Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English. The show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
I'm Alastair Badge and today we are going to be talking about the history of perfume. It's a curious story that takes us from ancient Mesopotamia to the Middle East, from southern France to airport terminals so I hope you'll enjoy it but before we get right into today's episode I want to remind you that you can become a member of Leonardo English and follow along with the interactive transcript and subtitles over on the website which is LeonardoEnglish.com
Membership of Leonardo English gives you access to more than double the number of episodes, plus all of our learning materials, including instant translations in 12 languages, study packs and much, much more. So, if you are ready to take the next step on your English learning journey, the place to go is leonardoenglish.com. Okay then, let's get right into it and talk about the history. perfume. As any language learner knows, some words are best left in their original version, not translation.
This is certainly true with French, a language people have long associated with beauty, sophistication and elegance. And perhaps nowhere is it more true than when it comes to French words relating to something that France is rightfully very proud of. Perfume. Take, for example, the small town in southern France that is the perfume capital of the world.
A name that evokes the fields of lavender and jasmine used in the world's finest fragrances. But if you translate it into English, well, grasse just means fat. And what about the title given to the greatest perfumers, the masters of scent, the artists who create the most luxurious fragrances in the world? In French, they are called grand nez, which means great nose. Or, if you are being particularly uncharitable, you might translate it as big nose.
We'll come to learn more about what it takes to become a big nose, or rather a gourmet, later on in the episode. But first, we must wind the clocks back and talk about the early days of perfume. And these early days were early indeed. The tradition of creating a scent and either covering your body in it or spraying it around a room goes back much further than modern France, further than Rome, and even further than the pyramids of Egypt.
Some of the earliest evidence of creating scent dates back more than 4,000 years to Mesopotamia in modern-day Iran. And from the very beginning, it had two purposes. The first was ritualistic. People burned aromatic resins, woods and spices as offerings to their god. The idea was simple. If something smelled heavenly, it was probably appreciated by the heavens. The other, well, it was for a far more practical reason.
Today, we live in a world where most people have showers in their houses, soap is cheap, deodorant is everywhere, and there really is no valid reason to not wash yourself regularly. But clearly, this is a relatively modern phenomenon. Go back a few centuries, or even just a hundred years, and the world was a much smellier place. Without modern hygiene, strong body odours were just a part of life.
Sweat, unwashed clothes, the lingering scent of livestock or open sewage in the streets. It was all unavoidable. The world was just smelly. And so perfume wasn't just about smelling nice. It was about covering up reality. So, how were these early perfumes created? Well, the process was not too dissimilar to modern perfume making. They would extract the fragrant oils from flowers, resins and spices and distill them to leave only the best smelling scent.
These scents were often used as religious offerings, both being burned in temples and with priests dousing themselves with them during ceremonies. Scents like frankincense and myrrh, which you might remember as being gifts the three kings brought to the baby Jesus. But perfume wasn't just for the gods. It was also for the living. A way to have pleasant scents that followed you everywhere you went.
And perhaps nowhere was this more true than in ancient Egypt, where perfume became a serious status symbol. For the Egyptians, scent was as important as gold or fine clothing. The wealthy bathed in perfumed oils, covered their wigs in fragrant wax, and carried scented cones on their heads that would melt throughout the day, slowly releasing pleasant aromas. One theory about why perfume became particularly popular in Egypt is one that you might have guessed
Egypt is hot. A burning desert sun. Long, sweaty days. And like everywhere else in the ancient world, no soap, no deodorant, and no running water. Sure, as a wealthy and status-seeking Egyptian, you might have had people fanning you down and carrying you around in a chariot so you didn't have to break a sweat. But if you wanted to avoid smelling too much like an overworked donkey, perfume was essential. And even the dead wore perfume.
The mummification process involved covering bodies in frankincense, myrrh, and aromatic oils, not just for preservation, but so that the dead would smell divine in the afterlife. And then, of course, there was Cleopatra. She is said to have been obsessed with perfume. When she sailed to meet Mark Antony, so the legend goes, she had the sails of her boat soaked in perfume so that long before he saw her, he could smell her.
