When did perfume become so expensive?

If you want to spend £2000 these days evoking and recreating memories of the warm salty breeze you experienced in the Seychelles, you can! If you have the money, there’s a nuanced fragrance to suit everyone and every memory you’ve ever had. You can even commission your own personal “privee” fragrance.

Imagine owning a scent that is totally exclusive to you?

It used to be that you could grab a bottle of designer perfume for around the £65 mark but these days, fragrance definitely doesn’t fall into the stocking filler category. Perfume is a considered purchase with all the major fashion houses creating private blends. From Louis Vuitton to Prada, Yves Saint Laurent to Tom Ford, they’ve all tapped into the luxury fragrance market.

Ask for something by Clive Christian, Caron, Jean Patou, or Annick Goutal and you could be paying up to $12,000 per ounce! Damn, you’re going to want to smell sexy at that price! Typically that’s because they contain rare and exotic ingredients. Plus let’s face it, the packaging is usually pretty fancy too! Always a

sucker for some pretty packaging!

Just why is perfume so pricey?

The more exclusive and difficult the exquisite ingredients are to extract, the higher the price tag.

The key driver isn’t marketing or packaging (although those do have an undeniable part to play). It’s the ingredients. Containing rare flowers and essences of unusual roots from around the globe, the scarcity of an element, significantly adds to its value.

We already mentioned Jean Patou. When the brand’s Joy fragrance was released in 1930, it became the world’s most expensive fragrance. It takes 10,600 jasmine flowers and 28 dozen Bulgarian roses that can only be harvested in May to make

just one bottle of this intoxicating scent.

Luxury ingredients prized in the perfume industry.

The below ingredients are highly prized and coveted by consumers and fragrance ateliers, so look out for these if you fancy adding something decadent to your fragrance wardrobe.

Oud - you might be surprised to learn that Oud is extracted from agarwood that is infected with a specific type of mold!

Bulgarian Rose - handpicked in May from one specific valley in Bulgaria, this ingredient has been cultivated for centuries.

Jasmine - did you know that it takes around 240,000 handpicked jasmine flowers to create just one ounce of essential oil?

Orris - currently, one of the rarest perfume ingredients you can get your hands on, it’s extracted from the root of the iris.

Ambergis - derived from the intestines of a sperm whale, this waxy like substance is highly prized.

With million-dollar A-List celebrity marketing endorsements, adverts that cost as much as movies to produce and some bottle designs that boast diamonds and solid gold detailing today’s luxury perfumes are the ultimate status symbol.

You could say that they smell of money!

So if you want to feel and smell like a million bucks, it’s time to splash the cash and invest in a new signature scent.

Leave a comment below and let us know what's your current favourite scent.

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