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Odor (particularly that of a human) is a powerful memory-triggering agent.“Human scent is like an olfactory cocktail,” says Rabeau, and “what you eat, where you come from, if you smoke, what products you put on your skin” are all part of our scent identity . In addition to sight, sound, or touch, Rabeau claims smell and the memories associated with it can create a rounder picture of the person or event someone is remembering—like an olfactory photograph. Article explores how companies have tried to create human scents, for the most part to keep the memory of lost loved ones alive as best as possible.

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Immortalizing Human Scents as Memory Perfumes

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An overview of 18th century techniques and perfumery processes mirroring those explained in the novel.
Includes: Distillation, Enfleurage, and Maceration

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Evidence suggests that perfume has been around since the time of the Ancient Egyptians. Since that time, there have been many natural as well as man made materials used to create scents that can be applied to the body. Perfume is created from countless natural ingredients including flowers, fruit, spices, and more. Scents will also contain other ingredients such as alcohol and essential oils. The manufacturing process for perfume includes collection, extraction, blending, and aging.
How Perfume is Manufactured Collecting Ingredients
Prior to the manufacturing process actually beginning, the ingredients for the perfume must be gathered. Ingredients are often harvested from all around the world, many times being picked by hand. Materials that are not natural such as aromatic chemicals are created in laboratories by people known as perfume chemists. Once all of the ingredients are harvested, or created in a lab, the manufacturing process can begin.
Extracting Oils
In order to create perfume, the natural ingredients must have their oils extracted. This can be done with several different methods including solvent extraction, maceration, steam distillation, enfleurage, or expression.

Solvent Extraction - This method is performed by putting plants into big, rotating drums. The plants are then covered with petroleum ether or benzene. The plant parts eventually dissolve in whatever solvent is used, leaving a waxy substance that contains the oils. This substance is then placed in ethyl alcohol. The oil dissolves in the alcohol, which is then burned off, leaving a highly concentrated perfume oil.

Steam Distillation - With steam distillation, the natural materials are placed in a still. The resulting substance is then passed through tubes, where it is cooled, and then liquefied. In addition to steaming, oils can also be extracted from plant materials by boiling in water.

Expression - One of the oldest forms of extraction, expression is quite simple. This process, often used for extracting citrus oils, involves pressing the plant, either mechanically, or manually, until all of the oils are extracted.

Enfleurage - With the process of enfleurage, large glass sheets are coated with grease and the flowers or other plant material are spread across them. The glass sheets are then placed in tiers between wooden frames. The flowers are then moved by hand and replaced until the grease is able to absorb the fragrance.

Maceration - The process of maceration is similar to enfleurage however warmed up fats are used to soak up the fragrance as opposed to grease. The fats then have to be dissolved in alcohol so that the essential oils can be obtained.
The Blending Process
Once all of the oils for the perfume have been extracted, they need to be blended together. The oils are blended accorded to a formula that has been predetermined by a master in the perfume industry, often referred to as a "nose." One perfume can contain hundreds of different ingredients and can take multiple years to develop. Once the perfume oils have been blended, the scent is mixed with alcohol. The amount of alcohol added to the perfume oils varies depending on what the final product will be be. Eau de parfum will have a lower concentration of alcohol while scents such as body mists will have a much higher concentration of alcohol.
Perfume Aging
Higher quality, or fine perfumes are oftentimes 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
The manufacturing of perfume includes many quality control steps. 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.
Learn More About Perfume Manufacturing

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Evidence suggests that perfume has been around since the time of the Ancient Egyptians. Since that time, there have been many natural as well as man made materials used to create scents that can be applied to the body. Perfume is created from countless natural ingredients including flowers, fruit, spices, and more.

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Manuel Blanco Romansanta, a Spaniard who lived in the 1800s draws many parallels to how Suskind characterized Grenouille. Suskind did take courses in 18th century history and its likely he may have taken aspirations from Manuel's actions.
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Manuel was known to be Spain's first serial killer (similar to how Grenouille is a prominent serial killer in France) who killed people to extract their fat to turn into soaps (similar to how Grenouille extracted scent from people's bodies). Manuel lived in isolation for a period (like Grenouille in the cave) and people who hired him disappeared (much like Grenouilles owners).

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The Perception of Perfume in the 18th century

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The Perception of Perfume in the 18th century

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Key Ideas ( captured in sections 4 and 5):
-  in the 18th century, perfume was used to provide distinction between the social classes and determine gender relations
-  As suggested by various 18th century literary works ( for example,  Love in a Chest, A Farce (1710) ), the use of perfume is the desire to mask our own  "unpleasant" facets
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- Süskind employs these two ideas to connect scent to identity

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eighteenthcenturylit [licensed for non-commercial use only] / Perfumes

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Oxford English Dictionary show the different uses of the word that can also be found in eighteenth century literature (see below). On the one hand, the word "perfume" can be defined as a "pleasant smell", the use of the term that is most widely employed in literature.

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Süskind is an ascetic recluse who rejects public recognition for his success. He does not grant interviews and almost never comments on his work
- he claims to be an "blissfully ignorant epigone", something he claims to be a fortunate handicap for a creative writer since it frees him from the anxiety of influence and creates an uncomplicated relation to plagiarism, without which, he paradoxically insists, nothing original can be written.
-  Perfume: the story of a murderer has been described as   "nothing but a complex construction of parodied codes and citations by means of which the author is able to write himself out of the text, an aesthetic ploy that is consistent with Suskind's public (and presumably philosophical) self-effacement".
-  Süskind is shown to believe in "postmodern kenosis" where all ideas and imagination are considered to belong to all authors and writings
- reflects Grenouille's own perception of scents ( specifically those of people) as common property

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The article below is a long, but interesting analysis of Patrick Suskind's Perfume (originally published in German as Das Parfum).Immediately below is a citation for the article.I hope you enjoy it.

The Poetics of Melancholia and Mourning

In what has become a definitive example of German literary postmodernism, Suskind projects his concern with personal identity and literary persona onto the themes and characters of Das Parfum. Set in eighteenth-century

Given the tyrannical insistence of traditional literary aesthetics that the author be identified as the voice of a singular and unified subject, it was predictable that the shell game with authorial identity played out in the ostentatious borrowings of Das Parfum would be considered a Germanic version of the deconstructive ecriture that Roland Barthes had defined decades ago as a "neutral, composite, oblique space" where conventional notions of human subjectivity slip away and identity is lost (Barthes 142). Barthes's reduction of the author's identity to an effect of literary discourse found little resonance among German intellectuals, especially in the years immediately preceding Das Parfum's publication in 1985. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the counter-Enlightenment impulses that fed deconstructive theory were considered suspect and their influence was limited, in particular by the philosophy of Jurgen Habermas, who called for a completion of the unfinished project of modernity grounded in the Enlightenment ideal of individual autonomy. To dismiss the author as an effect of literary discourse, especially for postwar German intellectuals, is to subvert the Enlightenment ideal of autonomous selfhood needed to construct and maintain liberating social institutions. Certainly, the Germans have good historical reasons for fearing a counter-Enlightenment that, in its philosopical attacks on the "myth" of the autonomous subject, encourages dangerous backsliding into the Romantic irrationalism often cited as the precursor of the amorphous collective identity of fascism. After Hitler's exploitation and contamination of the German cultural tradition, vast portions of its intellectual heritage, especially those relating to Romanticism, were disavowed, leaving (already geographically and politically divided) with an impoverished group identity. Presumably, the implication that the writing subject of a novel like Das Parfum has been swallowed by the black hole of postmodern ecriture, only to re-emerge as an irrationally destructive and cynical parasite, is too frightening to contemplate in a culture clinging to the shreds of an uncohesive collective identity.

Less anxious critics, most notably the American Germanist Judith Ryan, have argued that the novel's pastiche implies a critical strategy that forces an overdue reassessment of established literary values, especially of conventional notions of creativity. As such, the pastiche citationality of Das Parfum challenges the notion of artistic autonomy that had emerged in the Enlightenment aesthetics of Kant and Schiller and was elaborated by certain Romantics and their modernist successors. Indeed, by this late date it ought to be clear that our perception of creativity has changed substantially. Increasingly, we witness the emergence of writers who construct their texts as hybrid reproductions of prior texts assimilated into a synthetic pastiche. Moreover, not all such writing can be dismissed as meaningless epigonal play across the textual surfaces of anteriority. Even though the parodic qualities of a novel like Das Parfum tend to obscure its critical function, its pastiche still effectively exposes illusions of creative mastery and textual ownership encoded in the precursor texts that it seems to exploit. More than a parasitic parody that feeds on dead poets, Das Parfum can be productively interpreted as an enactment of literary anamnesia that contributes to a working through of complex psychic and social issues.

In this respect, several critics have usefully explicated the novel's allegorical critique of the epistemic mechanisms of the Enlightenment. Following early Foucault and the proto-deconstructive thought of Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialektik der Aufklarung, these analyses treat the novel as a cautionary fable revealing how the Enlightenment ideal of individual autonomy is all-too-easily subverted by instrumental reason to produce the ego pathology that increasingly infects modern society (Butterfield; Grey). Grenouille's coldly rational plundering of the human body to create an ideal perfume is undeniably an allegory of the "murder" that instrumental reason commits on the objects of its reifying analysis and thus also a parable of the perversion of reason that led Germany into the horrors of the Holocaust. At the same time, Suskind's alleged plundering of what is to a large extent a Romantic canon suggests that the narcissistic ego spawned by Enlightenment reason infected the aesthetic imagination as well, extending the perverse myth of autonomy to the artistic realm and producing the aberration of "original genius." A principal aim of this essay will be to trace Suskind's recourse to certain Romantic and neo-Romantic precursor texts that present the artistic genius as an aesthetic avatar of the Enlightenment's pathological tendencies and to elucidate them as case studies of ego pathology in allegorical disguise, rather than, as is often thought, depraved glorifications of aesthetic narcissism. As such, these precursors provide constructive models for a redefinition and restitution of a disavowed Romantic tradition without which, Suskind seems to say, the contemporary creative mind is incapable of self-comprehension and therefore also of useful self-criticism.

The result of this imaginative narcissism is a creative melancholia that promotes a literary amnesia. Because originality becomes the post-Enlightenment law of creativity, Bloom argues that writers in the Romantic tradition (which he interprets broadly to include most canonical literature since the late eighteenth century) must refuse to mourn the loss of the idealized precursor by a process of self-defensive repression. "Poets," Bloom contends, "do not exist to accept griefs" (Yeats 5). Inevitably, such repression leads to an enormous diminishment of the creative ego, making Romantic poetry "the result of a more prodigious sublimation of imagination than Western poetry from Homer through

In the ongoing assessment of postmodern creativity, Freud's distinction between mourning and melancholia has been largely overlooked. Based on Romantic aesthetics and a canon of modernist literature that opposes the implied agenda of postmodern art, Bloom's widely acknowledged theory of intertextuality constructs the writing subject as a melancholy narcissist. Postmodernism, on the other hand, redefines creativity as a variant of the therapeutic Trauerarbeit advocated by Freud. By means of a desublimated reincorporation of parodied precursors, postmodern texts such as Das Parfum create an intertextual transference in which the self-destructive Romantic dream of creative omnipotence is subverted. Undoing melancholic repression, citational play creates a discourse of mourning that undergirds and sustains both the philosophical and aesthetic practices of a postmodern culture confronted with the disintegration of Enlightenment master codes of unity and totalization. Shifting the focus from Bloom's repressive melancholia to a mode of commemorative grieving, I hope to show that the postmodern work of mourning has important antecedents in Romantic literature. Subverting notions of mastery, purity, and originality associated with the Enlightenment genius, Romantic ironists who favored hybrid texts, shared authorship, and plagiaristic play contributed heavily to an aesthetic philosophy that is revived by contemporary writers like Suskind.(2) As openly acknowledged and thus mourned antecedents, Romantic stories of genius can be incorporated or ingested by the creative writing subject to reformulate identity, strengthening the ego, rather than as Freud and Bloom think, poisoning it.

