It is absurd to object to “artificial” perfumes, for practically all perfumes now sold are artificial in the sense of being compounded by the art of the perfumer and whether the materials he uses are derived from the flowers of yesteryear or of Carboniferous Era is nobody’s business but his.  And he does not tell.  The materials can be purchased in the open market.  Various recipes can be found in the books.  But every famous perfumer guards well the secret of his formulas and hands it as a legacy to his posterity.  The ancient Roman family of Frangipani has been made immortal by one such hereditary recipe.  The Farina family still claims to have the exclusive knowledge of how to make Eau de Cologne.  This famous perfume was first compounded by an Italian, Giovanni Maria Farina, who came to Cologne in 1709.  It soon became fashionable and was for a time the only scent allowed at some of the German courts.  The various published recipes contain from six to a dozen ingredients, chiefly the oils of neroli, rosemary, bergamot, lemon and lavender dissolved in very pure alcohol and allowed to age like wine.  The invention, in 1895, of artificial neroli (orange flowers) has improved the product.

French perfumery, like the German, had its origin in Italy, when Catherine de’ Medici came to Paris as the bride of Henri II.  She brought with her, among other artists, her perfumer, Sieur Toubarelli, who established himself in the flowery land of Grasse.  Here for four hundred years the industry has remained rooted and the family formulas have been handed down from generation to generation.  In the city of Grasse there were at the outbreak of the war fifty establishments making perfumes.  The French perfumer does not confine himself to a single sense.  He appeals as well to sight and sound and association.  He adds to the attractiveness of his creation by a quaintly shaped bottle, an artistic box and an enticing name such as “Dans les Nues,” “Le Coeur de Jeannette,” “Nuit de Chine,” “Un Air Embaume,” “Le Vertige,” “Bon Vieux Temps,” “L’Heure Bleue,” “Nuit d’Amour,” “Quelques Fleurs,” “Djer-Kiss.”

The requirements of a successful scent are very strict.  A perfume must be lasting, but not strong.  All its ingredients must continue to evaporate in the same proportion, otherwise it will change odor and deteriorate.  Scents kill one another as colors do.  The minutest trace of some impurity or foreign odor may spoil the whole effect.  To mix the ingredients in a vessel of any metal but aluminum or even to filter through a tin funnel is likely to impair the perfume.  The odoriferous compounds are very sensitive and unstable bodies, otherwise they would have no effect upon the olfactory organ.  The combination that would be suitable for a toilet water would not be good for a talcum powder and might spoil in a soap.  Perfumery is used even in the “scentless” powders and soaps.  In fact it is now used more extensively, if less intensively, than ever before in the history