49 Fun Facts About Perfume

The word 'perfume' comes from Latin words meaning what?

To smoke through: Latin per, 'through', plus fumare, 'to smoke'. The word first named the scented fumes of something burning, such as incense, and only later a liquid scent.

Tapputi, named on a cuneiform tablet as a palace perfumer, is one of the first recorded chemists of which civilisation?

Mesopotamia. Around 1200 BC in the Assyrian city of Assur, Tapputi distilled flowers, oil and calamus, filtered the result and put it back through the still several times.

On which Mediterranean island did archaeologists unearth a 4,000-year-old perfume factory, believed to be the world's oldest?

Cyprus. An earthquake destroyed the Bronze Age perfumery at Pyrgos but also buried its stills and bottles, so scientists could recreate scents from the residues left inside.

Which Persian polymath is credited with first distilling oils from flowers?

Ibn Sina (Avicenna). He is credited with distilling rose petals into both rose oil and rose water, and he used the oil to treat heart conditions.

By legend, Hungary Water, one of Europe's first alcohol-based perfumes, was first made for whom?

The country's queen, Elizabeth. The legend, which scholars doubt, has the rosemary water made to treat her ailments, and in one telling it won her a marriage proposal at 72.

Why is perfume traditionally dabbed on pulse points such as the wrists?

Body heat there diffuses the scent. At pulse points blood vessels run close to the skin, and the extra warmth keeps the fragrance evaporating so it is released steadily.

Which fragrance concentration ranks second in strength, just below pure extrait?

Eau de parfum. It carries more fragrance oil than an eau de toilette or an eau de cologne, which is why it lasts longer on the skin than those lighter waters.

In perfumery, what are the quickly evaporating scents perceived immediately on application called?

Top notes. They are small, light molecules, citrus and mint among them, that evaporate fast, so a perfume's bright opening gives way to its heart and then its longer-lasting base.

Which artist's 1985 prints show the Chanel No. 5 bottle?

Andy Warhol. He had started out drawing magazine advertisements in the 1950s, and his Ads series turned famous ones, Chanel's bottle among them, back into art.

Who composed the formula for Chanel No. 5?

Ernest Beaux. Born in Moscow, he trained at Rallet, perfumer to the Russian imperial court, and after the 1917 revolution closed its Russian business he carried on with the firm's exiles on the Riviera.

Why did Coco Chanel name her perfume No. 5?

She picked the fifth of the numbered sample vials, the story goes, from two sets marked 1 to 5 and 20 to 24, and kept the number for luck because she showed her collections on 5 May.

Which actress famously answered 'Chanel No. 5' when asked what she wore to bed?

Marilyn Monroe. The line ran with her first Life cover story in April 1952, and in 2013 Chanel built a whole campaign around a 1960 recording of her telling the story again.

In 2012, who became the first man to advertise Chanel No. 5?

Brad Pitt. In a black-and-white spot he mused that 'wherever I go, there you are' and ended on one word, 'inevitable', following faces such as Catherine Deneuve and Nicole Kidman.

Which Provençal town is known as the world's perfume capital?

Grasse. It was a leather-tanning town whose glove-makers began scenting their gloves to mask the stink, and the perfume trade that grew from it outlasted the leather.

Eau de Cologne was originally mixed in 1709 by whom?

Johann Maria Farina. An Italian who had settled in the German city, he said the scent recalled a spring morning back in Italy, and he named it in honour of his new home.

The cologne 4711 is named after a house number handed out in 1794, when which country's army occupied Cologne?

France. Every house in the city was numbered as French revolutionary troops moved in, and the shop on Glockengasse drew 4711; the soldier painting it on from horseback was invented for adverts.

Guerlain stayed in family hands from 1828 until 1994, when which luxury group bought it?

LVMH. Bernard Arnault's group bought the family out, but Jean-Paul Guerlain, who had composed the house's perfumes since the 1950s, stayed on to keep creating them.

Guerlain's Jicky, launched in 1889, is often called the first modern perfume because it was among the first to use what?

Synthetic ingredients. Aimé Guerlain blended lab-made vanillin and coumarin with natural essences such as lavender, a marriage of chemistry and nature that modern perfumes still follow.

Guerlain's Shalimar was inspired by the love story of Shah Jahan and which empress?

Mumtaz Mahal. When she died in 1631 Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal as her tomb, and Jacques Guerlain drew on their story for the perfume.

Ambergris, long prized as a fixative, is produced in the digestive system of which animal?

The sperm whale. Ambergris is thought to form around the sharp squid beaks the whale cannot digest, and lumps that wash ashore after years at sea have been called floating gold.

Natural musk, long used to fix perfumes, comes from a gland of which animal?

The musk deer. Only the male carries the scent pod, and because he was killed to get it, perfumers have largely given up the real thing for imitations.

Oud, or agarwood, forms in Aquilaria trees after what happens to them?

They are infected by a mould. The tree answers the attack with a dark, fragrant resin that soaks its heartwood, wood that is pale and light while the tree is healthy.

Vetiver, a staple base note, is the root of what kind of plant?

A grass. Vetiver is a tall bunchgrass whose fragrant roots grow straight down for three metres or more, so it is also planted in hedges to stop soil washing away.

Which citrus fruit, grown chiefly along the coast of Calabria, is prized by perfumers for the oil in its peel?

Bergamot. Too sour to eat like an orange, it is grown for its peel oil, which freshens classic eau de cologne and gives Earl Grey tea its flavour.

Frankincense and myrrh are both harvested by doing what?

Cutting bark. Boswellia trees give frankincense and thorny Commiphora trees give myrrh: the gum that bleeds from the cuts hardens into lumps called tears, which are then collected.

