FRIDAY PHILOSOPHY: CLUELESS CLAIMS

The claims made by some perfume companies and the journalists who write about them never cease to amaze me. Recently on one of the many Facebook perfume groups there was a link to this article entitled,“Could sniffing this perfume be the answer to being skinny?”,  claiming that a company that shall remain nameless here had released a perfume that can cause weight loss.

Not only are the claims over-the-top (“the first fragrance to boost your well-being”!), the journalist who writes about them seems to have no sense of logic. He or she writes, “A whiff of chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven can beckon even the fullest stomach to take a bite. Likewise, something rather foul can quickly turn off even the most prominent of hunger pangs. And now there’s a perfume that’s claiming to work in a similar way.”

Which way? Does the perfume smell so foul that it “turns off hunger pangs”? That would be the logical conclusion, but the article goes on to describe the perfume as “a blend of light, fruity and floral notes”. If so, then it’s no different from thousands of other perfumes dipped from the same vat, so what’s the point?

Reading on, apparently the point is that the perfume is supposed to alter your mood and make you feel “happy” (as other perfumes also claim), which will, in turn, lower stress, which will, in turn, cause you to eat less, assuming stress is what causes you to overeat in the first place. The problem here is that any pleasant odor that you like to smell, or any activity that you enjoy, will do the same thing, so the claims are not specific to the perfume in question, or even to perfume in general.

In the name of investigative reporting, the journalist appears to have consulted an aromatherapist who agrees that inhaling pleasant odors can affect mood, but who goes on to try to debunk the claims as follows: “they say it is the topical application that will affect mood … but absorbing through the skin would take up to 12 hours to travel through the body to finally reach the brain, so spraying this perfume would not be a way to get an instant mood shift”. Who said that perfume had to be “absorbed through the skin” to improve mood or that it would ever reach the brain via that route? I thought the whole point was smelling it regardless of where or how it was applied. Aromatherapists may not like to hear this, but it’s still aromatherapy even if it’s not straight essential oils sniffed from an organic, vegan diffuser.

The aromatherapist and a nutritionist go on to bash perfumes that contain alcohol and imply that perfumes all contain “harmful chemicals”.

There is so much wrong with practically every statement in this article that I couldn’t begin to enumerate them all and will steer clear of commenting on the many misconceptions about biology. Unfortunately, this article epitomizes the overblown claims of perfume manufacturers (and those of many other industries), as well as the profound ignorance and/or lack of any real critical thinking on the part of those who write about them. As my father would say, if it weren’t so funny it would be tragic.

This concludes my rant for the day.

[Perfume bottle photos from retailers’ websites; Jack Sprat images from nursery-rhyme illustrations posted online. “Jack Sprat could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean; and so between them both they licked the patter clean”, one point being that it takes all kinds to make the world go round and function as well as it apparently does for the two happy lovers in the last image.]

CARRIERS PART 2 AND FRESH LIFE GIVEAWAY WINNER

First, I want to announce that the winner of the mini bottle of Fresh Life is  SUN MI   Please contact me at olympicorchids at gmail dot com or leave a message on Facebook with your complete, correct name and shipping address.

On the last Materials Wednesday when I posted on perfume carriers, there was talk about solid perfumes, so it seems reasonable to cover that, too. Personally, I’m not a fan of solid perfumes, but I know many people like them.

Basically, solid perfumes are fragrance in a carrier of wax and oil in a ratio that makes the resulting mass solid but spreadable. The fragrance can be anything from essential oils to ready-made synthetic fragrance oils or concentrates. The solid wax is heated enough to melt it, and the carrier oil and fragrance oil are added in whatever ratio gives the desired consistency and scent. While liquid, the mixture is poured into a small tin or jar, where it is allowed to solidify, and voila! You have solid perfume.