In this sense Suskind can be included in a larger constellation of postmodern artists whose creative projects seek to recuperate aspects of Romantic discourse as a part of a contemporary revision of German cultural identity. German visual artists have addressed this issue most directly, possibly because, as Andreas Huyssen notes, "Nazi culture had most effectively occupied, exploited, and abused the power of the visual" (Huyssen 217). A notable example is the German filmmaker Hans-Jurgen Syberberg, who contends that post war German intellectuals used rationalism to repress the Romantic tradition, blaming modern fascism on the Romantic glorification of the irrational.(3) Some critics remain skeptical of efforts to reclaim German Romanticism because, as they insist, the grieving in much neo-Romantic art is merely melancholic nostalgia which compulsively repeats regressive fantasies rather than geniunely working through the psychological and social wounds that created the fantasies (Brockmann; Kaes 66-72; Santner 147). To cite Romanticism as the source, rather than a symptom, has thus far been the error of such criticism, which (like Bloom's) defines Romantic creativity as a pathological melancholia and neglects its attempts to mourn and to reinterpret the image of original genius as a symptom of psychic illness in Enlightenment culture.

Mourning a Romantic Antecedent

Like Kleist, but also Tieck and Jean Paul, Hoffmann's predilection for depictions of abnormal psychology addresses psychic conflicts with an allegorical technique that prefigures contemporary texts like Das Parfum. Furthermore, Hoffmann's satirical critique of Enlightenment ideals and his predilection for parodic citationality also suggest him as a precursor of literary postmodernism. Citing postmodern parody as a productive and transformative return to precursor texts, critics have interpreted Suskind's global allusion to Hoffmann's Das Fraulein von Scuderi as a homage that subsumes and heightens themes and effects of its model with ironic deference (Whitinger and Herzog). Indeed, this parodic stance, along with Hoffmann's precocious intuition of art's relation to psychopathology may best explain Suskind's attraction to the story.

The prenatal trauma and the resulting conflicts with the father and his societal agency, the law, are tantalizing clues to the mystery of Cardillac's violent acts, suggesting that the mother's infidelity breached not only her relationship with her husband but also, and in a far less mediated way, the emotional attachment with her unborn child. According to this logic, the intervention of a rival for maternal affection at such an archaic juncture preconditions Cardillac to act out an unconscious oedipal conflict with his male clients. Compelled to repossess the masterpieces of jewelry he creates for handsome suitors, Cardillac's homicides can be construed as revenge on a paternal order and as reappropriations of precious self-representations invested with incestuous libidinal energy.(5) The unmediated loss of the maternal symbiosis, exaggerated by the in utero trauma, triggers the formation of a creative imagination obsessed with fetishized works of art whose violent retrieval compensates a primal narcissistic wound. Such an allegory implies a vision of creativity that exceeds Freud's sense of art as a sublimation of drives, bringing it closer to Bloom's image of the artist as oedipal murderer. The crucial element in Hoffmann's portrait of the artist is a compensatory mechanism: Cardillac creates works of art precisely so that he can take them back. His artistry is thus a perpetual recreation of a lost narcissistic unity for which there is no liberating Trauerarbeit. The regressive nature of Cardillac's art fetish makes him a textbook example of Bloom's Romantic genius: To satisfy his infantile urge to be merged with the maternal element and possess it exclusively, the mad goldsmith must develop backwards toward an antecedent stage of psychic organization. Cardillac identifies himself with his jeweled masterpieces, which simulate the gems that his mother had idealized. He cannot accept an ego ideal because the idealized maternal object is still fused with a primitive grandiose self.

In Hoffmann's tale the psychic catastrophe caused by the mother's erotic desire transcribes her optical fixation onto the fetus, resulting in Cardillac's obsession with glittering gems. While Suskind changes the sensory modality, investing his wunderkind with a superhuman sense of smell, the primal cause of the artist's "genius" remains the same: Grenouille's instinctive olfactory talent is linked to the site of his traumatic wounding, the profoundly odiferous environment of eighteenth-century

In such an allegory of creativity, regression to an antecedent stage emerges as a psychopoetic metaphor consistent with the Bloomian notion of the creative genius who unconsciously reactivates a primal affiliation with a central precursor and imaginatively regresses to a state of primary narcissism. Although Bloom seems unaware of it, his idea finds support in the aesthetics of object relations theory, which shifts the conception of creativity from classical Freudian sublimation to a compensatory idealization of the self. In post-Freudian psychoanalysis it has long been the consensus that artists work to restore a lost beauty and perfection that was once their own. By inventing an idealized object onto which primitive fantasies of omnipotence are projected, artists enact a mourning of the lost omnipotence of the primitive grandiose self ( and Schapiro 23-36). Especially artists who exhibit an exaggerated concern with wholeness and ideal beauty are unconsciously attempting to restore the blissful perfection of archaic narcissism associated with the idealized self-object. Suskind and Hoffmann, however, who depict the psychic abnormalities that often underlie aesthetic idealism, parody the artistic fetishism of Romantic idealism. Rather than disavowing the pain of a primal wound by regressing to the imaginary perfection of primary narcissism, their fantasies recreate sites of emotional injury in search of psychic insight and reparation.

Citationality as Alchemical Transmutation of Creative Identity

In a German novel such as Das Parfum such Trauerspiel represents an aesthetic elaboration of the social Trauerarbeit called for by Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich, whose 1967 study Die Unfahigkeit zu trauern examined postwar Germans' refusal to remember and mourn the National Socialist period. The Mitscherlichs' central idea is that the Germans experienced the fascist period not as politically oppressive, but rather as a phase of intense societal narcissism. The grandiosely staged public spectacles and the idealization of the Fuhrer, so obviously parodied in the final chapters of Das Parfum (cf.

The restitutive effects of the novel's pastiche technique also apply to the dilemma confronting the contemporary German-speaking writer who must reconcile the avoidance of a politically contaminated tradition with the need to preserve connections with viable cultural antecedents. If, as Kristeva maintains, genuine mourning is achieved by a process of triangulation, which in the contemporary literary imagination implies an identification with the patriarchal canon, how is this possible in what Alexander Mitscherlich has called the "fatherless society" of post-Nazi

In a similar fashion, the novel's concluding image of self-extinction mirrors the postmodern kenosis of subjectivity. After achieving his highest ambition of being loved unconditionally and then realizing that this love is only a manufactured illusion, Grenouille commits suicide by drenching himself with his ideal perfume and throwing himself to a crowd of riffraff, who tear him to pieces and consume his body in an act of "love." The corporeal sacrifice and redemptive reincorporation suggested by this cannibalization is amplified by a cluster of allusions including, most obviously, the Christian crucifixion, as well as the Euripidean dismemberment of Pentheus by the Dionysian maenads, the latter representing the defeat of the rational ego in both the classical text and its postmodern adaptation. Additionally, the image resonates with Kleist's Penthesilea, which also ends with the devouring of a wounded hero (Achilles) in an orally sadistic Liebestod. Reinhabiting ancient and sacred myths, these images of ingestion, communion, and redemption converge with the psychic necessity of introjective Trauerarbeit as a cure for wounded cultural identity. Grenouille's Christian name, Jean-Baptiste, further reinforces the interpretation: John the Baptist preached the gospel of redemption achieved by an identificatory communion performed in the name of the Father.

The literary history of the narcissist can be said to reach one of its high points in the Symbolist aesthete, whose characteristic fantasies of self-origination provide the literary-historical context for understanding the hibernation chapters of Das Parfum. In a remote cave at the uninhabited peak of the highest mountain in France, "Grenouille der GroBe," as he calls himself, withdraws into a radically autistic dream world, a paradis artificiel of the imagination, over which he reigns with god-like omnipotence. In fantasies of perverse grandiosity he conjures a race of slaves whom he dominates tyrannically and destroys with infantile rage. In his "purple castle" he indulges himself in drunken debaucheries by flooding his imagination with scented recollections of personal experience recalled from the storehouse of his vast olfactory memory. He refers to these regressive reveries as vintage wines, which he addictively imbibes to fortify himself against the painful emptiness of his depleted psyche. Sometimes these scented memories are called "books," which his servants retrieve from a "great library" implying that he, the aesthete, intoxicates himself with an excessive consumption of literary art. Ironically, despite this retreat from reality into the inner sanctum of his imagination, he is unable to defend himself against external influences, least of all from painful memories of rejection and abuse, which return in the scented memoirs he obsessively peruses. Similarly, the return of repressed Romantic and Symbolist texts is so pervasive in these chapters that many passages seem to consist of almost nothing but blatant plagiarizations (Ryan 399). Thus the aesthete's narcissistic fantasy of a self-enclosing realm is defeated by an underlying web of citations, commenting parodically on the perverse impossibility of self-origination.

The analogy of transmutation is also suggested by recent advances in psychotherapeutic treatment of the borderline personality. In the clinical theories of Heinz Kohut, for example, the narcissistic personality is restored to healthy functioning by a psychic transmutation in which the analyst becomes the patient's transitional ego ideal, sustaining the weakened identity-structure of the patient who undergoes a healing change of personality during the therapeutic process. Expanding his theory into aesthetics, Kohut argues that creativity cannot be the affair of a radically isolated imagination, but is sparked by the affirming presence of an ego ideal. Identifications with mentors, in a so-called transference of creativity, provide cohesion for the "fluid" subjectivity common to creative persons ("Creativeness, Charisma, Group Psychology"). This transitory attachment to ego ideals assists the artist's retrieval of the lost omnipotence of primary narcissism, recreating a liminal psychic condition in which identity and creative impulses are thought to originate. The narcissistic wound is best healed at the irrational level of affect, where substantive changes in psychic structure are possible. It is perhaps in this sense that we must undertand the plea by German artists such as Syberberg for a return to Romantic irrationalism as a way of restoring identity to a culture without a Heimat (cf. Kaes 68).

(2.) As Kathleen M. Wheeler notes: "Contrary to received opinion about romantic poets, authors were not seen as essentially discrete individuals originating new and individual works of art; individuality was seen as `portions of one great poem' (to use Shelley's words)." "Like Derrida," Wheeler adds, "the ironists were reminding their readers that influence and tradition permeate even the most apparently original texts" 31. For a discussion of German Romantic irony in relation to deconstructive thought see 26-49.

(4.) The homicidal psychopath is, however, only the most extreme form of a sociopathic type now considered by many to be pervasive. See Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism (New York: Warner Books, 1979). Also interesting in this context is the fact that Kurt Cobain, grunge rock icon and spokesman for the alienated youth culture of the 90s (who committed suicide for apparently the same reasons as Grenouille), had read and idealized Das Parfum. He wrote a song alluding to the novel entitled "Scentless Apprentice" for the album In Utero.

(9.) Kater Murr is a particularly good example of Hoffmann's playful citationality. See Kropf, 201-210. Hoffmann's story "Die Rauber" is a prose remake of Schiller's famous play of the same title, and story "Das Gelubde" feeds off Kleist's Die Marquise von O. There are numerous other examples.

WORKS CITED

Andreas-Salome, Lou. "The Dual Orientation of Narcissism," Trans. S. Leavy. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 31 (1962): 3-30.

__. Poetry and Repression: Revisionism from Blake to Stevens. : Yale UP, 1976.

Butterfield, Bradley. "Enlightenment's Other in Patrick Suskind's Das Parfum: Adorno and the Ineffable Utopia of Modern Art." Comparative Literature Studies 32.3 (1995): 401-418.

Grey, Richard T. "The Dialectics of `Enscentment': Patrick Suskind's Das Parfum as Critical History of Enlightenment Culture." Publications of the Modern Language Association 108 (1993): 489-505.

__. "Creativeness, Charisma, Group Psychology." Search for the Self, 2, 793-843.

Wheeler, Kathleen M. Romanticism, Pragmatism, and Deconstruction. : Blackwell, 1993.

, D. W. The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment: Studies in the Theory of Emotional Development. : International Universities Press, 1965.

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The article below is a long, but interesting analysis of Patrick Suskind's Perfume (originally published in German as Das Parf

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The article below is a long, but interesting analysis of Patrick Suskind's Perfume (originally published in German as Das Parfum).Immediately below is a citation for the article.I hope you enjoy it. The Poetics of Melancholia and Mourning In what has become a definitive example of German literary postmodernism, Suskind projects his concern with personal identity and literary persona onto the themes and characters of Das Parfum.

