When you first meet someone, what’s the first thing you notice about them? Is it the way they talk, the way they dress, their accent – or is it the way they smell? People have been using perfume since ancient times and our culture has tied scents to godliness, to religions, and even used it for medicinal purposes.
The idea of Covid looms over our heads like a forgotten foe as we trudge through the endemic phase. I experienced the nightmare of fearing that I would lose my sense of smell forever after testing positive. Fortunately my nose is now on the road to recovery (I’m at around 75% now).
My latest obsession has been the world of perfumery, so I decided to seek out a perfumer to ask him some questions.
Perfumer’s Lab & Academy (PLA) is located in UKM-MTDC Technology Centre in Bangi, in a quiet and secluded block with greenery all around.
There are reportedly more astronauts than perfumers in the world, and Md Abdullah Al Roman, an NPA Qualified Professional Natural Perfumer, is one of them.
Just like how different people are attracted to different styles, food, and people, it is the same for scents. We usually forget most of the visual information we are bombarded with day in and day out, but our memory and our sense of smell are intertwined because of our brain’s anatomy, and this is why smells can trigger vivid memories.
Before a baby is born, fetuses have already learned about their mother’s preferences and even emotions through the amniotic fluid as the brain’s olfactory (smell) centre forms very early in fetal development.
For Abdullah, his path to perfumery was by chance. Coming from a family who owned an oud distillation plant, he has always been around raw materials, and that was the perfect environment to let his love for perfumery grow.
He said: “Before PLA was founded, I was in Malaysia trying to find raw materials and trying to understand the industry here, when I realized most of the raw material sellers in Malaysia didn’t have much knowledge about the industry. I knew that a lot of them were interested to learn more, so when I saw the need for perfumery education, I decided to start PLA with [co-founder Charmaine Lai].
“Although most of the raw materials of the perfumery industry actually come from ASEAN countries, the industry didn’t grow in these countries (including Malaysia) due to a lack of knowledge. Before PLA was established, you’d have to travel all the way to Bangkok just to learn about perfumery.
“In order to become a perfumer, you will need to familiarise yourself with thousands of natural oils and aroma molecules. In total, that can total up to 4000 something raw materials that are combined into 100-300 scents.
“Usually, a bottle of luxury perfume is a combination of hundreds of raw materials, which explains the hefty price tag behind them.”
Perfumes are created from natural oils, aroma molecules, and animal materials and it takes anywhere from two months to a year to perfect a formulation. Depending on the season the raw material is harvested or the location that they come from, their scent extraction can vary greatly.
When the raw materials are combined, they create a perfume accord, which is a balanced blend of notes that lose their individual identity to create a completely new, unified odour impression.
For Abdullah, he always starts off his creations with an emotion or feeling as our olfactory is connected deeply to our emotions.
In PLA, they provide perfumery classes for people who are interested in learning more about making a scent. Most of the people who join their academy are hobbyists and they currently provide courses such as Introduction to Perfume Making, and an 8 Days Perfumer Making Foundation class.
During the classes, Abdullah and Charmaine Lai found that much of the knowledge that their ‘self-taught’ students got from the internet wasn’t accurate. With the academy, curious minds can now have a proper platform to learn about perfumery.
According to Lai, one of the challenges for the perfume industry in Malaysia is that ‘inspired perfume’ is very dominant in Malaysia. Inspired perfume is a scent similar to a designer fragrance but for a cheaper price.
Even though perfumes are not patentable under 35 U.S.C. 101, there isn’t much space for creativity to emerge if people just followed the trend toward inspired fragrance.
Besides the ethical issue of copying scents, Lai also cautions that since the fragrance industry in Malaysia is unregulated, we need to be aware of the dangers of counterfeit synthetic petroleum-based fragrances that have been popping up in the market. In these types of counterfeits, chemicals found in them may include phthalates, which are endocrine disruptors, and benzophenone and styrene, which are carcinogens.
On the subject of getting your signature scent, Abdullah advises that you try the scent on your skin instead of smelling it on paper. Depending on our individual skin and body, fragrances smell differently from person to person, so that’s why you can’t judge a perfume just because it smelled good on someone else.
Besides that, the smell also changes as time goes by after it dries on your skin, and this is by design, as the perfumist creates the scents based on their relative evaporation rates, and the changing character of a perfume comes from the varying volatility of scent molecules.
When you spray or dab on a fragrance, the first thing you smell is the combined effect of all of the scents in the product. Then, as some of those scent molecules evaporate and others stick around, the fragrance starts changing. Eventually, what you’re left with is the scent of the longest-lasting, or least volatile, of the scent molecules included in your perfume – and this final stage is called the dry down.
This is where the idea of top notes, middle notes, and base notes in perfumes comes in. To be specific, the scent of a perfume unfolds like this: The top notes are what you smell when you first apply the perfume, and it is the result of all of the scent ingredients blended together, which lasts only a few minutes.
Then, as the most volatile of the scent molecules evaporate, the middle notes arise. This scent is considered the heart of the fragrance and lasts up to an hour. When the middle notes dissipate, the base notes take over and this final fragrance is said to reveal the body of the perfume – its true scent.
However, the goal isn’t just to find the one. Abdullah explains that typically, perfume enthusiasts have a range of perfumes according to the time of the day, their mood, or the occasion. A perfume is like an accessory. Just like how we have a closet of clothes, we can wear different scents depending on what we feel like and what emotion we’re trying to evoke or how we want to present ourselves.
Some fleeting, some heavy, some remind you of someone, and some can be so overpowering to the point of nausea, but smells are all around us and one of our most underrated senses. Now that we’ve taken a whiff at what perfumery is all about, I hope it gave you a greater appreciation for our olfactory, and perhaps encourage you to smell deeper.
