“Wherever I go, there you are; my luck, my fate, my fortune.
Chanel No. 5 ... inevitable.”
Put “mis” in front of fortune and replace “Chanel No. 5”with
“cancer”, and you have the harsh reality of fragrance today. I’m by no means an
expert (choosing to spend my time reading Vogue rather than medical reports),
but cancer is everywhere, and perfumes with synthetic ingredients (which
include most commercial perfumes these days) are notoriously dangerous, leading
to many serious illnesses and terminal diseases. One of the problems is that
manufacturers are not required to list the specific “ingredients” (read, chemicals)
that make up the aroma or smell, needing only to cite “fragrance”. There could
be rat poison in there for all we know! (For a more “researched” article about this issue, click
here).
This all led me to try DIY perfume. I’ve always been a bit
of a DIY-er; one Christmas I asked for a set of power-tools ... strange for a
19 year old fashion fanatic, right? Well, I’m also a perfectionist so I prefer
to do things myself to ensure they are ... well ... perfect! DIY perfume was
sadly not one of these things. Perhaps there is something to be said for the price
and composition of cancer-inducing candy-coloured bottles with expensive and
sometimes just plain weird advertising campaigns (yes, Brad, I’m talking about
you).
I started by Googling some DIY perfume recipes. Most
recommended using the basic composition of “real” perfume, i.e. unscented base
oil, scented essential oils for the top, mid and base notes of the fragrance,
alcohol (such as vodka) to help the product evaporate, and water to dilute the
oil. I spent hours in my local organic shop sniffing and smelling all the
essential oils. I couldn’t tell if I was in the store or a hobbit house, so
earthy and organic were some of the aromas. Eventually I came back to my
fragrance stalwarts – the citrus family. I’ve always been a citrus kind of
girl, and I was keen to try something with lemon, but for creativity and
originality’s sake, I thought I had better include some base and mid notes
(lemon and citruses typically being top notes). Sandalwood was quite nice, but
also quite dear (5x the price of the other oils), so I opted for its close
cousin, Cedarwood. My first batch of perfume smelled like an alcoholic hamster-raising
hippie (thanks to the vodka, and the woody “freshness” of the cedarwood).
The oil/alcohol/water balance was difficult to get right,
and I can’t say I ever mastered it. Too much oil and you’re left with a
not-so-pleasant residue on skin or clothes; too much alcohol and people start
to wonder ... too much water and the three of them won’t mix – much like
Brangelina and Jennifer Aniston circa 2005. I also had to use up far too much
of each tiny bottle of essential oil to get a fragrance beyond what only dogs
could smell. The whole process was neither easy nor economical.
On the second batch, I left out the Cedarwood, opting only
for Lemon and Mandarin, and it smelled less like hippie, more like a lemon
martini (I added more vodka, thinking that it might dilute the base oil and
create less residue, but sadly only added to the party girl vibe) ... not
really a professional smell for anyone other than a bartender/shot girl – not
the sophisticated-fashionista-meets-healthy-happy-girl-about-town fragrance I
was going for. As well, because the citrus oils are so light in their
fragrance, the lemony goodness soon wore off, not having the lasting power of
my favourite cancer causing friends (perfumes, that is ... not actual friends).
I mixed up the oils for the third batch (lemon with
lavender), with less base oil and less vodka, and ended up with a generic
grandma scent – lavender water and lemon candies. Throw in some mothballs, a
bit of crocheted patchwork and I might have pulled it off ... if I was closer
to 92 than to 29. Similar to the first two, the fragrance had no lasting power.
I added that one to the pile of “linen sprays”.
The only fragrance that really worked was just plain lemon
essential oil, diluted with a small amount of water – I suppose I’m a bit of a
purist and don’t like to overcomplicate the scents. Nature usually gives us
what we need and by mixing and mashing we destroy the simple beauty that has
existed before us and will continue to exist long after we are gone.
DIY perfume has, for now, been put on the back burner, and
I’ve opted to forgo perfume altogether in favour of trying to avoid cancer and
other such unpleasant illnesses. I’ve decided too, that on days when I get out of my pj's and into the shower, I can smell pretty sweet just being me.
GG Rating - Good for Hardcore Hippies, if anyone at all.
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