Igor Jeremic is a psychologist and a future psychology major. He loves philosophy, history and literature. And he knows a great secret – the perfume culture of our country and region, what smells we like and what we would love to know. For Original, he’s revealing how to exercise your nose but also that there are online courses and perfume classes.
He became interested in perfumes early on and as most teenagers, he liked it when people complimented him that he smells nice, so he decided to raise his sense of smell to a higher level – he began exploring emotions that certain scent notes stir.
What followed were years of studying foreign literature, internet, and explorations, including chemistry lessons and nose exercises. He offers his knowledge free of charge to the online community and in a very short while got 35.000 fans on Facebook alone, when he decided to step into the limelight and reveal who plays with words and scents on Scentertainer blog.
“Perfumes for me are half science and half art. There are certain scientific norms – procedures that have to be followed, but above all, it is a question of feeling, creativity, and imagination. Just like music. I’ve read every important book on perfumes, their history and how they are made, as well as everything world’s best perfume reviewers, wrote. In the notebooks of famous perfume creators, I found nose exercises. I attend online courses and lectures of perfume schools, said Igor, 30.
His followers want to know everything, from the usual small tricks of the trade to history and the origin of perfumes. It turned out that “A little psychology of perfumes” is one of his most read texts yet.
“First contemporary perfume was made in the 14th century, it had an alcohol base and like today’s perfumes had the scent oils of lavender and rosemary.”
According to the legend, a monk made it for queen Elisabeth and named it “Hungarian water.” He promised youth and vitality and soon after the queen seduced the king of Poland. And he was not the first nor the last who fell for a good woman’s perfume, Igor said.
Translated from Latin, perfume would mean: through the smoke.
“Hundreds of years ago it was discovered that certain trees and resins when burned let a pleasant smell that was given divine attributes. Scents carried messages to gods. Their purpose, in the beginning, was ritual and in ancient Egypt it became secular as well, with upper class using scented oils for disinfection, as a means of making themselves pretty and for seduction. Ancient Greeks and Romans elaborated it even further, adding scents like rosemary and lavender and the perfume obsession spread from there to the Middle East and probably the entire world. Who among us is immune to a good perfume? No one except maybe people that suffer from anosmia and even they love to smell good even though they can not smell it, he added.
There is no official number of perfumes in the world, but it is estimated that there are more than 10.000 considering there are perfumes not registered on websites like Fragranica or Basenotes.
“The base of the perfume are usually essence oils that we get from distilling herbs and sometimes animal products. I say usually because with the growth of perfume industry and chemistry as a science, now you can get a scent molecule identical to the one from the plant but from the entirely different source. Those substances, aromachemicals have taken the lead in the perfume industry because they are cheaper to make. Thanks to them, perfumes last longer than before. The state of the perfume industry is like this: one percent of scent absolutes, 15% of aromatic oils and everything else are aromachemicals,” Igor said explaining the difference between perfume and eau de cologne.
The difference is in the scent components. Each perfume (except those made for kids) is basically alcohol based. Depending how big of a percentage of scent products are distilled in alcohol, we get categories like: pure perfume or extrait eau de parfum, eau de toilette, eau de cologne, and deodorant. Pure perfume has the highest percentage of scent substances, around 30 to 40% while deodorant has around one percent. Dominant scents are those that evaporate the least, while base or lower scent notes are longlasting. They make the basis of the perfume and the perfume is built upon them. Some of those notes are amber, musk, sandalwood, vanilla…
A good perfume needs to have a pleasant and well thought out ratio od scent notes that, like music, can be made almost mathematically.
In the end, Igor says he doesn’t have a favorite but favorites but he also has perfumes he would never ever wear.
From his personal collection, his favorite male perfume is Frapin 1270, a mix of cognac, dry fruit and oriental spices. His favorite female perfume is Guerlain Shalimar, oriental vanilla and unisex – Bvlgari Black, the first avant-guarde perfume because it is a sexy mixture of rubber and vanilla. A bit kinky but very intimate and pleasant…