It's a dramatic story, perhaps not one based in any historical truth, but it is also a clever reminder of the power of sense. to create an impression, to seduce and to linger in someone's mind long after you've left the room. By the way, if you'd like to learn more about the fascinating life of Cleopatra, episode 461 is the one for you. But if the Egyptians perfected the art of perfume, the Romans took its use to the extreme.
Romans bathed in scented waters and doused their clothes, furniture, and even their horses in fragrance. Some even had perfume fountains at their extravagant banquets, spraying scented mist over their guests. And, of course, perfume had a very practical function in rum, because, once again, people smelled bad. Public baths helped, but let's not forget that Roman cities had open sewers, unwashed togas, and streets filled with animals.
If you are wealthy, you covered yourself in perfume to stand apart from the sweaty, unwashed In fact, perfume became so popular in Rome that it started to be imported from all over the world. Arabian myrrh, Indian cinnamon, and North African flowers. It was a booming industry, and the average Roman senator's daily perfume consumption would probably even put a member of the Kardashian family to shame.
But with the fall of the Roman Empire, perfume's prominence faded in much of Europe, at least for a while. While Europe forgot about perfume for several centuries, the Middle East became its new home. During the Islamic Golden Age from the 8th to the 13th centuries, Arabic and Persian scientists revolutionized the way perfumes were made.
They perfected distillation, which is a technique that allowed for the extraction of pure concentrated scents and is still a method used in modern perfume making. And from here, from the Middle East, the knowledge of perfume spread back into Europe. carried along trade routes from the Middle East to Italy, Spain, and to the country that would become the spiritual home of perfume, France.
If you were to ask someone today which country is most associated with perfume, the answer would almost certainly be France. And it is a well-deserved reputation. Because while the Romans indulged in excess and the Middle East perfected the science, it was in France that perfume became an art form. But why France? And why Grasse, the small town you heard about at the start of the episode, that still calls itself the perfume capital of the world?
Well, strangely enough, it all comes down to leather gloves. In the 16th century, grass was famous for its glove-making industry. But there was one problem. They smelled terrible. This was real leather, made from the skin of dead cows. And as anyone who has ever spent any time at a tannery will know, the process of making leather smells very bad. So, local artisans began scenting the gloves with floral extracts to mask the unpleasant odor, to hide the nasty smell.
This small innovation led to a huge transformation. The demand for scented products grew, and soon, combined with increased taxes on leather, Grasse's leather industry faded away, replaced by something far more profitable. Perfume. And by the time of King Louis XIV, in the late 17th and early 18th century, perfume was no longer just a luxury, it was a necessity at the royal court.
The king of France was famously obsessed with fragrance, and the halls of his palace at Versailles were filled with the smells of perfumed waters, scented gloves, and aromatic balls. At a time when bathing was still rare, perfume became a way of covering up unpleasant realities. Not just for individuals, but for entire rooms. Fountains in Versailles were filled with orange blossom water, and royal furniture was sprayed with lavender and rose extracts.
And it was during this time that the modern perfume industry began to take shape. Perfumers in Grasse and Paris began refining their distillation techniques using alcohol instead of oil to create lighter, more wearable fragrances. These would be packaged up into beautiful little bottles, not too dissimilar to the stylized bottles that perfume comes in today. And by the 18th and 19th centuries, perfume was no longer just for royalty. It was for anyone who could afford it.
Still, it was not cheap, but it became something that was available not just for a king. And this brings us to a big question. Why is perfume still so expensive? Even if you don't buy perfume yourself, you will probably have walked through the duty-free section of an airport or perhaps visited a high-end department store. And you'll know that perfume doesn't come cheap. A small bottle from a luxury brand can easily set you back 100 euros or more. And some even sell for thousands.
But if it's just smelly water, why is it so expensive? Well, this isn't a sponsored message from Chanel or the Tourist Authority of Grasse, but there are some good reasons. First, there's the cost of ingredients. Some of the world's most famous perfumes contain materials that are incredibly rare and difficult to obtain. Take, for example, oud, which is a resin produced by a particular type of tree when it becomes infected with mould.
It's one of the most expensive raw materials in the world, costing more per gram than gold. And even things that seem more run-of-the-mill, more ordinary, like jasmine and rose, which are used in many classic perfumes. thousands of petals to produce just a few milliliters of essential oil and harvesting them is a delicate time-consuming process.