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How perfume affects a person's perception of beauty and attractiveness. 

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How perfume affects a person's perception of beauty and attractiveness. 

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Important points from article
1. Pleasant or familiar scents are capable of influencing a person's emotions.
2. Fragrances will mix with personal body odor to create a scent unique to that specific person.
3. When individuals were exposed to odors that they found pleasant, it was seen that more testosterone was produced in males and more estrogen was produced in females. This indicates that the individuals were more sexually driven around pleasant odors (as opposed to normal).

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The scientific findings of this article can be seen in many places throughout the book.

Grenouille's final perfume caused everyone around him have an increases sex drive (literally resulted in a massive orgy).

The scent of the women is what attracts Grenouille and not the smell, the scents that were described in the book are all described as if they were extremely fragrant and pleasant.

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Hiroaki Matsunami, Editor

Abstract

Cross-culturally, fragrances are used to modulate body odor, but the psychology of fragrance choice has been largely overlooked. The prevalent view is that fragrances mask an individual's body odor and improve its pleasantness. In two experiments, we found positive effects of perfume on body odor perception. Importantly, however, this was modulated by significant interactions with individual odor donors. Fragrances thus appear to interact with body odor, creating an individually-specific odor mixture. In a third experiment, the odor mixture of an individual's body odor and their preferred perfume was perceived as more pleasant than a blend of the same body odor with a randomly-allocated perfume, even when there was no difference in pleasantness between the perfumes. This indicates that fragrance use extends beyond simple masking effects and that people choose perfumes that interact well with their own odor. Our results provide an explanation for the highly individual nature of perfume choice.

Introduction

Odors are highly potent in affecting various domains of human psychological functioning, ranging from perception and mood to cognitive processes and behavior. Recent studies suggest that odors could be effective even at concentrations below conscious levels. For example, subthreshold ambient 'sweet' odors increase pain tolerance [1], while a common detergent perfume changes spontaneous cleaning behavior [2]. Further, results of recent studies suggest that odors can affect judgments of faces at both supra-threshold [3] and subliminal levels [4]. The last two studies are of particular importance as they indicate that odors can be involved in various social judgments, interactions and behavior. Indeed, the widespread use of fragrances in human societies may serve this same purpose.

Fragrance use is neither a recent phenomenon nor specific to western cultural settings, as historical records from ancient Egypt (and then later from ancient Greece and Rome) suggest that people commonly modified their body odor with a variety of odorous substances [5]. Numerous anthropological observations also point out that people of highly diverse cultures tend to manipulate their body odor in this way, suggesting that fragrance use is a near universal human phenomenon [6]. Furthermore, data on the still growing income of the cosmetics industry suggest that in modern times this is not an issue of marginal significance. For instance, and irrespective of various economic turnovers, estimated total sales in the fragrance and flavor industry rose from $12.9 billion in 1999 to $22 billion in 2010 [7].

Although fragrances appear to be used to rid the body of its underlying odor, growing evidence indicates that body odor plays a significant role in various social interactions and can carry important biological messages. To take just two examples: newborns are able to find their mothers' nipple by smell [8] while adults' judgments and decisions are influenced by the body odor of others who have experienced specific affective states (e.g. fear) [9]-[10]. However, it is thought that the principal context in which body odor influences social interactions is within romantic relationships and mate choice decisions in particular. Results of surveys in several western populations show that women report odor cues as most important in the context of partner choice [11]-[13]. Humans, similar to other species, are thought to partly base their choice on the genetic profile of the potential partner, exhibiting preferences for the odor of individuals who are dissimilar to themselves at genes in the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) [14]. Products of these genes play a central role in immune system functioning and such disassortative preferences may therefore lead to offspring with more potent immune systems [15]-[16]. Furthermore, both men and women prefer the smell of individuals with lower fluctuating asymmetry, which is thought to be a marker of individual developmental stability [17]-[19]. It has also been found that women prefer the odor of men who are high in psychological dominance [20], that men prefer women's odor around ovulation compared to non-fertile cycle stages [21]-[22], and that odor samples collected at this time raise testosterone levels in men [23]. Lastly, some specific chemical constituents of human axillary sweat, notably androstadienone, have been repeatedly shown to affect heterosexual women's mood, physiology and social perception in both laboratory and semi-realistic settings [24]-[26].

All these findings point to the significance of body odors in social realms. However, as previously discussed, humans in various cultures engage in activities to modify or hide their body odor [6]. Why, then, do we live in a world of omnipresent personal fragrances? It has been proposed that using perfumes serves to indicate cleanliness, social status and personality [27]. Additionally, fragrances are frequently considered to enhance sexual attractiveness [28], and it has been found that they effectively modulate sexual arousal and mood response of females, particularly in the periovulatory phase of the cycle [29].

Moreover, perfume usage may also have an indirect impact on social perception through changes in the perfume wearer's self-perception and self-consciousness. For instance, Roberts et al. [30] asked their targets, half of whom were using a commercial deodorant (the other half used a placebo deodorant), to take a video recording while introducing themselves to an imagined person of the opposite-sex. An independent group of raters who saw the muted videos judged deodorant users as more attractive than the placebo group. Using a similar design, Higuchi et al. [31] also found changes in nonverbal behavior and increases in attributed confidence.

The above-mentioned studies suggest that enhanced attractiveness of perfume wearers is due to the masking effect of the perfumes. If this is the case, one would expect diminished variability between individuals in the pleasantness of their body odor when perfume is used (i.e. regression toward the mean). Milinski and Wedekind [32] proposed an alternative view, suggesting that people prefer to use perfume formulations that complement and enhance their own body odor, because they found a correlation between an individual's MHC profile (which affects body odor) and perfume ingredients preferred for oneself (but not for their partner). According to this view, the resulting odor retains characteristics of both perfume and body odor, with an emergent quality that is perceptually different from either constituent. If this is the case, then individual odor variability would be retained (or even enhanced) and perfume will affect the wearers' hedonics to a varying degree.

Here we set out to test between these two ideas. In two independent experiments, we compared hedonic ratings of perfumed and non-perfumed axillary samples obtained from the same group of donors. The studies were conducted in Vienna and Prague to examine cultural specificity of the studied phenomena. If perfumes mask body odor, we should find uniformly higher ratings of perfumed axillary samples and lower individual variability (i.e. no significant interaction). In the third experiment, we compared ratings of axillary samples collected while participants were wearing either their own preferred perfume or an assigned perfume. If the perfumes interact with the body odor in the manner proposed by Milinski & Wedekind [32], the ratings of axillary samples should be higher when wearing one's own perfume.

Results

Initially, we tested the effect of perfume treatment on body odor perception using Wilcoxon matched-pairs tests. In Study 1, the perfumed samples were rated significantly more attractive (Z = 2.97; N = 29; p = 0.003) and pleasant (Z = 3.48; N = 29; p<0.001). Similarly, in Study 2, the perfumed samples were rated significantly higher on attractiveness (Z = 3.78; N = 20; p<0.001) and pleasantness (Z = 3.82; N = 20; p<0.001), and higher on intensity (Z = 2.72; N = 20; p = 0.006).

To test the interaction between individual body odor and perfume treatment on perception of the odor blends we performed repeated measures ANOVAs. In Study 1, we found a significant effect of individual donor on ratings of attractiveness, pleasantness and intensity (). The effect of perfume treatment was significant in ratings of attractiveness and pleasantness, but not in ratings of intensity. Compared to untreated ones (i.e. body odor only), perfumed armpit samples were rated as more pleasant and attractive. The interaction between individual donors and perfume treatment was highly significant for all rated variables () suggesting that the perfume affected individual donors differently. Finally, we did not find lower variance in the perfume condition in ratings of attractiveness (F 1,354 = 2.06; p = 0.15) or pleasantness (F 1,354 = 2.27; p = 0.13), lending support for the hypothesis of an interaction between axillary odor and the odor of the perfume, rather than to the hypothesis that perfumes simply mask human body odor. On the other hand, variance of ratings of intensity (F 1,354  = 8.2; p = 0.004) was significantly lower in the perfume condition ().

Table 1

In Study 2, we similarly found a significant effect of individual donors on all dependent variables (i.e. attractiveness, pleasantness and intensity) (). The samples treated with perfume were rated as significantly more attractive, pleasant and intense than non-perfumed armpit samples. The individual donor and perfume treatment interaction was significant on all rated variables () and there was no significant difference in variance between perfume and control conditions in ratings of attractiveness (F 1,354 = 0.99; p = 0.32), pleasantness (F 1,354 = 0.67; p = 0.41) or intensity (F 1,354  = 2.13; p = 0.15) ().

In study 3, we first analyzed whether the pure perfumes (the assigned one and donors' own perfumes) were rated differently. Thus we compared the mean rating scores given to the donors' own perfumes with the mean scores of the assigned perfume, using Mann-Whitney U tests. We found a significantly higher intensity (Z = 2.03; p = 0.04) rating of the assigned perfume over the donors' own perfumes, but no significant difference in pleasantness (Z = 0.57; p = 0.57) ().

Subsequently, we analyzed ratings of axillary odors when treated by the participant's own or the assigned perfume, using Wilcoxon matched-pairs tests. The odor blends with the participants' own perfume were rated significantly more attractive (Z = 2.37; N = 21; p = 0.02) and pleasant (Z = 2.48; N = 21; p = 0.01) than blends with the assigned perfume, but there was no significant difference in intensity.To test for interactions between individual body odor and perfume treatment, we used repeated measures ANOVA. In all rated variables we found a significant effect of individual odor donor. The axillary samples mixed with the perfume of participants' own choice were judged as significantly more attractive and pleasant (; ), but there was no significant difference in ratings of intensity (). Further, similar to our previous studies, we found a significant effect of interaction between individual odor donor and perfume condition in all rated variables ().

Discussion

In the first two experiments we found a positive effect of perfume on the perception of axillary samples, compared to the non-perfumed samples obtained from the same individuals. This is not suprising, as general attitudes toward untreated body odors is rather negative within European cultural settings [33]. However, this general effect of perfume usage was modified by the interaction with the target individual. Moreover, inspection of effect sizes, assessed by eta square (), shows that the effect of the perfume treatment was consistently weaker (e.g. for pleasantness 0.113, 0.215 and 0.036 in Study 1, 2 and 3 respectively) compared with the effect of the interaction (e.g. for pleasantness 0.120, 0.315 and 0.322 in Study 1, 2 and 3 respectively). This suggests that the impact of perfume varies among individuals, according to some aspect of the quality of body odor. Similar results of both studies thus lend support to Milinski & Wedekind's [32] notion of an interactive nature between perfumes and body odor rather than a simple masking effect. Although there is a myriad of different fragrances available to choose from, which might call into question the generalisability of our findings, the fact that our three studies used different perfumes and participants from two different countries (Austria and Czech Republic), with convergent results, suggests one underlying pattern rather than many fragrance-specific effects. This is in spite of the fact that cultural standards regarding use of personal care products, and perhaps also their perception, may be different in the two neighbouring countries, as a consequence of recent history. For instance, marketing, advertising and availability of various consumer goods, including fragrances, were relatively restricted in the Czech Republic until 1989. Although grooming habits have since changed dramatically, available data (e.g. perception of body odors) suggest that some specificities remain [11].

Although the main focus of our study (i.e. effect of the interaction) was consistent across the studies, we also found some discrepancies. The main difference between results of Study 1 and 2 was that intensity of perfume-body odor blends, compared to body odors alone, were rated significantly higher in Study 2 but not in Study 1. This could be due to specific perceptual properties of the perfumes used ('B Men'- in Study 1 and 'Hoggar' in Study 2). However, this could also be attributed to the lower number of odor donors (and consequently, power) of Study 1. Thus, future studies should use several perfumes of varying perceived intensity to control for this effect. The results of the current study are restricted to the effect of perfume usage in male wearers. In theory, we might expect a similar pattern in women as well; however, as female axillary odors are weaker on average than those of men [34], [39], it is also plausible that the perfume would overpower the body odor. Future studies should address this question empirically.

