MARCH 2018 • Vol. 24 No. 3
New York Society of Cosmetic Chemists
www.nyscc.org
Scent of the Future – The Role of Science and Technology in the Art of Perfumery
A
t its core, perfumery is an artistic endeavor—like a chef tasting flavors, a musician hearing notes, or a painter visualizing the colors on a palette. A perfumer is guided by his/her nose to choose and balance each aroma within a composition in order to create the impression of say, a bouquet of flowers, and manifest their concept in a way that is endearing to the senses and evokes the feelings and memories in which they found their inspiration. Throughout history, the evolution of the art of perfumery has been virtually married to advances in the sciences, particularly in chemistry. It was the Persian chemist Avicenna who developed and perfected the technology of steam distillation in the 11th century, enabling for the first time the extraction of the essential oil of roses, and in the late 19th to early 20th century, chemists like William Henry Perkin and Karl Reimer, who first synthesized coumarin and vanillin, respectively. Such advances brought about the dawn of fragrance chemistry, opening a Pandora’s box of aromas for the perfumer beyond naturally derived materials. These discoveries led to fragrances, such as Houbigant’s Fougere Royale and Guerlain’s Jicky, which were milestones for the art form, made possible by the application of scientific thinking and research. For the 21st century perfumer, continuing advancement has kept pushing the boundaries of perfumery as an art form, yet again by advances in technology, synthetic chemistry, and even bioengineering. The invention and proliferation of headspace analysis has been one such monumental development for perfumers. An analytical technique used for the separation and concentration of volatile organic compounds, one is able to isolate and characterize the full spectrum of fragrant molecules present in the air—or the headspace —around an object, above a liquid, or in a particular environment, and understand which molecules are responsible for the impression of an odor.1 A dome or sphere-like apparatus is placed around the object of interest, and either inert gases are passed through the
…by Matthew Brooks
chamber, or a vacuum is utilized, to remove the volatile, fragrant compounds from the headspace. The fragrant molecules are then captured using a variety of techniques, which may include solvent traps and adsorbent materials. This concentrated ‘headspace vapor’ can then be injected directly into a gas chromatograph system for analysis, ultimately revealing the chemical formula behind a particular odor.1 This technology has been monumental for perfumers, effectively providing a paint-by-numbers approach to replicating various aromas, from a particular variant of rose to the scent of aged paper in an antique book. In 2001, Roman Kaiser of Givaudan, a pioneer of this technology, notably used it to measure and characterize the scents of a tropical rainforest, sampling orchids using a net suspended from an airship!2 By utilizing this advancement in chemical analysis, (Continued on page 4)
NYSCC-AMERICAN SOCIETY OF PERFUMERS JOINT SYMPOSIUM March 22nd • The Legacy Castle, Pompton Plains, NJ