Ep 23: Have People Always Cared About the Way They Smell? The Weird History of Perfume

Long before perfume was something you sprayed on your neck before leaving the house, it was burned for the gods, melted onto people’s heads, and made from ingredients we probably shouldn’t talk about before dinner. This episode is all about how perfume evolved from sacred rituals  to everyday identity.

Also I must mention that a lot of this information comes from the book Neurobiology of Sensation and Reward. We’ve linked the chapter in the shownotes, it’s pretty comprehensive and a super interesting read!

Ancient Perfumery 

The word “perfume” comes from the Latin phrase per fumum, which means “through smoke”. It originated about 4000 years ago among the Mesopotamians in the form of incense. In ancient times, it was common to burn wood, resins and herbs during religious ceremonies and offerings to the gods. They evolved to using herbs and spices to create aromas, but didn’t use flowers until later. 

The art of making perfume, known as perfumery, then traveled to Egypt where they initially only used it for religious purposes, like in rituals for gods and pharaohs. They had a god of perfume called Nefertem. Apparently he was associated with the very aromatic blue water-lily flower (which also may have been a narcotic) and became a divine representation for perfume and luck. Egyptians would wear these cones made up of oil, resin, fat and myrrh on their heads, known as head cones; as the wax melted, the ingredients would flow out and perfume them. This personally sounds horrific to me; hot, smelly wax dripping down my body, but apparently they were big fans. 

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_cone 

As perfume moved from sacred ritual into daily life, it also became a marker of status, power, and eventually personal identity, a theme that is a tale as old as time. In Persia, a philosopher and physician named Avicenna came up with distillation, which is the process of extracting oils from flowers. They mash up flowers into liquid, then boil them and can separate chemicals based on their properties. This is still used today to extract ingredients, it’s just a lot more efficient now than it was in 980 BC. In Rome, women loved perfume so much they literally never went anywhere without it. Gladiators would also apply scented body lotion before contests. 

In 1307, the first modern perfume of scented oils blended in alcohol was made. It was done at the request of Queen Elizabeth of Hungary (shoutout to her for real). They referred to this perfume as “Hungary Water”. Cities in Europe smelled so disgusting that perfumes became super popular; in the Renaissance, France became the epicenter of perfume development and culture, and it has stayed that way. Not only was it popular to spray yourself and everything you owned with perfume, but people would also put it on their pets (and honestly so valid, they are stinky little creatures). 

This era was also where perfume really started to shift from something spiritual and medicinal into something that had to do more with fashion and class; it was something worn to show that you had taste, wealth, and refinement. 

In 1709, a French perfumer proposed that people should wear different perfumes based on their social class, because separating social statuses is a train that’s never late. He made a royal perfume for aristocrats, a bourgeois perfume for the middle class, and said poor people only deserved disinfectant. Rude but not surprising. From 1715 to 1774, King Louis XV said his court had to wear different perfumes for every day of the week. 

Interestingly, when people learned about germs and how filth usually smells, perfumes became super unpopular (and even thought of as evil). Perfumes also started to be gender stereotyped; sweet, floral scents were seen as feminine, while deeper, woodsy notes were seen as masculine. In the early to mid 1900s, men were expected to smell like clean skin and tobacco, while women were supposed to smell faintly floral. Only sex workers wore heavier perfumes that had once been popular. Perfume became more about being polite (aka not smelling offensive to those around you) rather than a way to express yourself through scent. 

20th Century Perfumes in America

Americans are often late to the party, and that was no exception with perfumes. Perfumes were one of the first cosmetic products that were sold in American Pharmacies. Essential oils, dried herbs, tinctures, extracts and mineral salts were all used to create both medicine and various cosmetics. Essential oils like rose, lavender, and musk were not only used as flavor in medicine, but they were also used in the toilet and also to cover up the nasty smells of early cosmetic products. Since people didn’t have deodorant or antiperspirant before the early 1900s, they just used perfumes to cover up their body odor. 

As the world got more industrialized and we learned more about chemistry, perfumes became easier and cheaper to mass produce. This meant that fragrance wasn’t just for royalty or upper class citizens; it was now accessible to everyday citizens. Fancy perfume bottles also started to become super popular around the 1920s, popularized by a French guy named Francois Coty. He employed a jewelry designer name Rene Lalique to create perfume bottles, and they were so pretty that people didn’t care about the small amount of perfume inside, they just wanted the bottles. He was able to infiltrate the American market, pretty quickly, the large companies that had pretty bottles overtook the small perfume houses.