The high-end commercial “natural” and/or low-end DIY solid perfume formulas typically use beeswax, candelilla wax, carnauba wax, shea butter, cocoa butter, or mango butter along with various liquid oils like almond, coconut, olive, sunflower, grape seed, or jojoba. Many of these ingredients have scents of their own, so contribute subtly to the final fragrance, which is one reason why solid perfumes often smell a little different from liquid ones.

There are not a lot of mass-market commercial solid perfumes, and those that exist do not disclose all of their ingredients, but they probably use soy wax, paraffin wax, deodorized castor oil, mineral oil, and small amounts of other “natural”-sounding waxes and oils like the ones mentioned above, along with synthetic/mixed-media fragrance concentrates.

Next week I’ll actually start on the perfume materials themselves.

[Beeswax photos are from Wikimedia, solid perfume photos from retailers' websites, and Fresh Life bottle from Fragrantica]

ARTIFACT-BOTTLE GIVEAWAY WINNER

With apologies for missing this Wednesday's materials series due to some extra, time-consuming work at the university, I am happy to announce that the winner of the artifact fancy bottle drawing is LAUREN. I understand Azar's dog Fender did the choosing.

[The photo, for no particular reason, is the green spotted hellebore that's blooming now, child of the dark red one. There seems to be no consistency in how the offspring look.] 

SAMPLE SATURDAY: MAKE-UP REMOVERS/CLEANSERS

I am a sample junkie – I admit that I enjoy using samples much more than the full size of anything. I have thousands of 1-ml vial perfume samples, and quite a lot of skin care and cosmetic samples. For some reason the samples always seem better than the full size, and my theory is that alternating and rotating is much more effective and enjoyable than finding a “favorite” and sticking with it. I know some people use samples as a means to the end of finding the one fragrance or other product that they will commit to using continuously, but to me, samples are an end in themselves.

I recently acquired some samples of various make-up removers and face cleansers, some of which are (in my opinion) better than others. Here’s my report:

Sephora Waterproof Eye Makeup Remover: This comes as two phases, a water-based blue one at the bottom and a clear oil-based one on top. Basically, it’s just water and oil, which, when shaken up temporarily mix together as a suspension and can take off both water-soluble and oil-soluble makeup. It works effectively on eye make-up, but not as a complete face wash. It costs $14 for about 7 ounces, so is not prohibitively expensive.

Clinique Take the Day Off Makeup Remover: Almost identical to the Sephora product except for the fact that it appears to be colorless. It also comes as two phases (oil and water) that have to be shaken together before using.  It takes eye makeup off effectively, but is not meant to function as a complete face wash. At $19 for 4.2 ounces, it costs about twice what the generic Sephora product does, so I see no advantage to using it.

Fresh Soy Face Cleanser: This is a strongly cucumber-scented runny gel that has to be squeezed out of a tube and plops in odd places if your hand isn’t under the mouth of the tube to catch it. It doesn’t really work as a night-time remover for eye makeup or any other type of makeup, so I use it in the morning in the shower where it basically functions as a shower gel for the face. It works OK in that context. It doesn’t foam at all, but it does seem to clean my skin. So does soap. The sample tube doesn’t seem to contain much product given its size, but I’ll give the full size the benefit of the doubt and assume that it is completely full. At $38 for 5.1 ounces, it doesn’t seem worth it.

Ole Henriksen Pure Truth Melting Cleanser: My favorite of the bunch, this is a gel that melts on the skin to function as a complete eye makeup remover, general makeup remover, and face wash. It comes in a jar, so it’s easy to control how much you use. A tiny dab scrubbed around on the face really does remove everything from waterproof mascara to just plain dirt. It has a light citrus scent, does not end up particularly oily, and simply rinses away with water, leaving my skin feeling clean, but moisturized. It’s great for quick makeup removal at night. I really like it. It seems kind of pricey at $34 for 4 ounces, but a little goes a long way, and the convenience of a single product that does everything justifies the price. My small sample is lasting a long time, so when it runs out I might just spring for a full size.

