Luxury Perfume Industry

Today we had a long day of class 8am-5:30pm. We haven’t had a 8am class in a while and totally underestimated how long it would take to bus in morning traffic! Whoops. I learned that one of the most expensive ingredients for luxury perfume is grey amber. From what I understand grey amber (aka ambergris) is formed in the stomachs/ digestive systems of sperm whales and is composed of the hard shells of shrimp and other sea creatures. Basically anything the whale has a hard time digesting gets stuck in a ball in their stomach and ages over its life. It is very expensive and difficult to acquire because sperm whales are protected and no longer widely hunted.

We also learned about the various ways perfumers perform fragrance extraction, such as using solvents, fats, distillation, etc. I never thought of perfumers as chemists, but chemistry is vital to their work. They must be experts in the reactions of chemicals and their effects on scent. Pretty cool stuff!

At night we went and got snacks from Carrefour city market and had a movie night with Sabrina. We watched a pre-teen movie from the 2000’s called Wild Child.