Biology

BIOLOGY OF PERFUME

Cross-culturally, fragrances are used to modulate body odor , but the psychology of fragrance choice has been largely overlooked. The prevalent view is that fragrances mask an individual’s body odor and improve its pleasantness.

Fragrances thus appear to interact with body odor, creating an individually-specific odor mixture. The odor mixture of an individual’s body odor and their preferred perfume was perceived as more pleasant than a blend of the same body odor with a randomly-allocated perfume, even when there was no difference in pleasantness between the perfumes. Fragrance use extends beyond simple masking effects and that people choose perfumes that interact well with their own odor. This explains the highly individual nature of perfume choice.

Pheromones & sex appeal

Perfume: Coty Wild Musk Natural. Untamed. (1986)

The story of pheromone perfumes is, in many ways, the story of pheromones themselves—which first became a household name nearly thirty years ago, when a biologist named Winifred Cutler and her team announced they had proven the existence of the so-called attraction chemicals in humans in a study.

Pheromones are chemicals secreted by an animal that change the behavior of another animal of the same species. There’s a misconception that pheromones are equivalent to a scent—but really, we “detect” them more than we “smell” them. Research has shown without a doubt that pheromones are real throughout the animal kingdom, but their history in humans is more controversial.

In one relatively famous study on the path to identifying the chemical, scientists collected armpit secretions from fertile men and women and froze them. A year later, they thawed the secretions and placed them on the mustache region of a different set of subjects. The researchers found that the secretions from heterosexual, fertile men and women increased the frequency of sociosexual behaviors such as kissing, petting, dating, and intercourse in their heterosexual subjects.

Despite their big discovery, they have yet to disclose what the mysterious chemical is. In 1993, however, she patented a pheromone formula containing the chemical, which promised to help women attract men, naming it the Athena Pheromone™. She soon began selling her “pheromone perfume” through the Athena Institute for Women’s Wellness in Pennsylvania, a biomedical research organization that she founded in the eighties. In 1995, she began selling a pheromone formula to help men attract women as well.

Body: Where to spray perfume

The best place to apply fragrances is where the body’s natural heat slowly releases perfume ingredients.

- Behind the ear

- Neck Shoulder

- Wrist

- Back of knee