Let’s Enfleurage!

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You must consider many variables when you're trying to determine the proper amount of fixative to add to each bottle of alcohol. Variables such as: [1] how completely you deodorized the fats before exposing them to the flower petals, [2] how much fragrance the plucked petals emitted, [3] how much of the scent the fats absorbed, and [4] how often and how thoroughly you shook each bottle during the three months of dark storage.

A good general rule of thumb is the addition of three or four drops of fixative to every half cup of perfume. Try this with a single bottle of scented alcohol, then use the resulting perfume for a few days. Did it evaporate too quickly? If so, try a bit more fixative, Is the floral bouquet dulled or overpowered by the fixative's scent? In that case, add more scented alcohol to the perfume to dilute the fixative (and, next time, use less of the fixative to begin with).

Trial and error is the best—if not the only—way to learn the proper fixative/perfume ratio.

PRINCE MATCHABELLI, MOVE OVER

There you have it: You've actually made a French perfume in your own kitchen, with flowers from your own garden! And except for a few absurdly expensive essences obtained from civet, musk, and ambergris (which are used to impart greater diffusiveness to the final scent), your homemade Chanel differs little in composition from the elaborately packaged offerings of France's finest perfume houses.

There is one thing, in fact, that your perfume can give you that no department store's product can: namely, the satisfaction which comes from knowing that your one-of-a-kind fragrance came out of your kitchen, your garden, and—perhaps most important—your imagination ... and for only four cents an ounce!

MAXINE B. McCLAIN:

Far from being an arcane art, enfleurage—a centuries-old method of making perfume—is something that nearly anyone can do at home right now! It's easy, it's inexpensive, and (as folks who've tried it know) it's "just plain fun"! Maxine McClain tells you how.

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