Increases in positive attributions towards perfume wearers have been reported in several previous studies. Using the T-shirt method, Schleidt [34] showed that ratings of odor pleasantness were higher when participants used cosmetic products. Further, the overall effect of the perfume could be modified by other available cues and by situational context. For instance, Baron [35] found that formally dressed interviewers with perfume were judged as less attractive than those without perfume, but the opposite result was found for informally dressed interviewers. Despite all this, whether perfume usage has differential impact on relatively pleasant or unpleasant body odors (as judged by a panel of raters) remains unknown. Such an investigation would help to distinguish between the possibilities that our reported effects are due to individual-specific enhancement or individual-specific masking of body odor. It is a well-known phenomenon that mixtures of volatile chemicals have emergent perceptory qualities and that humans, including trained experts, perform rather badly in discrimination of individual components within the mixture [36]-[37]. However, while this mechanism may apply to odor discrimination, it may not be generalized to other cognitive processes such as hedonic perception. Our results suggest that, in terms of hedonic perception, the axillary odor and fragrance blend have emerging qualities while also retaining some of the qualities of its components. The exact mechanism of the interaction is not known, but there is evidence that volatile compounds in perfumes show different patterns of evaporation from human skin compared to an inert surface [38]. This could be due to body temperature, skin structure or presence of lipid particles, each of which can change temporal evaporation patterns of individual chemicals and thus also its perceptual quality.

Previous support for the masking hypothesis comes mainly from the finding that perfume use obscured correct gender attribution based on body odor [34]. This could be caused by the fact that gender of the body odor donor is usually attributed according to intensity of the sample rather than to any specific qualities [39]. However, Schleidt [34] found no significant reduction in terms of the individual odor identification, a result which is consistent with our findings.

The results of Study 3 suggest that people choose fragrances to complement their own odor, as the body odors blended with perfume of the participants' own choice were rated higher in pleasantness and attractiveness than when blended with the assigned perfume. Hedonic ratings of odors are usually interrelated [21], [39], thus one can argue that this could be due to higher ratings of intensity of the assigned perfume when rated alone. However, we think this is unlikely as we found no differences in the intensity of perfume and body odor blends. Further, and more importantly, when perfumes were rated alone, we found no significant differences in their hedonic quality. Thus the effect cannot be attributed to generally lower pleasantness of the assigned perfume. We deliberately recruited only participants who had chosen their own perfume, rather than using one given to them. Anecdotally, there are common complaints among perfumery customers that perfumes given to them do not really suit them and that, when choosing a perfume, they must try it on their own skin. This is in agreement with Milinski & Wedekind's [32] pioneering study which found a correlation between MHC profile and perfume preferences, but only when perfume ingredients were rated for self and not for a partner. An implication of this is that preferences for specific, genetically-linked body odor qualities, which mirror those found in animals and may be seen as adaptive preferences to increase offspring viability, may not be disrupted by cultural practices such as fragrance use. Indeed, these cultural practices may be exercised in full accordance with the underlying communicatory significance of body odor, rather than against them.

Evolutionary theorists of culture have repeatedly pointed out that cultural practices should be included into, and may significantly modify the outcome of, evolutionary models of human behavior [40]-[41]. In general, we concur with this view and we further suggest that the perfume-body odor complex may provide an insightful model into interactions between cultural and biological evolution. More specifically, various cultures prefer different substances suitable for fragrancing (e.g. [42]-[43]), based on local values and beliefs and on their local availability. However, fragrance use within individual communities is characterised by a high diversity of preferences. Our results indicate that people select specific perfumes that suit their individual body odor and they thus provide an insight into the highly individual nature of perfume choice. Furthermore, as particular fragrances appear to suit some individuals within the population more than others, patterns of individualised fragrance choice may create specific selective forces on body odor and fragrance use through differential patterns of mate choice. Consequently, and over generations, fragrance-related cultural practices may contribute to changes in genotype (and also phenotype) frequencies.

Materials and Methods

Study 1 and 2

Study 3

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all the volunteers for their participation, Aleš Kuběna for help with statistical analysis, Jindra Havlíčková and Tom Hadrava for many helpful comments and proofreading on the previous versions of the manuscript.

Footnotes

Competing Interests: Yves Rocher, Optimum distribution CZ & SK and Fann Parfumery provided a material donation to this study. There are no patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, as detailed online in the guide for authors.

Funding: The study was supported by Grant Agency of Charles University (GAUK 55108/2008), Czech Science Foundation (GACR P407/10/1303) and Czech Ministry of Education grant 0021620843. The authors are also very grateful for a material donation provided by the Yves Rocher, Optimum Distribution CZ & SK and Fann Parfumery. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

References

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Psychology of Fragrance Use: Perception of Individual Odor and Perfume Blends Reveals a Mechanism for Idiosyncratic Effects on Fragrance Choice

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Hiroaki Matsunami, Editor Cross-culturally, fragrances are used to modulate body odor, but the psychology of fragrance choice has been largely overlooked. The prevalent view is that fragrances mask an individual's body odor and improve its pleasantness. In two experiments, we found positive effects of perfume on body odor perception.

# data[].attributes.body
The name of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille might be inspired by the French perfumer Paul Grenouille, who changed his name into 'Grenoville' when he opened his luxury perfume house in 1879 (both share the same setting and relatively similar timeframe). Both were also considered  maître parfumeur's

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The Grenoville house developed in the interwar years and branched out in Brussels, New York, London, and Milan. Grenoville's perfumes were also distributed in Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria, where they were advertised as "the best, the most tenacious and the finest".

# data[].attributes.headline
Article on the History of Perfumery in France

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Article on the History of Perfumery in France

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After the French Revolution, Perfume was more popularized in France and eventually the rest of Europe (much like how Grenouille's perfumes were popularized around France initially and later was popularized around Europe whilst he worked under Baldini)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Perfumes and their use dates back to the dawn of time, developing alongside civilisations.
It seems that it was in the Middle East, around 7000 BC when the first objects considered as perfume and cosmetics vases appeared. These civilisations employed various odorants, mainly resins widely used as early as 4000 BC in ritual fumigations in censers or incense burners, reserved for the gods and reserved for royal families.
Egyptians knew the techniques for capturing fragrances in fat, cold maceration or hot decoction, but they were still unaware of distillation. Although enormously popular, the products obtained did not possess the olfactory power of our modern perfumes. This art, which still struggled to infiltrate the secular world, would disappear at the end of the Bronze Age, around 1200 BC. It was not until the archaic period (sixth century BC) that fragrances were popularised. They were then contained in simple containers, aryballos or alabasters. Thus scent occupied a prominent position at the crossroads of the sacred, therapeutic, cosmetic and culinary, which it would maintain throughout the middle ages, regardless of the civilisation in question.
In Grasse, raw materials were widely used in the emerging perfumery industry. Although natural and raw fragrances from spices, flowers, mineral or vegetable resins were used, scented oils or waters obtained by decantation, maceration or filtration were also employed. The question of perfume remains closely linked to the development of distillation techniques, which were popularised with the spread of the still and alchemy, with the translation of Arabic treaties by doctors from the School of Salerno in the twelfth century, and then by the dissemination of distillation techniques to Andalusia in the thirteenth century. Alcohol was invented in Salerno in the twelfth century and had a strictly medical use until the fifteenth century. Its use in the manufacture of perfumes spread in the sixteenth century.
The French Revolution ruined perfumers but did not suppress the taste for perfumery. After the Terror, people wore perfume more than ever. The industrial sector experienced a fundamental change; this was also the great intellectual and social period for Grasse. High taxes caused the rapid regression of tannery in favour of perfumery which developed through improved technical processes. As well as scented pastes, there were now powders, soaps, tobacco etc. Pleasure, the watchword of the period, also produced a proliferation of boxes and gewgaws, related to the development of new materials while other civilisations still employed perfume burners... with the scented materials being solid.
In Europe, smell marked a social division until the arrival of the English hygienist revolution in the eighteenth century. Personal cleanliness was promoted leading to the development of lighter fragrances. Meanwhile, the perfumers' palette was enriched with new raw materials imported by the East India Company. Advances in chemistry questioned disinfection measures using strong scents.
Eighteenth century Europe also underwent a transformation in terms of commerce, moving from glove-making to perfumery. The nineteenth century saw a change in this artisanal activity, which become powerfully industrial.

Modern perfumery began in the late nineteenth century with the first use of synthetic products, developed in the twentieth century from real creations, based on discoveries of odorant products through research in organic chemistry and brought together with irreplaceable natural products from new technologies. Houbigant and Guerlain were the first to use synthetic products: Fougère royale in 1884, Jicky in 1889, considered the first modern perfume, celebrating the advent of vanillin. They paved the way for the great works of the twentieth century. François Coty, the father of modern perfumery, a pioneer and industrialist, commonly used natural "Absolutes", from the development of the extraction technique using volatile solvents, that he used with new synthesis products. Technique became the slave of creation and thus the perfumer could recreate the scents that are so inextricably linked to them.
Globalisation went hand-in-hand with the development of the fragrance industry and created uniform customs and standardisation, in all of the big cities. France played a predominant role in this "Grand Siècle" due to the combined and complementary action of Grasse, the world's largest centre of natural raw materials for Perfumery and their derivatives, and Paris, the world's fashion capital. In the City of Perfume, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the perfume industry was characterised by the treatment of natural products, and had a virtual world monopoly. After a flurry of creation without any real price limits, through an elitist distribution, the second half of the twentieth century was marked by the provision of fragrances in greater quantities resulting in a lower factory cost and so a lower price. There were more launches with more or less success. The average life of a product was restricted. With few exceptions, perfume changed from being exceptional to everyday and from super selective to having mass market appeal.

Some civilisations were not - and are still not - affected by the globalisation of perfume; it is the same today. In Oceania, people rubbed their body and hair with plants selected for their fragrance. Asia is still synonymous with floral offerings, as fresh flowers are everywhere in secular and religious life. Scent has a power of seduction and purification. Bodily practices associated with fragrance constituted a model for social life in the UAE. Gradually, in China, scents played a role as a personality marker as was already the case in the West. Perfume was a product with therapeutic, aesthetic and ritual value. It was an accessory for seduction or eroticism, a way to celebrate the gods, a method of purification.
In eighteenth century Africa, the art of perfumery was linked to the major coastal towns of East Africa but also to an "ambiguous Africa", mysterious and primitive. Perfumes and preparations based on odoriferous plants still contributed very differently to magical and therapeutic strategies in both rural and urban areas. In the twentieth century, perfume imported in bottles became increasingly fashionable, becoming synonymous with social success, in large cities and in the most remote villages.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Perfumes and their use dates back to the dawn of time, developing alongside civilisations. It seems that it was in the Middle East, around 7000 BC when the first objects considered as perfume and cosmetics vases appeared.

# data[].attributes.body
Important Points from Article
Scientific article proving as to how perfume cannot be allocated to an individual randomly. It asserts that perfume must coordinate well with an individuals body odour and that perfect combination is able to yield a marvelous scent. This aspect was incorporated by Suskind into Perfume as he characterized Grenouille as having an advanced olfactory sense and ability to effectively produce perfumes of high qualities.

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Pavlína Lenochová,

Pavla Vohnoutová,

S. Craig Roberts,

Elisabeth Oberzaucher,

Karl Grammer,

Jan Havlíček

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Abstract

Cross-culturally, fragrances are used to modulate body odor, but the psychology of fragrance choice has been largely overlooked. The prevalent view is that fragrances mask an individual's body odor and improve its pleasantness. In two experiments, we found positive effects of perfume on body odor perception. Importantly, however, this was modulated by significant interactions with individual odor donors. Fragrances thus appear to interact with body odor, creating an individually-specific odor mixture. In a third experiment, the odor mixture of an individual's body odor and their preferred perfume was perceived as more pleasant than a blend of the same body odor with a randomly-allocated perfume, even when there was no difference in pleasantness between the perfumes. This indicates that fragrance use extends beyond simple masking effects and that people choose perfumes that interact well with their own odor. Our results provide an explanation for the highly individual nature of perfume choice.