[Sample photo is mine, others are from a retailer's website] 

PERFUME MATERIALS: THE HUMBLE LIQUID CARRIER

Before moving on to a series on what we usually think of as the perfume materials themselves, I thought it might be interesting to consider the component of most perfumes that everyone takes for granted, the carrier. Perfumes are generally fragrance materials diluted with a more or less odorless substance, never completely odorless, but benign enough to be masked and/or quick to evaporate.

Alcohol

By far the most common carrier is alcohol, usually 95% ethanol (ethyl alcohol), the same alcohol that’s in alcoholic beverages. Perfumer’s alcohol is typically grain alcohol that contains a bitter, low-odor “denaturant” that renders it unpalatable to drink, thus minimizing the chances that the alcohol could be resold as a beverage without the authorities having collected beverage taxes on it. If you see “SD alcohol” or “alcohol denat” on a perfume label, it just stands for “specially denatured alcohol”.

Some perfumers also use non-denatured alcohol, which can be obtained with the proper type of license. It is usually considerably more expensive than SD alcohol, and may be produced by craft distilleries that cater to the beverage and/or natural perfumery trade. Popular types of non-denatured alcohol include grain or potato alcohol, which have very little extra odor from the plant matter that was fermented and distilled, grape alcohol, which has a strong grappa smell, and sugar cane alcohol, which has a rum-like smell. These special effects are fine, if you want them in your perfume, but because of the extra expense and extra smells, most perfumers stick with the garden-variety SD alcohol.

Because alcohol is a non-polar solvent, it works well with most essential oils and aroma chemicals, which readily go into solution in alcohol and stay there. It is volatile, so evaporates quickly, leaving the less volatile fragrance materials behind for our enjoyment. Alcohol-based solutions are thin enough to easily be sprayed. The only down side is that ethanol is flammable at relatively low temperatures and has some smell of its own. Other than that, it’s the ideal carrier.

Oil

Oil is another traditional carrier for perfumes. Like alcohol, it easily mixes with essential oils and aroma chemicals. However, not every oil can work as a perfume base. Many oils have strong smells of their own (think about olive oil, or sesame oil). Unless the scent of the carrier oil is intended to be part of the fragrance, it is best to use low-odor oils. The other problem with oils is that many of them go rancid quickly. I will never forget pulling out some samples of oil-based perfumes that had been sitting around for about a year and being hit with the smell of rancid oil. It was so bad that I had to throw them away.  The oils that I’ve used that tend not to go rancid are argan and fractionated coconut oil (FCO). Grapefruit seed oil can be added as a natural preservative and, of course, there are lots of synthetic preservatives that will work with oil.

Traditional attars are made from flowers or other materials distilled into a carrier of sandalwood oil or vetiver oil, both of which have their own scent that contributes to the attar. Today some attars are distilled into diethylphthalate (DEP) or dioctylphthalate (DOP), which act as cheap substitutes for the traditional oils. If you are buying attars and want to avoid phthalates, you should find out what the carrier is.  Oil-based perfumes tend to go on sticky, with the fragrance developing more slowly than it does in alcohol-based ones.

Water

I have tried a few water-based perfumes and was not impressed. First, most fragrance materials are not soluble in water, so the best that can be done is to produce a suspension or emulsion of the oils or aroma chemicals. For this reason, water-based perfumes tend to be cloudy. The amount of fragrance that can be added to water is limited, so they are usually quite weak.

Concentrations of fragrance materials in carrier are all over the place, ranging from minute amounts of fragrance materials to the pure concentrate. The highest concentrations are found in attars and concentrated perfume oils (CPOs), followed (in theory) by extraits/parfum, eau de parfum (EdP), eau de toilette (EdT), eau de cologne (EdC), and body sprays, which typically use a carrier with a high ratio of water to alcohol. However, you can’t really go by these designations because an EdT may smell stronger than an extrait. It depends on the fragrance itself and how the manufacturer defines the terms.

[Except for (maybe) the 190 proof grain alcohol in the first photo, all are things that should not be in perfume, just included for the visual interest. All images are from Wikimedia]