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| 4,000 year old perfume bottles discovered in 2003 on Cypress Island. |
Perfume making is a 4000 year old art. In ancient times, perfumes were a mix of fragrant compounds with oil that people burned as incense or wore either as oil or unguents. Somewhere in the middle ages, Europeans started mixing this the fragrances with alcohol, and later still, in the early 1900's, the atomizer became the preferred mode of dispensing scent. I should mention here that back then, people didn't bathe as regularly as we do today and thus atomizers, which dispensed scent quickly and efficiently was a good thing, to quote Martha.
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| Perfume vase from the tomb of King Tutankhamum, 14th century B.C. |
Alcohol and oil based perfumes both have their good points. It’s a matter of personal preference. Alcohol based perfumes “lift” the scent to the nose faster for a more powerful hit, if you will. Top notes rise higher, heart notes beat more intensely. Oil based perfumes are not in such a rush to reveal their personality. Oil based may be more easily concentrated around pulse points because of the nature of their application – dabbing versus spraying. I personally prefer the experience of spraying perfume more than dabbing, while recognizing there may be situations where one desires to confine one’s scent to one spot for a lucky someone to discover. Like an X on the treasure map of your person, so to speak. Or a fingerprint on your hourglass, oh, never mind.
If I had to describe perfume as movie stars, alcohol based would be like Jennifer Aniston, bubbly, full of life, fun, while oil based would be like Angelina Jolie, smoldering, unhurried, full of mystery. At the end of the day though, both are at heart sexy complicated women who love Brad Pitt. Though, the goatee has to go. What was I talking about?
Some believe alcohol based perfumes are bad for the skin, but I don’t buy it. This might be the case if one bathed in alcohol (or digested it). However, the amount of alcohol dispensed with each poof of perfume is miniscule, disperse, and ready to flee via evaporation when it meets your body heat. On the other hand, the nice thing about oil based perfumes are that they are moisturizing to the spots on which you dab them, and are ideal for very dry skin, for dry skin has a hard time holding down scent. There’s also something very sexy about touching perfume to your ears that brings to mind Cleopatra stretched out on silk pillows, servants bringing pots of myrrh to the Persian queen Scheherazade, you get the picture. For me, I love the physical act of poofing, whether it's my hair or my perfume. It's just so girly. Now if I could only poof away those dishes in the sink.
I will be offering alcohol based perfumes in the coming weeks. In the meantime, please visit my Etsy shop to browse my oil based (i.e., sexpot) natural perfumes: Mermaid Lane Perfumes
I'm so excited, I had no idea I was a sexpot! I much prefer dabbing perfume on pulse points, and I like how oil-based perfumes "warm up" and deepen when they're worn. And although you just dab them locally, I feel like the scent wafts around me; I've suddenly become a magnet for helpful salespeople (and postal clerks :D) Or maybe it's just the placebo effect; I certainly feel prettier and more confident when I'm wearing the scent you made me, and perhaps I project that.
ReplyDeleteBtw, I'd much rather be Angelina; and Brad's goatee can STAY; I love a man with a beard! (including my husband..)
Agreed about the oil based ones warm up and diffuse around you. . .good point. Re: Brad, If only his goatee weren't so scraggly, like a rodent that scrabbled onto his chin.
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