Citation: Lenochová P, Vohnoutová P, Roberts SC, Oberzaucher E, Grammer K, Havlíček J (2012) Psychology of Fragrance Use: Perception of Individual Odor and Perfume Blends Reveals a Mechanism for Idiosyncratic Effects on Fragrance Choice. PLoS ONE 7(3): e33810. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0033810

Editor: Hiroaki Matsunami, Duke University, United States of America

Received: April 14, 2011; Accepted: February 16, 2012; Published: March 28, 2012

Copyright: © 2012 Lenochová et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: The study was supported by Grant Agency of Charles University (GAUK 55108/2008), Czech Science Foundation (GACR P407/10/1303) and Czech Ministry of Education grant 0021620843. The authors are also very grateful for a material donation provided by the Yves Rocher, Optimum Distribution CZ & SK and Fann Parfumery. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: Yves Rocher, Optimum distribution CZ & SK and Fann Parfumery provided a material donation to this study. There are no patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, as detailed online in the guide for authors.

Introduction

Odors are highly potent in affecting various domains of human psychological functioning, ranging from perception and mood to cognitive processes and behavior. Recent studies suggest that odors could be effective even at concentrations below conscious levels. For example, subthreshold ambient 'sweet' odors increase pain tolerance [1], while a common detergent perfume changes spontaneous cleaning behavior [2]. Further, results of recent studies suggest that odors can affect judgments of faces at both supra-threshold [3] and subliminal levels [4]. The last two studies are of particular importance as they indicate that odors can be involved in various social judgments, interactions and behavior. Indeed, the widespread use of fragrances in human societies may serve this same purpose.

Fragrance use is neither a recent phenomenon nor specific to western cultural settings, as historical records from ancient Egypt (and then later from ancient Greece and Rome) suggest that people commonly modified their body odor with a variety of odorous substances [5]. Numerous anthropological observations also point out that people of highly diverse cultures tend to manipulate their body odor in this way, suggesting that fragrance use is a near universal human phenomenon [6]. Furthermore, data on the still growing income of the cosmetics industry suggest that in modern times this is not an issue of marginal significance. For instance, and irrespective of various economic turnovers, estimated total sales in the fragrance and flavor industry rose from $12.9 billion in 1999 to $22 billion in 2010 [7].

Although fragrances appear to be used to rid the body of its underlying odor, growing evidence indicates that body odor plays a significant role in various social interactions and can carry important biological messages. To take just two examples: newborns are able to find their mothers' nipple by smell [8] while adults' judgments and decisions are influenced by the body odor of others who have experienced specific affective states (e.g. fear) [9]-[10]. However, it is thought that the principal context in which body odor influences social interactions is within romantic relationships and mate choice decisions in particular. Results of surveys in several western populations show that women report odor cues as most important in the context of partner choice [11]-[13]. Humans, similar to other species, are thought to partly base their choice on the genetic profile of the potential partner, exhibiting preferences for the odor of individuals who are dissimilar to themselves at genes in the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) [14]. Products of these genes play a central role in immune system functioning and such disassortative preferences may therefore lead to offspring with more potent immune systems [15]-[16]. Furthermore, both men and women prefer the smell of individuals with lower fluctuating asymmetry, which is thought to be a marker of individual developmental stability [17]-[19]. It has also been found that women prefer the odor of men who are high in psychological dominance [20], that men prefer women's odor around ovulation compared to non-fertile cycle stages [21]-[22], and that odor samples collected at this time raise testosterone levels in men [23]. Lastly, some specific chemical constituents of human axillary sweat, notably androstadienone, have been repeatedly shown to affect heterosexual women's mood, physiology and social perception in both laboratory and semi-realistic settings [24]-[26].

All these findings point to the significance of body odors in social realms. However, as previously discussed, humans in various cultures engage in activities to modify or hide their body odor [6]. Why, then, do we live in a world of omnipresent personal fragrances? It has been proposed that using perfumes serves to indicate cleanliness, social status and personality [27]. Additionally, fragrances are frequently considered to enhance sexual attractiveness [28], and it has been found that they effectively modulate sexual arousal and mood response of females, particularly in the periovulatory phase of the cycle [29].

Moreover, perfume usage may also have an indirect impact on social perception through changes in the perfume wearer's self-perception and self-consciousness. For instance, Roberts et al. [30] asked their targets, half of whom were using a commercial deodorant (the other half used a placebo deodorant), to take a video recording while introducing themselves to an imagined person of the opposite-sex. An independent group of raters who saw the muted videos judged deodorant users as more attractive than the placebo group. Using a similar design, Higuchi et al. [31] also found changes in nonverbal behavior and increases in attributed confidence.

The above-mentioned studies suggest that enhanced attractiveness of perfume wearers is due to the masking effect of the perfumes. If this is the case, one would expect diminished variability between individuals in the pleasantness of their body odor when perfume is used (i.e. regression toward the mean). Milinski and Wedekind [32] proposed an alternative view, suggesting that people prefer to use perfume formulations that complement and enhance their own body odor, because they found a correlation between an individual's MHC profile (which affects body odor) and perfume ingredients preferred for oneself (but not for their partner). According to this view, the resulting odor retains characteristics of both perfume and body odor, with an emergent quality that is perceptually different from either constituent. If this is the case, then individual odor variability would be retained (or even enhanced) and perfume will affect the wearers' hedonics to a varying degree.

Here we set out to test between these two ideas. In two independent experiments, we compared hedonic ratings of perfumed and non-perfumed axillary samples obtained from the same group of donors. The studies were conducted in Vienna and Prague to examine cultural specificity of the studied phenomena. If perfumes mask body odor, we should find uniformly higher ratings of perfumed axillary samples and lower individual variability (i.e. no significant interaction). In the third experiment, we compared ratings of axillary samples collected while participants were wearing either their own preferred perfume or an assigned perfume. If the perfumes interact with the body odor in the manner proposed by Milinski & Wedekind [32], the ratings of axillary samples should be higher when wearing one's own perfume.

Results

Initially, we tested the effect of perfume treatment on body odor perception using Wilcoxon matched-pairs tests. In Study 1, the perfumed samples were rated significantly more attractive (Z = 2.97; N = 29; p = 0.003) and pleasant (Z = 3.48; N = 29; p<0.001). Similarly, in Study 2, the perfumed samples were rated significantly higher on attractiveness (Z = 3.78; N = 20; p<0.001) and pleasantness (Z = 3.82; N = 20; p<0.001), and higher on intensity (Z = 2.72; N = 20; p = 0.006).

To test the interaction between individual body odor and perfume treatment on perception of the odor blends we performed repeated measures ANOVAs. In Study 1, we found a significant effect of individual donor on ratings of attractiveness, pleasantness and intensity ( Table 1). The effect of perfume treatment was significant in ratings of attractiveness and pleasantness, but not in ratings of intensity. Compared to untreated ones (i.e. body odor only), perfumed armpit samples were rated as more pleasant and attractive. The interaction between individual donors and perfume treatment was highly significant for all rated variables ( Figure 1) suggesting that the perfume affected individual donors differently. Finally, we did not find lower variance in the perfume condition in ratings of attractiveness (F 1,354 = 2.06; p = 0.15) or pleasantness (F 1,354 = 2.27; p = 0.13), lending support for the hypothesis of an interaction between axillary odor and the odor of the perfume, rather than to the hypothesis that perfumes simply mask human body odor. On the other hand, variance of ratings of intensity (F 1,354 = 8.2; p = 0.004) was significantly lower in the perfume condition ( Table 2).

In Study 2, we similarly found a significant effect of individual donors on all dependent variables (i.e. attractiveness, pleasantness and intensity) ( Table 1). The samples treated with perfume were rated as significantly more attractive, pleasant and intense than non-perfumed armpit samples. The individual donor and perfume treatment interaction was significant on all rated variables ( Figure 2) and there was no significant difference in variance between perfume and control conditions in ratings of attractiveness (F 1,354 = 0.99; p = 0.32), pleasantness (F 1,354 = 0.67; p = 0.41) or intensity (F 1,354 = 2.13; p = 0.15) ( Table 2).

In study 3, we first analyzed whether the pure perfumes (the assigned one and donors' own perfumes) were rated differently. Thus we compared the mean rating scores given to the donors' own perfumes with the mean scores of the assigned perfume, using Mann-Whitney U tests. We found a significantly higher intensity (Z = 2.03; p = 0.04) rating of the assigned perfume over the donors' own perfumes, but no significant difference in pleasantness (Z = 0.57; p = 0.57) ( Figure 3).

Subsequently, we analyzed ratings of axillary odors when treated by the participant's own or the assigned perfume, using Wilcoxon matched-pairs tests. The odor blends with the participants' own perfume were rated significantly more attractive (Z = 2.37; N = 21; p = 0.02) and pleasant (Z = 2.48; N = 21; p = 0.01) than blends with the assigned perfume, but there was no significant difference in intensity.To test for interactions between individual body odor and perfume treatment, we used repeated measures ANOVA. In all rated variables we found a significant effect of individual odor donor. The axillary samples mixed with the perfume of participants' own choice were judged as significantly more attractive and pleasant ( Table 2; Figure 4), but there was no significant difference in ratings of intensity ( Figure 4). Further, similar to our previous studies, we found a significant effect of interaction between individual odor donor and perfume condition in all rated variables ( Table 1).

Discussion

In the first two experiments we found a positive effect of perfume on the perception of axillary samples, compared to the non-perfumed samples obtained from the same individuals. This is not suprising, as general attitudes toward untreated body odors is rather negative within European cultural settings [33]. However, this general effect of perfume usage was modified by the interaction with the target individual. Moreover, inspection of effect sizes, assessed by eta square ( Table 1), shows that the effect of the perfume treatment was consistently weaker (e.g. for pleasantness 0.113, 0.215 and 0.036 in Study 1, 2 and 3 respectively) compared with the effect of the interaction (e.g. for pleasantness 0.120, 0.315 and 0.322 in Study 1, 2 and 3 respectively). This suggests that the impact of perfume varies among individuals, according to some aspect of the quality of body odor. Similar results of both studies thus lend support to Milinski & Wedekind's [32] notion of an interactive nature between perfumes and body odor rather than a simple masking effect. Although there is a myriad of different fragrances available to choose from, which might call into question the generalisability of our findings, the fact that our three studies used different perfumes and participants from two different countries (Austria and Czech Republic), with convergent results, suggests one underlying pattern rather than many fragrance-specific effects. This is in spite of the fact that cultural standards regarding use of personal care products, and perhaps also their perception, may be different in the two neighbouring countries, as a consequence of recent history. For instance, marketing, advertising and availability of various consumer goods, including fragrances, were relatively restricted in the Czech Republic until 1989. Although grooming habits have since changed dramatically, available data (e.g. perception of body odors) suggest that some specificities remain [11].

Although the main focus of our study (i.e. effect of the interaction) was consistent across the studies, we also found some discrepancies. The main difference between results of Study 1 and 2 was that intensity of perfume-body odor blends, compared to body odors alone, were rated significantly higher in Study 2 but not in Study 1. This could be due to specific perceptual properties of the perfumes used ('B Men'- in Study 1 and 'Hoggar' in Study 2). However, this could also be attributed to the lower number of odor donors (and consequently, power) of Study 1. Thus, future studies should use several perfumes of varying perceived intensity to control for this effect. The results of the current study are restricted to the effect of perfume usage in male wearers. In theory, we might expect a similar pattern in women as well; however, as female axillary odors are weaker on average than those of men [34], [39], it is also plausible that the perfume would overpower the body odor. Future studies should address this question empirically.

Increases in positive attributions towards perfume wearers have been reported in several previous studies. Using the T-shirt method, Schleidt [34] showed that ratings of odor pleasantness were higher when participants used cosmetic products. Further, the overall effect of the perfume could be modified by other available cues and by situational context. For instance, Baron [35] found that formally dressed interviewers with perfume were judged as less attractive than those without perfume, but the opposite result was found for informally dressed interviewers. Despite all this, whether perfume usage has differential impact on relatively pleasant or unpleasant body odors (as judged by a panel of raters) remains unknown. Such an investigation would help to distinguish between the possibilities that our reported effects are due to individual-specific enhancement or individual-specific masking of body odor. It is a well-known phenomenon that mixtures of volatile chemicals have emergent perceptory qualities and that humans, including trained experts, perform rather badly in discrimination of individual components within the mixture [36]-[37]. However, while this mechanism may apply to odor discrimination, it may not be generalized to other cognitive processes such as hedonic perception. Our results suggest that, in terms of hedonic perception, the axillary odor and fragrance blend have emerging qualities while also retaining some of the qualities of its components. The exact mechanism of the interaction is not known, but there is evidence that volatile compounds in perfumes show different patterns of evaporation from human skin compared to an inert surface [38]. This could be due to body temperature, skin structure or presence of lipid particles, each of which can change temporal evaporation patterns of individual chemicals and thus also its perceptual quality.

