What is cologne made out of

The United States is the world's largest perfume market with annual sales totalling several billions of dollars.

Ancient Egyptians burned incense called kyphi —made of henna, myrrh, cinnamon, and juniper—as religious offerings. They soaked aromatic wood, gum, and resins in water and oil and used the liquid as a fragrant body lotion. The early Egyptians also perfumed their dead and often assigned specific fragrances to deities. Their word for perfume has been translated as "fragrance of the gods.

Eventually Egyptian perfumery influenced the Greeks and the Romans. For hundreds of years after the fall of Rome, perfume was primarily an Oriental art. Europeans discovered the healing properties of fragrance during the 17th century. Doctors treating plague victims covered their mouths and noses with leather pouches holding pungent cloves, cinnamon, and spices which they thought would protect them from disease. Perfume then came into widespread use among the monarchy. Royal guests bathed in goat's milk and rose petals.

Visitors were often doused with perfume, which also was sprayed on clothing, furniture, walls, and tableware. It was at this time that Grasse, a region of southern France where many flowering plant varieties grow, became a leading producer of perfumes. Meanwhile, in England, aromatics were contained in lockets and the hollow heads of canes to be sniffed by the owner. It was not until the late s, when synthetic chemicals were used, that perfumes could be mass marketed.

The first synthetic perfume was nitrobenzene, made from nitric acid and benzene. This synthetic mixture gave off an almond smell and was often used to scent soaps. In , Englishman William Perkin synthesized coumarin from the South American tonka bean to create a fragrance that smelled like freshly sown hay.

Ferdinand Tiemann of the University of Berlin created synthetic violet and vanilla. In the United States, Francis Despard Dodge created citronellol—an alcohol with rose-like odor—by experimenting with citronella, which is derived from citronella oil and has a lemon-like odor. In different variations, this synthetic compound gives off the scents of sweet pea, lily of the valley, narcissus, and hyacinth.

Just as the art of perfumery progressed through the centuries, so did the art of the perfume bottle. Perfume bottles were often as elaborate and exotic as the oils they contained.

The earliest specimens date back to about B. In ancient Egypt, newly invented glass bottles were made largely to hold perfumes. The crafting of perfume bottles spread into Europe and reached its peak in Venice in the 18th century, when glass containers assumed the shape of small animals or had pastoral scenes painted on them. The newest fragrance to join the Mr Burberry family, Mr Burberry Element has a freshness that takes its inspirational cues from the great British countryside.

With notes of ambergris fused with a powerful base of mineral oak moss, this scent is a new spin on a classic, woody aroma. Top notes of green almond are contrasted with a spicy, juniper heart for a sensual spritz with a hint of intrigue. Created by British scent specialist Laboratory Perfumes, this scent is an olfactory mood enhancer. In fact, the fragrance itself is inspired by how our moods shift and progress throughout the day. Notes of spice and greenery, layered with balmy ambergris and earthy wood, evolves on the skin, slowly shifting as you wear it.

At Liberty London. This dark fragrance has a richness dominated by ginger, cardamom and sandalwood, all complemented by waxy ambergris and water lily. With a spicy balsamic edge and sweet powdery middle notes of jasmine, orchid and fiery pink pepper, this scent is ready to take you on an aromatic journey.

This scent has cult status. Notes of jasmine, moss and ambrette seeds blended with ambergris make for a heady, aromatic cocktail that blends with your natural pheromones to create a unique scent that smells like you but better. Be warned, this olfactory offering is addictive.

At Selfridges. At Harrods. It's a range that celebrates the art of perfume-making by reinterpreting its quintessentially Italian, signature scent, Colonia, marrying it off with a complementary note leather and oud are two examples to give it a completely new and more progressive identity. The golden-fruit of Colonia forms the starting point for this Ambra elixir, contrasted against the supporting act of ambergris. Housed in a black glass deco-inspired bottle, symbolic of its intensive and assertive composition, it opens with orange essential oil, bergamot, petitgrain, followed by an abundance of woods like cedar and sandalwood, with delicate rose trailing off to a headier cocktail of patchouli, ambergris, musk and vanilla.

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Jill is a contributing writer for Byrdie where she covers fragrance. Byrdie's Editorial Guidelines. Featured Video. The fats then have to be dissolved in alcohol so that the essential oils can be obtained.

The process of creating a scent begins after the essential oils are extracted and collected. Once all the ingredients have been chosen, they need to be blended together. Many of these formulas were carefully created over several years and often include hundreds of different ingredients.

As we mentioned before, some perfume ingredients come from plants and some are animal products. For example, castor comes from beavers, musk from male deer and ambergris from the sperm whale. Animal substances are often used as fixatives that enable perfume to evaporate slowly and emit odors longer.

Other fixatives include coal tar, mosses, resins or synthetic chemicals. Alcohol and sometimes water are used to dilute ingredients in perfumes. The more essential oil, the stronger and more expensive the perfume is. Eau de parfum will have a lower concentration of alcohol while body mists will have a much higher concentration of alcohol.

High quality and pure perfumes are often aged for months or potentially even years after the scent has been blended. This is done to ensure that the proper scent has been created.

Aging allows the different scents, or notes, to really blend together. Perfumes are made up of top notes that provide the scent with body as well as base notes which create an enduring fragrance.

Quality control is a vital aspect of the perfume manufacturing process. Natural ingredients can be difficult to harvest, and some perfumes use natural animal oils which can also be troublesome to collect. Synthetic perfume has allowed perfumers to more easily create their scents and require less quality control. Today, perfumes are increasingly made using synthetic chemicals. Often, scents that occur naturally are reproduced synthetically rather than sourced and extracted.

This allows the cost of producing perfume to go down, increasing its availability to the public. However, this can also lower the quality of the perfume, at Shay and Blue all of our fragrances are made with real ingredients and synthetics are used as little as possible to make sure you're getting the best product possible. The importance of scent has been around since the beginning of time, meaning smell is valuable for a multitude of purposes, including emotion, memory, creativity and relationships.

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