The traditional technique of enfleurage captures the scent of flowers using what?

Odourless solid fats. Petals are laid on the fat and replaced every day or so until it is saturated with their scent, which alcohol then draws out as a concentrated flower oil.

Labdanum, a sticky shrub resin used in perfume, was gathered in ancient times by combing it from the coats of which animals?

Goats. They browsed on rockrose bushes and the resin stuck to their hair; Herodotus marvelled that so sweet a scent was found in the beards of foul-smelling he-goats.

The fougère family of forest-floor scents takes its name from the French word for which plant?

Fern. Houbigant's Fougère Royale of 1882 named the family, though it copied no real fern: its perfumer built the effect from lavender and coumarin, a note that smells of new-mown hay.

Thierry Mugler's Angel (1992) is considered the first modern example of which fragrance family?

Its notes of praline, vanilla and patchouli made it smell edible; it once outsold No. 5 in France, and the bottle is a star.

Which Yves Saint Laurent perfume of 1977 caused an outcry over its name?

Opium. Critics accused Saint Laurent of glamorising drug use and some demanded a new name, but he kept it and the scent was an immediate bestseller all the same.

Which perfume, launched just after the 1929 Wall Street crash, was marketed as the costliest in the world?

Joy. Jean Patou made it for American clients the crash had ruined and priced it defiantly high: an ounce was said to need some 10,000 jasmine flowers and 28 dozen roses.

Which American designer launched the 1994 hit fragrance that was pitched at men and women alike?

Calvin Klein. CK One came in a plain frosted flask with a screw cap under the slogan 'One for all', and shoppers of both sexes made it one of the decade's bestsellers.

Which men's grooming brand was launched in 1937 as a range of toiletries for women?

Old Spice. It began as Early American Old Spice, soaps and toilet water sold to women in colonial-style boxes; the men's line and its shaving mug with a sailing ship came next and took over.

Perfumers are affectionately known by which nickname?

Noses, or 'nez' in French. Until a school open to the public was founded in 1970, the craft was taught inside the perfume houses, so a nose learned it as an apprentice at a working perfumer's side.

The Osmothèque, a working archive of historic perfumes, is based in which French city?

Versailles. Its perfumers remake discontinued classics from their original formulas, so visitors can still smell scents that vanished from the shops generations ago.

Which French word for a ship's wake do perfume lovers use for the scent trail a wearer leaves behind?

Sillage. Skin changes it: a wearer's own skin scent and dryness alter how a fragrance carries, so the same perfume leaves a different trail on different people.

Which Balkan country's Rose Valley is the best-known source of damask rose oil?

Bulgaria. In the valley around Kazanlak the blooms are picked one by one by hand, and it takes several tonnes of petals to distil a single kilo of oil, which is why it costs so much.

Patrick Süskind's novel Perfume follows Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, whose surname is French for what?

Frog. Grenouille is born amid the stink of a Paris fish market with a superhuman sense of smell yet no scent of his own, and he murders in pursuit of the perfect perfume.

Who plays Grenouille in the 2006 film Perfume: The Story of a Murderer?

Ben Whishaw. After almost a year of searching, director Tom Tykwer watched the little-known actor play Hamlet at London's Old Vic and decided on the spot that he had his Grenouille.

Which singer and actress launched the hit fragrance Glow in 2002?

Jennifer Lopez. A small Los Angeles firm already selling a scent called Glow sued over the name, a judge refused to pull hers from the shelves, and by 2004 her perfumes and fashion were bringing in more than $300 million a year.

Despite its French name, the fragrance giant Givaudan has its headquarters in which country?

Switzerland. Based outside Geneva, Givaudan sells nothing under its own name: its perfumers compose scents that fashion houses bottle as their own, and it perfumes soaps and household cleaners too.

Which family of aroma chemicals, used in a dose no perfumer had tried before, gives Chanel No. 5 its clean sparkle?

Aldehydes. The story goes that an assistant added them at full strength instead of a ten per cent dilution; the 'mistake' stayed in the formula, and aldehydic florals became a family of their own.

A 9th-century perfume book attributed to Al-Kindi describes which still, whose name English took from Arabic?

The alembic. The word is Arabic al-anbiq, 'the still', borrowed in turn from a Greek word for cup, so saying 'the alembic' really says 'the' twice.

In everyday American usage, 'cologne' usually means what?

Perfume marketed to men. Dictionaries still define cologne as a light scent for anyone, named after a German city, but American shops shelve men's fragrances of every strength under the word.

François Coty's 1917 perfume Chypre built a whole family on citrus, labdanum and which base note?

Oakmoss. It is a lichen, not a moss, and because it can irritate skin its use is now tightly restricted, so many classic chypre perfumes have had to be reformulated.

Which designer's fragrances come in bottles shaped like human torsos and are sold inside metal cans?

Jean Paul Gaultier. Classique is a woman's torso in a corset and Le Male a man's in a sailor stripe; Le Male's own perfumer feared a bottle that did not look like a bottle would never sell.

Which ruler had a standing order with his perfumer for 50 bottles of eau de cologne a month?

Napoleon Bonaparte. He doused himself with it after washing, and surviving bills from his perfumer Chardin bear the habit out.

Kyphi, a temple incense blended from honey, wine, raisins and resins, was burned at nightfall in which ancient civilisation?

Egypt. Recipes for kyphi are carved on the temple walls at Edfu and Philae, and Plutarch wrote that its sixteen ingredients loosened the day's cares and eased the body towards sleep.

Which American beauty founder launched Youth-Dew in 1953 as a bath oil that doubled as a perfume?

Estée Lauder. Women then waited to be given perfume but would happily buy themselves a bath oil, so they poured Youth-Dew in by the bottle instead of dabbing it on by the drop.