Previous support for the masking hypothesis comes mainly from the finding that perfume use obscured correct gender attribution based on body odor [34]. This could be caused by the fact that gender of the body odor donor is usually attributed according to intensity of the sample rather than to any specific qualities [39]. However, Schleidt [34] found no significant reduction in terms of the individual odor identification, a result which is consistent with our findings.

The results of Study 3 suggest that people choose fragrances to complement their own odor, as the body odors blended with perfume of the participants' own choice were rated higher in pleasantness and attractiveness than when blended with the assigned perfume. Hedonic ratings of odors are usually interrelated [21], [39], thus one can argue that this could be due to higher ratings of intensity of the assigned perfume when rated alone. However, we think this is unlikely as we found no differences in the intensity of perfume and body odor blends. Further, and more importantly, when perfumes were rated alone, we found no significant differences in their hedonic quality. Thus the effect cannot be attributed to generally lower pleasantness of the assigned perfume. We deliberately recruited only participants who had chosen their own perfume, rather than using one given to them. Anecdotally, there are common complaints among perfumery customers that perfumes given to them do not really suit them and that, when choosing a perfume, they must try it on their own skin. This is in agreement with Milinski & Wedekind's [32] pioneering study which found a correlation between MHC profile and perfume preferences, but only when perfume ingredients were rated for self and not for a partner. An implication of this is that preferences for specific, genetically-linked body odor qualities, which mirror those found in animals and may be seen as adaptive preferences to increase offspring viability, may not be disrupted by cultural practices such as fragrance use. Indeed, these cultural practices may be exercised in full accordance with the underlying communicatory significance of body odor, rather than against them.

Evolutionary theorists of culture have repeatedly pointed out that cultural practices should be included into, and may significantly modify the outcome of, evolutionary models of human behavior [40]-[41]. In general, we concur with this view and we further suggest that the perfume-body odor complex may provide an insightful model into interactions between cultural and biological evolution. More specifically, various cultures prefer different substances suitable for fragrancing (e.g. [42]-[43]), based on local values and beliefs and on their local availability. However, fragrance use within individual communities is characterised by a high diversity of preferences. Our results indicate that people select specific perfumes that suit their individual body odor and they thus provide an insight into the highly individual nature of perfume choice. Furthermore, as particular fragrances appear to suit some individuals within the population more than others, patterns of individualised fragrance choice may create specific selective forces on body odor and fragrance use through differential patterns of mate choice. Consequently, and over generations, fragrance-related cultural practices may contribute to changes in genotype (and also phenotype) frequencies.

Materials and Methods

Study 1 and 2

Odor Donors.

Seven men, University of Vienna students, aged 23-32 years (mean 25.9 years) with body weight 60-87 kg (mean 71.3 kg) and height 165-202 cm (mean 180.9 cm), participated as the body odor donors in Study 1. Ten male students of Charles University in Prague, aged 21-35 (mean 25.1 years) with body weight 67-90 kg (mean 76 kg) and height 170-197 cm (mean 180.3 cm) participated as odor donors in Study 2. None smoked, reported any serious disease, or shaved their armpits.

Raters.

The odor samples in Study 1 were judged by 29 female students of Vienna University, aged 18-32 (mean 23.5 years). Fourteen used hormonal contraception. Cycle length reported by non-users varied between 26-31 days. The raters were also asked about the date of onset of their last menstrual bleeding (i.e. cycle day 1). Women in days 9-15 on the testing day were judged to be in the fertile phase and the others to be in the non-fertile phases of the cycle. Only three raters were in the fertile phase of their cycle, therefore we did not further test for the possible effect variation across the menstrual cycle.

Twenty female raters (Charles University students), aged 21-28 (mean 24 years) took part in Study 2. Here, to avoid the potential effect of fluctuations in olfactory function during the natural menstrual cycle, all were users of hormonal contraception [44].

The participants were contacted via posters, handouts given in lectures, advertisement on the University webpages, or personally by the first author. We recruited only participants without known smell damage or disorders and we further checked by a questionnaire that they did not suffer from any smell-related difficulty. However, we did not test for olfactory sensitivity, to reduce the burden on participants. All were given a 150 g chocolate bar and a perfume tester (Vienna) or cosmetics (e.g. shower gel or perfume) (Prague) in return for participation and gave oral informed consent (we did not ask for written consent as the nature of the study is non-invasive and participants' data were treated anonymously). Completed questionnaires were considered as a documentation of the oral consent. All three studies were carried out according to the Declaration of Helsinki and were approved (including oral consent) by the Institutional Review Board on Human Subjects of the Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague. At the time of the study, no formal IRB for research involving human participants had yet been established at the University of Vienna's Faculty of Life Sciences.

Odor Sampling Procedure.

Axillary odors were collected on cotton pads using the following procedure. The odor donors received a pack of experimental material (a white cotton T-shirt, a bar of non-perfumed soap, two cotton pads, a plaster and 2 zip-lock plastic bags). The cotton pads served as a medium for body odor collection (Study 1: 100% cotton pad, 10.5×6 cm, packed in aluminum foil with an oblong plaster (11×15 cm) attached to it; Study 2: 100% cotton, elliptical in shape, approximately 7 cm at their longest axis, attached by 3 M Micropore surgical tape). The donors were asked to follow the experimental schedule, including dietary and behavioral restrictions, on the day prior to sampling and on the sampling day. They were instructed to refrain from 1) using perfumes, deodorants, antiperspirants, aftershaves, and shower gels, 2) eating meals containing garlic, onion, chilli, pepper, vinegar, blue cheese, cabbage, radish, fermented milk products and marinated fish, 3) drinking alcoholic beverages or using other drugs, and 4) smoking. Additionally, they were asked to avoid exaggerated physical activities, sexual intercourse, and sleeping in the same bed with their partner or pet. All the necessary instructions were sent via e-mail several days before the experiment; if needed, ambiguities were discussed individually.

On the night before sampling the donors were instructed to use a non-perfumed soap (Sara Lee Household & Body Care, Stockholm, Sweden) and to wear a new white 100% cotton T-shirt, previously washed twice without washing powder, as the first layer of their clothing for the night and the following day to avoid odor contamination (e.g. other clothes, environment).

On the next day, the donors washed both armpits with the non-perfumed soap. Then donors in Study 1 applied 2 sprays of a perfume ('B Men' by Thierry Mugler) onto one, randomly assigned, armpit (the amount of perfume was determined on the basis of a pilot survey about common usage of perfume among the University students, N = 26), the other armpit was left untreated, serving as a non-perfumed control. The odor donors in Study 2 applied fragrance in the form of a wet-perfumed-tissue ('Hoggar' by Yves Rocher) by drawing the tissue three times over the armpit skin. Subsequently, all donors fixed the cotton pads into both armpits using the supplied materials and wore them for 24 hours (Study 1: starting at midnight; Study 2: at 7 am). On the next day, the donors returned the samples to the laboratory, where they were prepared for the rating session. The donors' conformity with the instructions was checked by a questionnaire. It showed no serious violations.

Odor Rating Procedure.

The rating session started approximately an hour after the collection and continued for several hours (Study 1: 1 pm to 8:30 pm; Study 2: 9 am to 6 pm). All fresh samples were enclosed in clean 200 ml lidded plastic sniffing bottles (Study 1) or in 500 ml lidded glass opaque jars (Study 2) and code-labelled. In both cases, the ratings took place in a quiet, ventilated room. The samples were randomly split into two sets. After sniffing one set, the raters were recommended to have a 10-minute break to avoid possible odor habituation. During the break, the women were asked to complete an additional questionnaire. Order of sets, and order of stimuli within a set, was randomized for each rater.

The stimuli were assessed on 7-point scales for their 1) pleasantness, 2) attractiveness, and 3) intensity, anchored by verbal descriptors (e.g. very un/pleasant). As in previous studies (e.g. [19]-[21]), the ratings were written down immediately after sniffing each stimulus, but the time spent by sniffing and the intervals between individual samples were not restricted in order to make the procedure more convenient for the raters. Raters were instructed to select the expression "I cannot smell the sample", instead of using the scales, if they found a sample too weak to detect; 18 of 140 rating pairs (i.e. perfumed and non-perfumed samples collected from the same individual) in Study 1 and 22 of 200 in Study 2 were excluded for this reason, leaving 128 and 178 pairs, respectively, to enter the subsequent analysis.

The studies slightly differed in several aspects of the odor data collection. These differences involved the timing of the odor collection, size of cotton pads and sniffing bottles. These differences mainly reflect different traditions in the two labs and to our knowledge, there are no relevant methodological studies testing their potentially confounding effects; for full discussion on this issue, see [45]-[46]. However, we can think of no way that this should introduce any systematic bias to the data that is relevant to the tested hypothesis.

Statistical Analysis.

Dependent variables were assessed on 7-point scales and the study design was within-subject, therefore we used the Wilcoxon matched-pairs test for testing the effect of the treatment (perfumed vs non-perfumed) with mean values for each rater as the unit of the analysis. However, this method does not allow for testing of interactions (ID × perfume condition) which is crucial in our analysis. As ANOVA is relatively robust to deviations from normality [47], we used a repeated measures ANOVA with perfumed/non-perfumed condition as a repeated measure and individual odor donor as a between-subject factor, and rated characteristics (e.g. attractiveness) as dependent variables. To control for the potential effect of hormonal contraception use in Study 1, we included this variable in the analysis as another between-subject factor. However, we found no significant main effect of hormonal contraception use, its interaction with individual donor, or with perfume treatment on ratings attractiveness, pleasantness or intensity, so we excluded this variable from further analysis. Strength of the effect was assessed by eta-squared (η ²) and homogeneity of variance by Levene's test. The statistical package Statistica 7.1 was used for all analyses.

Study 3

Odor Donors.

Twelve men, aged 21-28 years (mean 23 years), with body weight 65-90 kg (mean 75 kg) and height 173-188 cm (mean 182 cm), participated as the body odor donors. None reported any serious disease. All participants used a perfume that they had personally chosen (not a gift bought by someone else) and which they found pleasant. None of the donors used the same brand of perfume. All donors reported using perfumes on a regular basis. Regarding frequency of usage, seven donors (58.3%) stated using the chosen perfume at least once a day and the rest did not specify. They were reimbursed for their participation by 300 CZK (approx. 25 USD).

Raters.

Samples of axillary odor with perfume were judged by 21 women, aged 17-37 (mean 23 years). All were using hormonal contraception. Raters were given a 150 g chocolate bar and a perfume tester after participation. In addition, pure perfume samples were assessed by 15 women - hormonal contraception users, aged 19-30 (mean 23 years). All participants were Charles University students, were recruited via email or personally by the second author, and signed informed consent.

Odor Sampling Procedure.

Restrictions in diet, hygienic practices and activity were identical to Studies 1 and 2. Donors were asked to follow the instructions during the two days prior to, and on the day of sampling. At midnight they applied two sprays (as in Study 1) of their own perfume to one, randomly chosen, armpit, and the same amount of an assigned perfume (identical for all participants) to the other armpit. The assigned perfume was Balea Men Electric Blue and none of the participants used it as his own. Subsequently, they applied pads (see Study 2 for details) with surgical tape to their armpits and wore them for 12 hours (12 pm to 12 am).

Odor Rating Procedure.

The rating session started within 2 h of samples collection (12 am) and finished approximately at 7:30 pm. It was conducted in a quiet, ventilated room. All 24 odor samples (2 from each donor) were encased in 500 ml lidded glass opaque jars and randomly split into three sets. The samples from each donor were presented in pairs and rated in the form of a forced choice test. Order of sets and order of stimuli within a set was randomized for each rater. All other details were identical to Studies 1 and 2.

