Fragrance Files is a platform for the exploration of fragrance, its history and culture. It is designed to give the user a deeper insight into perfume making by providing detailed information on raw materials, olfactory classifications and how scents are formulated.

Choosing a perfume or cologne is an important personal choice. It can help shape one’s identity and deepen memories of special occasions. However, picking a fragrance can be overwhelming. The beautiful bottles, beautifully styled rollers and sprays can be quite tempting. It can also be difficult to decipher the olfactory language of fragrance ingredients and how they relate to each other. This link happi.com

Scent Stories: Exploring the Art and Science Behind Fragrances

Fragrances are a complex mixture of 3,000 chemicals that are used in every type of personal care product including perfumes, colognes, deodorants, soaps and detergents. Even products labelled as fragrance-free contain small amounts of fragrance along with masking agents to cover the smell of other ingredients.

Olfactive classifications are a way to group perfume ingredients into groups that have certain characteristics and that can be combined well. For example, a fruity or floral fragrance will blend well with a woody or oriental perfume. Perfumers use a pyramid model to describe how a perfume is constructed using the top, heart and base notes of the formula.

New chromatographic tools opened up a whole new level of quality control to perfume compounding. Combined with the emergence of IFRA olfactory safety standards, this allowed the olfactory community to unravel much of the secrecy historically associated with fragrance composition.