Million Dollar Perfume
Do you think perfume is too expensive nowadays? Many people do, and the reasons vary from many things. The cost can be based off of the ingredients, packaging, or more.
Starting off with ingredients, they can be costly for many reasons. The most common reason is due to the purity of the herb, or the rarity. Your average perfume from Bath & Body Works has generally watered down essential oils, and cheaper, more common or even synthetic ingredients. This is why your cheap perfumes barely last an hour, and have to be reapplied multiple times a day.
Designer perfumes are significantly more expensive than perfume you’d see at retail stores. This is because designer perfumes use only pure and natural ingredients. Aside from that, the ingredients used are also usually very rare and hard to obtain, making it expensive. Some designer perfumes use crystal plated packaging, increasing the price even MORE. An example would be the Clive Christian Imperial Majesty perfume. The bottle has a crystal bottle, with a 5 carat diamond plated into the 18 carat gold collar ring, while most common perfumes have a plastic bottle with a decal.
Overall, I think that designer perfumes are most definitely worth their price, due to the long lasting qualities and pure scents. In my opinion, one of the cheaper (but still high quality) perfume would be the Burberry Her Perfume set.
Perfume Over The Ages
Perfume is a liquid curated from a mix of essential oils and fragrances, and is used to apply a certain scent onto a person.
Perfumery first began in South Asia and around the Middle East, and mostly Egypt.
The first ever alcohol based perfume was in sometime around 1370, the Hungary Water. This perfume was formulated by Queen Elisabeth of Hungary, and was created by a monk-alchemist. Hungary Water quickly spread throughout Europe, until Eau de Cologne was made in the 18th century, and quickly became the most applied fragrance. Some people used Hungary Water in a medicinal way, in order to help with headaches or other minimal health issues.
The first EVER trace of perfume is the attar, allegedly a 60,000 year old secret recipe passed down from many, many generations in India. The attar is not alcohol based, making it generally oily. In modern day, Muslims use the attar to cleanse themself before praying.
In the 16-17th century, perfume was mostly used by wealthy and royal people in order to cover up bad odors from not bathing regularly. By then, France and Italy were already growing aromatic plants to provide the new industry with raw, and pure materials. The capital of the European perfume industry has remained the same since.
During the middle ages, perfume was used by both men and woman. It was only near the start of the 19th century when perfume became the focus of women.
One of the earliest perfumes, and in my opinion most important to the modern perfume industry would be G. B. Farina, the first founded perfume line, founded in 1709. Although they sold cologne, the industries go together. They also sold fashion items until their closing.