For ratings of the pure perfume samples, we applied the same amount of perfume as in the previous part of the study onto cotton pads and encased them in zip-locked plastic bags. The order of samples was randomized and they were rated on a 7-point scale for pleasantness and intensity by a different group of female raters.

Statistical Analysis.

Similarly to Study 1 and 2, we used Wilcoxon matched-pairs tests to test the effect of the treatment (own perfume vs assigned perfume) and repeated measures ANOVA to test for the interaction (ID × perfume condition). Further, we used Mann-Whitney U tests to test for differences between ratings of the pure perfume samples.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all the volunteers for their participation, Aleš Kuběna for help with statistical analysis, Jindra Havlíčková and Tom Hadrava for many helpful comments and proofreading on the previous versions of the manuscript.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: PL EO KG JH. Performed the experiments: PL PV. Analyzed the data: JH. Wrote the paper: PL SCR JH.

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Psychology of Fragrance Use: Perception of Individual Odor and Perfume Blends Reveals a Mechanism for Idiosyncratic Effects on Fragrance Choice

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Cross-culturally, fragrances are used to modulate body odor, but the psychology of fragrance choice has been largely overlooked. The prevalent view is that fragrances mask an individual's body odor and improve its pleasantness. In two experiments, we found positive effects of perfume on body odor perception.

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Suskind was born in 1949, and that is the same year that Germany is divided. The US, French and British zones in the west become the Federal Republic of Germany; the Soviet zone in the east becomes the communist German Democratic Republic. In 1985, when the book came out, it was during a time when the Wall of Berlin tumbled.
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So perhaps Grenouille smelled Communism?

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German Literature in the late 20th Century.

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German Literature in the late 20th Century.

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Important points from article:
1.Many writers felt the need to write about the war as the defeat of Nazism had left them in a cultural vacuum. However, the postwar situation made it possible to establish new connections with American and European literature, changing the way some authors wrote.

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German literature - The 20th century: German Modernism emerged from turn-of-the-century Aestheticism. Like European Modernism as a whole, German Modernism was in fact a cluster of different literary movements, including Expressionism, Neue Sachlichkeit ("New Objectivity"), and Dada. Of these, Expressionism is the best known and most important.

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The Understanding of Perfume in the 18th Century

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The Understanding of Perfume in the 18th Century

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Perfume in the 18th century was considered a form of medicine, a medium that could be used to influence and control both body and mind.

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This article highlights Grenouille's understanding of scent as a form of disguised power

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Perfume as we know it is a sweet smelling liquid made from natural and synthetic aromatic ingredients. Yet, far from being a mere scent, perfume is also a fashion accessory, tool of self-definition, and convenient gift. Perfumes are now branded so successfully that names and bottles are often more recognizable than actual smells.

It is easy to imagine that perfume in the past was much the same. For instance, conventional histories of perfume remind us that in the eighteenth century, perfume was luxurious and worn by female courtiers, amongst others, to demonstrate their social status. This was undoubtedly the case. But a variety of evidence reveals that, during this period, perfume had multiple uses and meanings that are readily overlooked if we simply seek out the familiar present in the past.

One kind of evidence comes from perfumers' business records. Stock inventories, account books, and sale receipts allow us to form a more nuanced impression of what perfumers sold, how much their products cost, and how they changed over time. In the late 1700s, the best-selling products available from perfumers in major European cities such as London and Paris included (as one might imagine) scented waters. However, they also included items that one would not associate with perfumers today: soap for the body, powders and pomades for the hair, alongside an assortment of tongue scrapers, tooth brushes, and toothpaste that reflected the new obsession with oral hygiene - the latter trend explored by Colin Jones in The Smile Revolution.

Advertisements, including trade-cards and broadsides, represent another set of evidence betraying the range of products sold by perfumers. In many cases, these advertisements contained a simple picture, the name and address of the shop, and a list of available products. One such broadside was displayed by Arthur Rothwell; it announced that he sold from "The Civet-Cat and Rose" on London's New Bond Street not only perfumes and "quintessences" but also snuffs, wash-balls, hair combs and powders, skin products, and several medicines including "Daffy's Elixir."

A third kind of evidence consists of medical treatises. These show that some circles considered perfumes effective medicines. As in previous centuries, perfume reputedly prevented and cured plague. But, in the 1700s, when outbreaks of bubonic plague ceased in Western Europe, perfume was set to work strengthening body and mind, preventing spasms, and curing lethargy. In the 1770s, for example, physician Pierre Lalouette invented a fumigation machine that used perfumes to treat venereal disease. Several ingredients burnt in his machine could be purchased from the perfumer's boutique; these included frankincense, nutmeg, myrrh, and juniper. Others, such as mercury and sulphur, remained exclusive to druggists and apothecaries because they were considered dangerous.

A final kind of evidence is arguably even more useful for showing the different uses and meanings of perfume. Other contributions to this blog demonstrate how recipes can reveal much about the past. Printed and manuscript recipes for perfumes are no exception. Recipes in pharmacopoeias confirm that physicians believed in the medicinal properties of perfumes. Pharmacopoia Bateana (1706) claimed that the "Royal Essence" (consisting of musk, civet, balsam of Peru, clove oil, rhodium oil, tartar salt and cinnamon) could form an "odoriferous water" that prevented "fainting fits." Various manuscript collections (such as those in the Wellcome Collection) include recipes for masking stenches, purifying the air, preventing aging, and enhancing beauty.

Such books indicate how the use of perfume changed. In the early 1700s, the emphasis was still on scenting waters, gloves, linens, and homes. By the second half of the 1700s, however, the emphasis switched from perfuming things and places to perfuming the body. For instance, The Toilet of Flora (1784) recommended that "Hungary-Water" (made from rosemary, pennyroyal and marjoram flowers mixed with conic brandy) be used "to bathe the face and limbs, or any part affected with pains" in order to cleanse and strengthen the body.

As these different sets of evidence suggest, perfume in the eighteenth century was multifarious, and the history of the word "perfume" is consistent with these multiple uses and meanings. The word derives from the Latin per fumum ("through smoke"), and throughout the seventeenth century perfume usually referred to substances that released odour when heated. However, by the mid-eighteenth century the "agreeable odour" of perfume was as likely to feature in dictionary definitions as its medical uses. By the early nineteenth century, some dictionaries referred to the purported medicinal uses of perfumes as an anachronism, while adding that perfumes were increasingly sought after for their refined and luxurious scents. It would not be until the nineteenth century, then, that the meaning and uses of perfume - though not its marketing - took on a character that looks decidedly familiar to us.
Kirsten James is a PhD candidate in History at the University of Toronto. Her dissertation is provisionally titled 'The Science of Scent and Business of Perfume in Paris and London in the Eighteenth Century."

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What Was Perfume in the Eighteenth Century?

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By Kirsten James Perfume as we know it is a sweet smelling liquid made from natural and synthetic aromatic ingredients. Yet, far from being a mere scent, perfume is also a fashion accessory, tool of self-definition, and convenient gift. Perfumes are now branded so successfully that names and bottles are often more recognizable than actual ...

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That's All There is To It - It's Simple!

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That's All There is To It - It's Simple!

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- All Posts Have Been Divided Into 5 Categories, Read Posts From Columns Left to Right Beginning with Information About the author (Who is Patrick Suskind?)
- Some posts may be quite lengthy (eg. scientific articles) and will have Sub-Headings titled Important points from article, these are summaries/the key points that we want you to take away
- Links to these article are still always available with the post and if something particularly interests you, feel free to take a look if you have time after going through all the other information
- Otherwise, feel free to skim through articles that are more concise as you are going through posts (we would recommend however to go through websites in a manner that will allow you to get through all the information in the allotted time)
- Once you are done there is a brief multiple choice quiz at the end to see how much you learned about the contextual details related to our topic!

Happy Reading! :)

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Süskind was born in Ambach by Starnberger See, near Munich in Germany. His father was writer and journalist Wilhelm Emanuel Süskind, who worked for the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and is famous as the co-author of the well-known publication Aus dem Wörterbuch des Unmenschen (From the Dictionary of an Inhuman),[1] a critical collection of essays concerning the language of the Nazi era. Suskind had no ambition of himself because his fathers literary career was cut short due to the Third Reich. Süskind has many relatives from the aristocracy in Württemberg, making him one of the descendants of the exegete Johann Albrecht Bengel and of the reformer Johannes Brenz.
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These family connections related to political power likely had a strong influence on Suskind’s Writing. As Suskind has mentioned, Perfume was written with the intention of the allegory of Grenouille as Hitler taking power over Nazi Germany to be evidently clear.

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The University of Munich in the 1900s

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After his qualification testing for university and his mandatory community service, he studied medieval and modern history at the University of Munich and in Aix-en-Provence from 1968-1974, but never graduated.
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His study of history was no doubt a major asset and influence when writing a story based on a diabolical murderer set in 18th century France.

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Süskind has an extremely reclusive nature; he never granted interviews and rarely allowed himself to be photographed. Mr. Suskind is a passionately private man, he refuses to appear on television, and he has authorized only one photograph of himself to be distributed by his Swiss publisher. He has also turned down all awards and cash prizes he has earned for the book.

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For the sake of this book, he visited perfumery factories and studied many cultural and historical sources.

During his researches, he said, he bought a motor scooter and drove through the perfume-producing country of southern France just sniffing, in the manner of the misanthropic protagonist of  Perfume, who murders beautiful girls to collect their scents.

''Smelling was practically the only sense I had functioning on the Vespa, with goggles I could hardly see and with the helmet on I couldn't hear anything.'' - Patrick Suskind

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This experience during his research sheds light on how Suskind learned so much about strictly different scents, a sense we often undermine, and why Suskind wrote about smell being the only true scent that mattered to a human, where as "men could close their hearts to sight and sound, but not scent."

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He said he originally thought of fixing the action in the present but was attracted to 18th-century France because ''this was when this type of modern man appeared, this dark side of the Enlightenment” (the emergence of the modern man). Moreover, he said, it was in the 18th century that city planners tried to banish foul odors that were thought to cause disease.

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Ready to test what you have learned from our page?

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Ready to test what you have learned from our page?

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Click on the link to go to our quiz! Feel free to post your scores and comments below! Good luck! :)

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So how much do you know about Perfume and its author after reading our padlet?

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Yes, Paris really did stink in the 1800s

The Great Stink of Paris and the Nineteenth-Century Struggle against Filth and Germs by David S. Barnes gives great background information about the era Grenouille's story takes place in and the Great Stink of Paris.

David S. Barnes’s history of the birth and dissemination of public health in France. The author shows that scientific discovery alone did not change the way a nation understood sanitation and the spread of disease. Eberth and Klebs's isolation of the typhoid bacillus (1880), Roux’s diphtheria antitoxin (1884), Pasteur’s work on anthrax (1881) and development of the rabies vaccine (1885) were the talk of the town, but that wasn't enough. It took a convergence of ideas (new scientific knowledge, persistent folk etiologies of contagion, a shift in political thinking toward Republican positivism, increased secularization, France's mission to "civilize" the peasantry and colonies) to garner acceptance of germ theory and support for sanitation control.

- Henri Bouley: "Tout ce qui pue ne tue pas, et tout ce qui tue ne pue pas"  ('All that stinks does not kill and all that kills does not stink").

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The author directly mentions just how badly Paris stank (during the time period in which Perfume takes place) and makes sure to emphasize it numerous times throughout the early stages of the book.

If you want to read more, click on the link below. (only for supplementary information).

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Fill up your pomanders, take out your nosegays: it's going to be a hot summer. "In the late summer of 1880 in Paris, death was in the air and it smelled like excrement." So begins David S. Barnes's history of the birth and dissemination of public health in France. The author shows that scientific discovery alone did not change the way a nation understood sanitation and the spread of disease. Eberth and Klebs's isolation of the typhoid bacillus (1880), Roux's diphtheria antitoxin (1884), Pasteur's work on anthrax (1881) and development of the rabies vaccine (1885) were the talk of the town, but that wasn't enough. It took a convergence of ideas (new scientific knowledge, persistent folk etiologies of contagion, a shift in political thinking toward Republican positivism, increased secularization, France's mission to "civilize" the peasantry and colonies) to garner acceptance of germ theory and support for sanitation control.

