So today I went to a perfume museum and got to make my own perfume!!  We started with an introduction to five different types of perfume and what scents are at their base:

• Eau Fraîche – citrus and neroli
• Chypre – Patchouli and Mousse oak Moss
• Fougeres -lavender and vanilla and cachemire wood
• Orientale – vanilla and patchouli and sandalwood and ambre ciste
• Floraux – tons of different flowers

I paid attention to each of the demos and smell tasters and quickly decided chypre and fougeres were my favorites.  I wasn’t a huge fan of the neroli smell in Eau Fraîche, the Orientale was just too too toxicly strong, and the Floraux smelled a bit like a grandma.

They lined up about 50 different bottles with concentrated scents in each one.  From here they gave us sample recipes to use or tweak with the concentrated scents to make little 5 ml sample perfumes.  I smelled through the majority of the 50 different bottles and came up with my favorite: Jasmine!  SO whatever I was going to make was definitely going to have jasmine.  I tried making a Fougeres by roughly following a recipe but omitting the smells I didn’t like and adding in jasmine and I loved it!!! Then for my next demo I followed a recipe exact for a chypre that contained jasmine and I liked it, but prefered the fougeres (I’m not a huge fan of patchouli).

Then we transfered our favorite sample into a large 50mL bottle.  So here is my (not so) secret recipe for my very own perfume for the 5 mL :

• 2 drops citrus
• 3 drops lavender
• 3 drops vanilla
• 6 drops cachemire wood (to give it the fougeres scent)
• 5 drops jasmin
• fill container with ethanol to the top (so it will evaporate and leave scent on you)

This ratio was of course multiplied by a lot for the 50 mL bottle.  We also got a visit through the perfume museum.  We learned that scents usually have a head, body, and base so there are scents that last about an hour, about four hours, and a few days… so the perfume will smell different after different amounts of time after being applied.  We also learned where certain scents come from around the world.  And we learned some perfume traditions: a woman would put a dot of perfume on the right cheek to say she was taken but on the left cheek to say she was available.  She would put a dot of perfume on her lips to say she wanted to be embraced and a dot of perfume on her chin to say she couldn’t be embraced today, but maybe tomorrow.

Then of course they took us to their show room and tried to sell us their products… They were super expensive!!!  I’m super grateful for this EDUCO opportunity. I only paid 10 euro and I will have wonderful perfume for a very long time (with my big bottle and the sample trials)!!