The whiff of their fragrances is good enough to eat and it is tempting to do so at times. These edibly fragrant scents are becoming a fad and a hit to all ages in the market especially to those who are experimental on their olfactory tastes. The spate of food-inspired perfumes that hit the market has been embraced by fragrance enthusiasts in France and the United States.
One of the famous brands gracing the stores right now is the perfume line of Jennifer Lopez a.k.a J. Lo which is laced with hints of chocolate and caramel scents. It immediately became a ravenous hit especially among the younger demography in the market. Those who know the music of J. Lo and have grown accustomed and even appreciative of her popular notes, jive, and fashion were also attracted by her new found fragrance business.
Jean -Michel Duriez, a perfumer for Jean Patou Paris said that rum, licorice, milk, and rice flavours are used in perfumes frequently. The edibly scented perfume that her company introduced carries notes of black-currant bud, green banana and pear. Victoria’s Secret, another manufacturer of perfumes and lotions aside from their well-known line of lingerie has gained popularity because of their fruity scented colognes and perfumes that have became a rave even to developing countries. They have fragrances inspired by fruits and spices that are convincingly real and fresh smelling. The company has a long list of fruits that they have utilized for their perfumes such as melon, raspberry, apricot, grapefruit, plum, cinnamon, green pears, sandalwood, green mandarin, pomelo, lemon, and the long list goes on and on.
Michael Edwards, author of the yearly guidebook Fragrances of the World observed that gourmand notes in perfumes are comforting. It might be due to our familiarity to these scents especially that we have been surrounded by these refreshing fruits all our life. The scents of gourmand perfumes are also bottled by even the most respected and expensive brands of perfumes such as Hermes and Christian Dior. The names of some perfumes were even extracted from the names of fruits and spices themselves. There are perfume names such as Wild Fig, The Color Orange, d’ Anjou (A pear scent), Midnight Cinnamon, and so on.
These highly palatable olfactory luxuries have reached even the most traditional perfumeries in Arabian countries. These Arabian countries have been producers and manufacturers of sensuous fragrances that earned the respect of the world’s well-known factories of scents and perfumes. In ancient times, when the Ottoman Empire still holds power, the extraction of essences from fruits and spices is already practiced. They have essences of saffron, sandalwood, grapefruit, cinnamon, melon and even cloves and ginger were considered palatable to the sense of smell.
The French, with their picky olfactory senses have also learned to shift their appreciation from flower essences to fruits and spices. There are French perfumeries that already produce perfumes with rinds of lemon and other citruses and strands of exotic spices that have been a envied by the western world.