In the 1950s, a perfume became extremely popular in the US; can you guess which one it was? Chanel No. 5 had a breakthrough in the US; it was created int he 1920s for the infamous Coco Chanel, but when Marilyn Monroe began wearing it, it became insanely popular in the US. It continues to be the most famous and sold perfume in the world, and interestingly was the first fragrance made using synthetic chemicals. This is probably a big reason why it was so popular, because it didn’t have to be reapplied as often as natural perfumes had. 

In the 1970s, most perfumes were imported from Europe, or American companies tried to manufacture their perfumes to seem European (this is still pretty popular to do today). Before World War II, men didn’t really care about scented products, but because clean grooming was required when they served in the war, men got used to using nice products that smelled good. 

I found a really cool article by the Smithsonian with lots of good information about perfumes, as well as photos of vintage perfumes. We’ll have it linked in our shownotes on our blog. 

Some unfortunate perfume ingredients

We’ve chatted about many of the fun parts of perfumery, but throughout history many perfumes have had some… questionable ingredients. Chanel No. 5 primarily became popular because of Marilyn Monroe, but up until 1998 it did contain secretions from the perineal glands of the civet cat; these secretions have a strong musky, fecal odor. Anal secretions from the civet cat, musk deer, beavers, and vomit from sperm whales have been used as perfume fixatives. Animal rights groups were understandably upset with these ingredients being used in perfumes, so many companies have since replaced those notes with synthetic ones. Many of the most popular perfumes have synthetic fecal notes, as well as, erm, the smells of private areas. 

There are some other very interesting comments about perfumes with natural body odor scents, especially with the dichotomy of trying to eliminate body odor, but I’ll let you read those in the article. Some of them are a little too intense to be mentioned on this podcast; we are family friendly, after all. It’s a fascinating read though, so I do recommend checking it out; we’ll link it in the episode description as well as the blog post on our website. 

Because of safety concerns and ethical issues, modern perfumery is now regulated by organizations like IFRA, which limits or bans ingredients altogether. This is one reason why synthetic molecules have become so important in modern fragrance.

Perfumes in the 21st century

In the early 2000s, body splashes became really popular. Victoria’s Secret Love Spell was one of the most popular body sprays, and it has a very fruity-floral scent, with notes of peach, apple and cherry blossom. The sort of fruity-floral perfumes were really popular in the early 2000s; perfumes like Versace Bright Crystal, Flowerbomb, Chanel Chance, Britney Spears Curious and Marc Jacobs’ Daisy were all extremely popular and had primarily fruity/floral notes. 

In the 2010s, it seems like more gourmand fragrances started to become popular. Santal 33 has notes of cardamom, iris and violet that combine and give a sort of leather, tobacco and campfire smoke feeling. Armani’s Si perfume is a warm woody vanilla perfume. Of course, florals are still incredibly popular, with more modern perfumes like Glossier You and Baccarat Rouge being extremely popular. Deeper fragrances like Carolina Herrera’s Good Girl and YSL’s Libre are also very popular for people who prefer scents that are richer and bolder. It kind of just depends on the person and whether they lean more fruity/floral or gourmand. 

In this era, there’s also a divide between designer perfumes, which are typically mass-produced and driven by the market, and niche perfumes, which are more focused on experimentation, unique notes and artistic expression. 

Conclusion

Perfumes have been around for millennia; they started off as religious rituals and have evolved into both luxury status symbols and everyday self-expression. They’ve been used to hide bad smells, show wealth, enforce gender norms and rebel against them, and trigger memories we didn’t even know were still stored in our brains. Whether it’s melted wax cones dripping down your back in ancient Egypt, civet cat secretions in a mid-century Chanel bottle, or a $12 body spray you oversprayed in middle school, fragrance has always reflected the values and obsessions of the time.

At the end of the day, perfume isn’t just about smelling good;  it’s about identity, culture, and the weird things humans are willing to put on their bodies in the name of beauty. And judging by how often trends come back around, we’re probably only a few centuries away from hot wax cones making a comeback. I just hope I’m not around to see it. 

Bibliography

1. Smithsonian Institution. (n.d.). Fragrance. Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History. Retrieved from https://www.si.edu/spotlight/health-hygiene-and-beauty/fragrance - historical overview of perfume use in American pharmacies, essential oils, advertising, and industry evolution.

2. Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Head cone. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_cone - description and cultural context of perfume head cones in ancient Egypt.

3. National Center for Biotechnology Information. (n.d.). Perfume - Neurobiology of Sensation and Reward (Book chapter). In Bookshelf. U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health. from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92802/ - research and scientific overview of perfume perception and sensory reward mechanisms.

4. Monsma, G. (2024, April). What the first 25 years of the century smelled like. Vogue. Retrieved from https://www.vogue.com/article/what-the-first-25-years-of-the-century-smelled-like - retrospective of 21st century fragrance trends and cultural associations.