Create a Custom Perfume for Valentine's Day
Give the Gift of a Signature Scent this February
Feb 11, 2009
Gentleman, take note; creating a unique scent is the ultimate romantic Valentine's Day gift.
Irene Perfumes is a family-run business led by matriarch Irene Saltzman. As a young adult Irene lived in Morocco and her neighbor, an Egyptian perfumer, took her under his wing and taught her the craft of creating perfumes. For nearly five years, Irene perfected the craft under his tutelage.
“At that point in my life I didn’t realize what he was offering,” Irene said. “In that part of the world that skill is passed down through the family. He didn’t have family, so he sort of adopted me.”
Custom perfume creation is hard to findThere are very few places in the world where the average Jane can develop her own fragrance. According to Irene the perfume houses in Europe require a minimum order of $20,000 to create a scent and the process will take upwards of one year. Through trial and error, Irene perfected a process that reduces the creation time down to several hours and the cost to $1300 for one ounce of perfume or $500 for an ounce of eau de perfume. True perfume has 30 to 50 percent fragrance oil whereas eau de perfume is usually only 15 percent oil.
”Creating perfume really is one-half art and one-half science,” Irene explains. “It took me a long time to figure out how to make perfume that someone could create and walk out the door a few hours later.”
Creating a Signature fragranceThe process begins with the client filling out a questionnaire and completing a simple color-profiling test. From the clients color preferences, Irene is able to determine what class of perfume an individual gravitates towards. My test pointed me towards the oriental perfumes. Spot on since I wear Angel perfume from the oriental family.
This knowledge in hand, Irene and I sit down and begin working with different vials of essential oils to pick the perfect base to blend in the mid-level and top-level notes. Irene painstakingly takes eyedropper after eyedropper of scents like rose, sandalwood, lily and cedar wood. With a small sample created to my liking in the beaker, Irene that extrapolates the formula to develop a full ounce of my scent.
Ladies, don’t be worried if the perfume doesn’t smell exactly as you wished initially. The different components in the perfume take several days to a month to meld together. Irene suggests storing perfume in the refrigerator as it extends the life of the fragrance.
Your signature fragrance will be one V-day gift that keeps on giving.
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