Podcast narrated by Bridget Kendall, featuring guest speakers Lizzie Ostrum, Luca Turin and Thomas.

Luca Turin defines fragrance as a ‘chemical poem’. A work of art done by arranging chemicals that each have their own smell, in order to deliver an impression an idea or a feeling.

Most people think of fragrance as a beauty product of a morning or evening ritual thats based on vanity, this shouldn’t be the case. Perfume can be about anything from religion, hospitality, seduction etc. The earliest perfumes start as incense and is much more to do with ritual and worship.

The molecules in perfume are only soluble in oils, therefore the ancient was of extracting scents was to place flowers onto fatty substances and the scents would be absorbed, and that would then have to be extracted from the fats. Animal extracts are also the basis of the perfume industry. There are four main animal extracts- Musk (native to Tibet parts of India and China) Castoreum (comes from the beaver) Civet (produced from the anal glands of a civet cat) Amber grease (comes from the sperm whale). However, a lot of synthetic musks are now used because of a controversy about the non-ethical ways in which these animal extracts are sourced.  A lot of synthetic scents were discovered by accident for example musk discovered by Albert Bauer when attempting to create a TNT explosive, and Coumarin by William Perkin.

The 20th century is there perfume as we know it came to be, with the main factor being the discovery and exploration into consumer culture. Complex advertising and marketing has played an enormous part in the growth of the perfume industry.