Barnes focuses on the years between 1885 1880 and 1895, a period framed by two "Great Stinks" in Paris intrusive enough to spark public outcry, political debate, and relentless commentary in the daily papers. One front-page cartoon, lampooning the government's slow response to the stench disaster, includes a transposition of the city motto fluctuat nec mergitur [it is tossed by the waves but it does not sink] to fluctuat et merditur [it is tossed by the waves and it - well, you get it]. Each smelly summer incited outrage, but by 1895 - though offended and disgusted - the public no longer feared that the fetid stench of Paris streets would cause death and disease. The author coins the term "sanitary-bacteriological synthesis" (SBS) to explain how during the time between these two events, public health reformers brought pre-Pasteurian beliefs (that foul smelling emanations are bad for you) into harmony with new scientific knowledge about the dangers of microbes (which might be accompanied by foul smells).

Why did Paris stink in the nineteenth-century? In fact, Paris was notorious for its noxious odors long before and long after 1880. The author traces some of Paris's earliest waste-removal efforts to 1184. In 1539 King François I mandated the installation of residential cesspits in an effort to rid the already filthy streets of human waste (liquid and solid). Foul odors signaled a gruesome crisis in the late 18th century, when the walls of a mass burial pit gave way. The Cemetery of the Innocents was literally leaking into the homes of near residents, who discovered odors, gasses, and even decaying corpses spilling into their cellars. By the nineteenth-century, overcrowding had led to hygienic alarm. It was the "offal" of everyday life, "the daunting volume of all organic matter produced, consumed and excreted by nearly a million Parisians - uneaten foodstuffs, animal hides, carcasses, dung, all human body fluids and solids - that worried contemporaries" (78). Think of poorly sealed cesspits (a sort of holding tank for residential raw sewage), and the emptying thereof. Add to this a horse-rendering plant and waste dump in northeastern Paris whose putrid emanations were believed to be the cause of disease and death in the area. Or consider a sewer under the Boulevard Rochechouart, so filled with fumes from human excrement that four sewer men cleaning up the place died of asphyxiation. The helmet and buttons of rescuers who saved a fifth worker turned fist red, then black upon exposure to the noxious vapors. All of this against the backdrop of narrow streets subject to public urination and filled with all manner of organic waste, stewing in the summer heat.

To show how nineteenth-century Paris, the birthplace of modern clinical medicine, also made a science of public health, Barnes combs through medical and public hygiene reports, daily newspapers and city records, not only in Paris, but in villages as well. Smelly anecdotes from the provinces include the story of a typhoid outbreak in Les Andelys in 1901, where the investigating doctor discovered that locals washed laundry in three ponds fed by manure runoff, and whose water was rumored to make excellent cider (204). In 1898 twelve cases of dysentery and four deaths were all traced to the same house near Neufchâtel-en-Bray. There, the Lasnier family had refused to follow doctor's orders regarding the handling and disposal of excretions: they "deposited" in the bed and on the floor, or defecated into bowls, later emptied into their vegetable garden (207). Barnes focuses on such repellent cases to draw attention to how and why they were written up. Reports of the peasantry's filth were imbued with moralizing commentary on the inferior nature and intelligence of the poor, thus justifying a need to involve the government in "civilizing" the provinces.

I highly recommend this book to readers with a deep interest in the history of public health and hygiene. As a scholar writing for scholars, Barnes articulates a tight central argument, solidly situated, and carefully justified against a backdrop of previous scholarship and research methodology. He untangles a fine knot in the thread of inquiry on contagion theory leading from miasmic to macrobiotic explanations: while most historians have viewed the advent of Pasteur's discoveries as a seismic paradigm shift, Barnes contends that there was overlap in the old and new ways of thinking - an overlap without which germ theory would not have been as widely accepted.

Though filled with colorful smelly examples, the book is a challenging read overall. Those who are intrigued by the subject might want to begin with academic studies that offer more context and scope before delving into The Great Stink of Paris. Georges Vigarello's Concepts of Cleanliness and Alain Corbin's th century. Corbin primarily treats 18 The Foul and The Fragrant would do the trick. Vigarello's work on changing notions of what is dirty and what is clean covers the Middle Ages through the 19 th- and 19 th-century France, examining a wide range of topics related to the social and cultural history of smell, including perfume.

Dear Fragrant Readers, you have no doubt guessed by now, that if it is beach reading or a perfumed book fix you are after, The Stink of Paris will not deliver. While there a few mentions of burning papier d'Arménie to deodorize homes, the majority of the text will besiege you with the stench of "pestilential mist" (17), "a swarming and oozing population" (92), "foul effluvia and pestilential vapors" (93) and "cadaverous gas" (239).

I hate to leave you high and dry, so if you read French and are interested in the stink of Paris, but have no time for lengthy academic studies, click on this article: "Mais pourquoi ça pue autant dans le métro parisien ?" ('So why is the Paris metro so stinky?'), in which "Nez and professional perfumer Céline Ellena [ Jean-Claude Ellena's daughter] describes with surgical precision the palette of odors that 750,000 daily travelers at Châtelet-Les-Halles [a major subway and commuter train hub] endure all year long" (translations my own).

If all of this malodorous talk starts getting you down, consider these words, attributed to Henri Bouley: "Tout ce qui pue ne tue pas, et tout ce qui tue ne pue pas" ('All that stinks does not kill and all that kills does not stink").

Now, Guerlain, take me away!

The Great Stink of Paris and the Nineteenth-Century Struggle against Filth and Germs
David S. Barnes
The Johns Hopkins University Press
2006
314 pages

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The Great Stink of Paris and the Nineteenth-Century Struggle against Filth and Germs by David S Barnes ~ perfume books

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Fill up your pomanders, take out your nosegays: it's going to be a hot summer. "In the late summer of 1880 in Paris, death was in the air and it smelled like excrement." So begins David S. Barnes's history of the birth and dissemination of public health in France.

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A Visual Representation of the History of Perfume.

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A Visual Representation of the History of Perfume.

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Please zoom in if you have any trouble reading!

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Having been born in Germany during the post-🤬 era would make many of Suskind's works susceptible of being influenced by such historical events and indeed Perfume was no exception. Suskind has stated that for post-Hitler Germans Perfume’s allegorical message should be clear enough. Mr. Suskind has said that French and Anglo-Saxon critics seemed to grasp better than German ones the political allegory lurking in his morbid tale. ''Some French critic said it was a typical German book,'' he observed. ''There is something to that.'' The Third Reich (🤬 germany), he continued, ''was for my generation always in the back of our minds.''

By portraying the post-Hitler era of despondency in his generation, he hints at the idea that many of his works, including Perfume is influenced by the events that occurred during the Third Reich.

Through Perfume, Suskind establishes parallels amongst both Hitler and Grenouille with both characterized as "abominable" people. In addition to his actions influenced by violence and 🤬, the two present parallels in their struggled upbringing, the ways in which they discovered the purpose to their lives and their thirst for megalomaniac aspirations.

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Very often, writers find inspiration in their roots to develop their stories and characters. Patrick Suskind is no exception to this. As many literary critics have remarked, he exploited one of the darkest ages and characters of his national History, the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler. Suskind said it himself, it "was for my generation always in the back of our minds", which gives us a sense of the post-Hitler despondency amongst the German population. Thus, several parallels can be drawn between the dictator and Perfume's main protagonist, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, two people that are unanimously regarded as abominations, ("In Eighteenth century France there lived a man who was one of the most (...) abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of (...) abominable personages" (p. 3))-respectively in the realm of reality and fictions that is. Beyond his actions, which are also characterised by violence and murder, his entire complexion presents many similarities to the other paragon of evil that was Hitler.

Amongst the numerous similarities between Hitler and Grenouille, we can find many between their respective early years. Both were born and brought up in awful conditions, and were subjected to the mistreatment of others. Grenouille was born in the "most putrid spot of the whole kingdom" (p. 4) and had never known the concept of home, as he was constantly given away, sold and purchased, by his wards or owners (Jeanne Bussie, Father Terrier, Madame Gaillard, Grimal, Baldini, Madame Arnulfi). Moreover, he was feared and avoided by his peers, who repeatedly attempted to murder him. As for Hitler, he experienced the death of four of his siblings in his youth and had a conflictual relationship with his father, who maintained different views from his. Furthermore, Hitler was denied to the Vienna Art School at the same time as his mother's death, thus representing the end of his artistic aspirations, a marking failure. While it might seem like Grenouille had a much more cruel upbringing than Hitler's, we have to take into consideration the fact that they live in different eras, which therefore had different standards of living. Essentially, it is important to recognize that the atrocites they had done later in their lives were symbolic of their revenge on life, which for so long, had treated them badly.

Both Hitler and Grenouille found purposes to their lives when they were exiled. After Hitler came back from the front of the Great War, he started his political activities and led many clandestine meetings throughout Germany, gradually gathering supporters. These culminated in a failed coup d'état for which he was imprisoned. However, his stay in prison was a revelation for Hitler. Indeed, prison was where he got to develop his ambitions and his nazi ideology, writing its referring book, Mein Kampf. This represented a starting point for the ascension of his political party, which would eventually lead him to be appointed Chancellor in 1933.

Similarly, Grenouille found a definite purpose to his life in his "mountain of solitude" (p. 121). While it was a place of solace for him at first, it slowly evolved into a place where he envisioned himself as "Grenouille the Great, the frantic gardener (of smells)" (p. 126) and had created in his mind an Empire of scents where he was idolised and worshipped, comparably to the Third Reich. This was the first exhibition of Grenouille's megalomaniac tendency, as for the most part, Grenouille had only found pleasure in the concoction of perfumes and was not interested by the glory that came with it, as demonstrated by his work for the Perfumer Baldini. Moreover, that was where he had realised he had no smell, which lead him to set out to create a human scent which would compensate his lack of body odor. Arguably, that was the origin of his aspiration to make "a scent that was not merely human, but superhuman, an angel's scent, so indescribably good and vital that whoever smelled it would be enchanted and with his whole heart would have to love him, Grenouille, the bearer of that scent." (p. 155). We can also note that Grenouille's lack of smell represented a profound complex for him, he who had mastered all smells, which could have influenced in committing all those murders, a trait that is recurrent in many serial-killers.

Most importantly, Hitler and Grenouille resemble each other in their thirst for power and megalomaniacal aspirations. As mentioned before, Grenouille wanted to " make the world admire him. (...) Love him! Desire him! Idolize him!" (p. 240). Likewise, Hitler desired to assert his nazi ideology by accessing to power. He uses his charisma and oratory skills to appeal to the masses while Grenouille makes use of his exceptional olfactory abilities to create a perfume so powerful that it could make people love him almost instantly. Moreover, parallels can be drawn between the concept of the Aryan race and the women he kills to produce his perfume, who all distinguish themselves by their unique scent, beauty as well as their virginity. He uses their combined scents to achieve his ends just like Hitler uses the idea of a superior race to uphold his ideas. They both sought purity in their respective standards, which translates into 'unsullied' beauty (virgins) for Grenouille and specific physical and theological features for Hitler. Furthermore, they both had spite for other human beings: Grenouille considered them "so dumb they stank" (p. 154) and had a "profound contempt" (p.154) for them whereas Hitler's entire nazi ideology revolved around antisemitism, the hatred of jews. Finally, both died by committing suicide (Grenouille subjected himself to cannibalism while Hitler shot himself) after having arguably completed their purposes: Grenouille created his master perfume which gave him the power to subdue the rest of humankind, while Hitler had expanded his nazi ideology throughout most of Europe.

"SUCCESS OF SMELL IS SWEET FOR NEW GERMAN NOVELIST." The New York Times . The New York Times, 08 Oct. 1986. Web. 23 May 2017.

"Adolf Hitler." Biography.com . A&E Networks Television, 28 Apr. 2017. Web. 23 May 2017.

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The political allegory of Hitler and the Third Reich in Patrick Suskind's Perfume (Oussama)

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Very often, writers find inspiration in their roots to develop their stories and characters. Patrick Suskind is no exception to this. As many literary critics have remarked, he exploited one of the darkest ages and characters of his national History, the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler.

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Suskind thought his book would only appeal to those who loved history.

He was troubled that readers associated themselves with Grenouille.
He is a proponent of the Enlightenment.