And then there are the synthetic ingredients, which allow perfumers to create scents that don't exist in nature, like the smell of fresh linen or a salty ocean breeze. These molecules can be incredibly expensive to develop, and some take years of research before they're ready to be used in a commercial fragrance.
So it's not so dissimilar to some pharmaceutical drugs where the raw materials might not be expensive, but all of the research and development that goes into creating them is. So that's what you're paying for. And lest we forget, there's the branding When you buy a bottle of perfume, you're not just paying for the liquid inside, you're paying for the name, the bottle design, the advertising and the luxury experience that comes with it.
Perfume brands spend hundreds of millions on celebrity endorsements, high-profile marketing campaigns and exclusive product launches. That little bottle on the shelf has been carefully positioned to make you feel like you're not just buying a fragrance, but a piece of a glamorous world.
Of course, not all perfumes are expensive. There are plenty of more affordable options out there. But the reason some fragrances command such high prices is this combination of craftsmanship, rarity and clever marketing And behind every great perfume there's a person who created it.
The term for someone who creates a perfume is a ne, a no. And when you get to the top of your game, when you have the most highly trained nose in the world, this is when you might be given the title of un gros nez, a great nose. Now, becoming a gourmet isn't something that you or I can apply for, and it certainly isn't something that happens overnight. It takes years of training, a truly exceptional sense of smell, and an ability to create complex, layered compositions.
It isn't an official title, and there is no official list of Grands Nets, but it's thought that there are fewer than a hundred worldwide, with some estimates putting it at as little as 30. In fact, saying worldwide is a little deceptive, as most of them are in France, split between Paris and Gaza. And something that might be surprising.
is that despite the fact that most perfume has historically been made for women, the industry of being a nez, and especially the grand nez, at the very top of the profession, has traditionally been a male one. Now, this is changing. Women's perfume has gone from being around 85% of the market to 60%.
And there are more women getting involved in the business of making perfume. But it is a curiosity that it has traditionally been the noses of men that have decided what the noses of women would enjoy. Now, before we end this perfumed journey, I want to leave you with some interesting facts about the life of a name.
Firstly, although you might imagine one of these Grands Mets to always smell fantastic, and to be covered head to toe with fragrance when they come into the office in the morning, they are... They have to avoid strong smells precisely so that there is nothing interfering with their ability to detect the subtle nuances of different smells.
Secondly, and on a related point, and bucking the French stereotype, they must avoid garlic as well as other spicy foods, because they too mean that you can't differentiate as well between scents. And further defying certain French stereotypes, most gourmets also steer clear of coffee, cigarettes and alcohol for the same reason. Thirdly, apparently they do most of their hardest work in the morning.
This isn't some productivity hack, but rather that everyone's sense of smell is most sensitive in the morning. And if your job relies on your sense of smell, well, I guess it does make sense to do the most important work in the morning. And while the job might seem glamorous, it's also incredibly challenging. The competition is fierce and trends in the perfume industry change rapidly. One year everyone wants fresh citrusy scents. The next warm and woody fragrances are in demand.
A perfumer has to be both an artist and a scientist, constantly experimenting, refining and adapting. But if they succeed, their work can last for generations. Some of the most famous perfumes in history were created decades ago and are still bestsellers today. Chanel No. 5, for example, has been around for over a hundred years and remains one of the most iconic fragrances in the world.
So, the next time you walk past a perfume counter and catch a familiar scent in the air, pause for a minute to think about the journey it took to get there. From the ancient temples of Mesopotamia to the laboratories of modern perfumers. From the rarest natural ingredients to the synthetic molecules designed to mimic them. Perfume is much more than just a pleasant smell.
It's history, it's science, it's art. And above all, it's something that connects us across cultures, across time, through the power of sex.
Okay then, that is it for today's episode on the Curious History of Perfume. I hope it's been an interesting and that you've learned something new as always i would love to know what you thought about this episode for you can head right into our community forum which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious And as a final reminder, if you enjoyed this episode.
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then I'd love for you to think about leaving a review or a star rating on your favourite podcast app. It takes less than 30 seconds to do but they are super helpful and each one brings a smile You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English. I'm Alastair Bodge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.