Sense Synthetic

I flipped the pages of a fashion magazine in the checkout line at the grocery. What I found was a short blurb on perfumes basically telling the consumer to stick to the perfume counter at department stores. It's objective was to inform women (and men) of the dangers of counterfeit and inexpensive perfumes. The fact that the deal you doused yourself in from Chinatown, a bottle (faux) Chanel No. 5, may be more harmful and disgusting than it is cheap. Common ingredients in these types of perfumes do not have a quality code and may include harmful chemicals and random ingredients, like urine.

This led me to think of the perfumes that these vendors are interpreting, a number of designer perfumes made from synthetic materials. Could these perfumes be of a greater quality than knock offs in Chinatown? Not necessarily. I remembered my boyfriend quizzing me on why natural perfumes are within the price range of over the counter designer perfumes and often, more expensive.

I keep a a couple of perfumes on the counter at home; Este Lauder Pleasures, a gift from my grandfather given to me when I was eight, most of the bottle still remains; and a tiny 1/4 once bottle of cocoa perfume by Afterlier.

Natural perfumes have a history that is 4000 years old on top of centuries of experimentation with extracting scents from aromatic materials. Natural perfumes require art, science, and expertise. Combinations of dozens of essences per bottle change and adapt to body chemistry, which in turn creates beauty.

Synthetic perfumes create beauty also, but the ingredients are less expensive, fake, and the typical number of essences is large enough to manipulate the structure of the scent. The aesthetics of both natural perfume and synthetic perfume aim to pleasure the senses but differ in several aspects: ingredient sources, structure, time on skin and relationship with the body, composition, cost and history.

The fine and sacred materials that compose natural perfumes are unique. Next time I'm walk through Macy's I'm curious to see the selection of natural perfumes to synthetic perfumes.