The Scents

Yesterday, I had this interesting conversation with Iko. Iko works for a scent-making company.Over lunch at KimGary (The Curve), we talked about this city of ours, our work but mostly as I was so interested, about what her company does. Which is to manufacture scents for companies around the world, including those big brandname ones.

I found out that the reason perfumes are expensive is because of the packaging. The box and those nice-looking bottles make the price even nicer, rather, pricier. She said that if it's just the perfume or cologne alone, it wouldn't even cost much.

Which drove me to thinking that it would be better to buy perfumes using refillable bottles. Wouldn't that be great for the environment, not to mention on our pockets? But of course, I don't think these perfume companies would like that, otherwise, they'd lose lots of Moo lah.

But what do you do with those bottles once you're done with the contents? I have discovered a long time ago (after seeing a lot of half-used bottles of perfume of my mom's languishing pathetically, all forgotten) that they just create clutter. I'm always left with the dilemma of throwing away the bottles because they are nice and I end up throwing them away, although hoping that I could find some means to recycle them but how?

Iko said that some, if not most of these bottles, are made out of real crystals. Which brings me to the point -- why have fancy bottles when it's what's inside that matters?It's like why bother to smell so good when it's what's in your heart that would make you smell like a garden of roses? Bad allegory I know. Oh and did you know that rose petals have to be picked at a particular time, otherwise, your rose-scented perfume wouldn't smell so good? They have to be picked at three o'clock in the effing morning!

Then the oranges. They must come from Florida. Only Florida. She said that for some reason, chemists swear by the oranges from Florida. Otherwise the scent would not be the same. So when those big typhoons hit Florida, you can just imagine what this meant to the industry. Shortage of citrus-based scents? Or a hike in their prices due to limited stocks?

Then there is the thing about the colours and the packaging. I told her that I don't like perfumes in purple- or dark-coloured bottles because they seem to smell the same. She explained that all that is part of the marketing too. And it's true, purple-like bottles would give you the same scent (overpowering smell if you ask me that could knock me down as I am averse to strong scents).

Just like a carefully packaged boyband or starlet, perfumes also follow the same marketing strategy. If they look like this, then they must smell like that. The only scent in a dark-coloured bottle I have liked so far is JLo's Still.

I seem to prefer scents in clear-coloured bottles. Take Clinique Happy, L'eau Par Kenzo and Philosophy's Baby Grace. Iko said Clinique is "fruity" while Kenzo is "soapy". I suspect that Baby Grace would be considered sappy, er, soapy too.

However, I'm still loyal to my favourite, BLV from Bvlgari. (yes la, i know i smell like an oldman)

How about you guys?