Photo: Unsplash
How do you correctly apply a perfume, cologne, eau de toilette or indeed any type of fragrance correctly?
Francesco van Eerd, owner of Fragrifert Parfumeur in Wellington, joined Emile Donovan to demystify the mist.
It was back in the 1950s that a dilute form of perfume emerged, van Eerd tells Nights, when Estee Lauder launched Youth-Dew.
"They couldn't call that perfume because it wasn't as strong as the full-strength perfume. So, they called it the bath oil."
It took off and other companies, keen to hop on this profitable bandwagon, followed suit leading to various Eau de Toilettes and Eau de Colognes entering the market, he said. Eventually, cologne became the generic name for scents for men.
So, what is the best way to apply a fragrance? First, keep away from the nose, van Eerd said.
"If you have a certain sensory impression coming in all the time, so continuously, your mind will tune it out.
"If you hear a certain tune on the radio all the time, and it's the same, your mind will tune it out."
Eventually, you will have no idea whether you are applying too much. So, van Eerd advises not to apply above the neck.
"Because your nose will be enveloped in that cloud of fragrance all the time. Your mind will tune it out after two or three minutes and you can't smell it anymore.
"Everybody else can, but you can't and then the danger is that you think 'oh it's gone? I better put a bit more on'."
Far better to apply to the wrist, he said.
"You get much more bang for your buck every time your hand comes close to your face, which is hundreds of times a day if not thousands, if you scratch, look at your watch or whatever, you actually get to smell your fragrance and you get much more enjoyment out of it rather than thinking it's not there anymore."
Some people developed an allergy to their favourite scent, he said.
"There's a very simple solution; if you can't wear it on your skin, put it on your clothes - scarves, handkerchiefs, sleeves, lapels, hair even, because there's no Bible anywhere that says perfume has to be applied to skin."
Francesco van Eerd, owner of Fragrifert Parfumeur in Wellington Photo: Fragrifert Parfumeur
Creating a mist and walking through it was not the answer either, he said.
"It's a very good way of marketing perfume. Because you spray 75 percent of your perfume into the air, and you only get about 25 percent value of it."
While most scent is near 100 percent synthetic, he still sees a place for natural fragrance in perfume.
"You can never get the complexity and finesse that nature has had literally millions of years compounding. There are 466, I think, chemicals that are part of the rose fragrance. So, 466 as opposed to one or two molecules to generate the same thing.
"Without naturals, you can't get finesse, in my opinion, other people disagree, there are admittedly some really nice synthetic perfumes around, but few and far between I think."
