Perfumes and seduction: love in a bottle?

Coco Chanel liked to say: "Without perfume, women have no future." A joke that hits the nail on the head as far as seduction is concerned. Indeed for experts, it's obvious that perfumes have just one purpose: to lead us by the nose!

By Muriel Picard . 15/03/01

From olfaction to affection

What turns our heads, awakens our emotions, revives memories of a past love? Nine times out of ten, it's a smell that simply happens into our lives. Out of the five senses, smell is indeed the one that best memorizes anything that concerns our feelings. There is nothing extraordinary about it, we're genetically programmed that way!

A prehistoric reflex

When a smell approaches our olfactory receptors, it excites the most primitive zones of our brains, known as the limbic system. Then it triggers a purely biological reaction of pleasure or repulsion. This ability to identify instinctively which things or beings we should stay away from has allowed us since the dawn of time, not only to increase our chances of survival, but to secure a lineage, as we capture the famous pheromones, or olfactory messages released in the air by the opposite sex.

Fatal attraction... Oriental style

n order to increase their power of seduction, human beings strive to adorn their body odor (or to mask the more unpleasant sides of it) with scents stolen from nature. Flowers, spices, precious woods... everything, or nearly, has been explored by perfum designers. But when it comes to attracting our nighbors (everywhere but in Asia where they have an entirely olfactory repertory) - sensuous fragrances are the best: Shalimar by Guerlain, Opium by Yves Saint Laurent, Obsession by Calvin Klein or Poison by Christian Dior attest to that.
In the beginning, those intoxicating trails from Egypt, Turkey and other places were created for oriental belles who wanted to get men's attention from behind their veils and shuttered windows.
Even today, those fragrances evoke a world of exciting taboos in which western women love to play! Even with jeans or classy suit, a few drops of this carnal and epicurean elixir are enough to declare loud and clear their femininity, and to hint at an unspoken promise.
As François Maisonnaud, a sociologist explains: "Because nothing can suggest sensuality better than sun and heat, and indirectly, all the raw materials that originate from torrid lands. Plus, coming from faraway lands as they do shrouds them in mystery. Enough to excite men's imagination, trigger their desire to learn and see more. In short, to dive straight into the grand old game of seduction..."

Does seduction have a gender?

While for millions of years men have aimed to conquer and have not hesitated to follow a tempting trail (on the contrary, the dangerous thrill of the unknown excites them all the more!), women have always instinctively been attracted to olfactory messages that express strength and security for them and their offspring. Despite evolution, this behavior is still firmly anchored in the collective feminine unconscious. The best way to please a woman is for a male fragrance to aim for balance, with ingredients that express men's strong, protective side. And what could be more virile than the leather, tobacco and woodsy smells that permeated our ancestors' skin? If the caveman role is a bit outmoded, the olfactory version is still fashionable. The best-seller list for men's fragrances is ample proof of that!