used either directly or purified for its main constituent, safrole, which is used in the synthesis of other fragrant compounds.

Flowers and blossoms: Undoubtedly the largest source of aromatics. Includes the flowers of several species of rose and jasmine, as well as osmanthus, plumeria, mimosa,tuberose, narcissus, scented geranium, cassie, ambrette as well as the blossoms of citrus and ylang-ylang trees. Although not traditionally thought of as a flower, the unopened flower buds of the clove are also commonly used. Most orchid flowers are not commercially used to produce essential oils or absolutes, except in the case of vanilla, an orchid, which must be pollinated first and made into seed pods before use in perfumery.

Fruits: Fresh fruits such as apples, strawberries, cherries unfortunately do not yield the expected odors when extracted; if such fragrance notes are found in a perfume, they are synthetic. Notable exceptions include litsea cubeba, vanilla, and juniper berry. The most commonly used fruits yield their aromatics from the rind; they include citrus such as oranges,lemons, and limes. Although grapefruit rind is still used for aromatics, more and more commercially used grapefruit aromatics are artificially synthesized since the natural aromatic contains sulfur and its degradation product is quite unpleasant in smell.

Leaves and twigs: Commonly used for perfumery are lavender leaf, patchouli, sage, violets, rosemary, and citrus leaves. Sometimes leaves are valued for the "green" smell they bring to perfumes, examples of this include hay and tomato leaf.

Resins: Valued since antiquity, resins have been widely used in incense and perfumery. Highly fragrant and antiseptic resins and resin-containing perfumes have been used by many cultures as medicines for a large variety of ailments. Commonly used resins in perfumery include labdanum, frankincense/olibanum, myrrh, Peru balsam, gum benzoin. Pine and firresins are a particularly valued source of terpenes used in the organic synthesis of many other synthetic or naturally occurring aromatic compounds. Some of what is called amberand copal in perfumery today is the resinous secretion of fossil conifers.

Roots, rhizomes and bulbs: Commonly used terrestrial portions in perfumery include iris rhizomes, vetiver roots, various rhizomes of the ginger family.

Seeds: Commonly used seeds include tonka bean, carrot seed, coriander, caraway, cocoa, nutmeg, mace, cardamom, and anise.

Woods: Highly important in providing the base notes to a perfume, wood oils and distillates are indispensable in perfumery. Commonly used woods include sandalwood, rosewood,agarwood, birch, cedar, juniper, and pine. These are used in the form of macerations or dry-distilled (rectified) forms.

Do you like to use perfumes? which is your favourite and which was your very first perfume you bought or received?