The main studies have been based at the Charles University in Prague by Dr Jan Havlicek
, who is going to be presenting her findings about how fragrances such as perfume and aftershave influence behaviour at a conference in London next week.
Research on this factor was carried out by asking twelve volunteers to spray a perfume that they had personally chosen into one of their armpits, and another perfume chosen at random by someone else into the other one, and were then swabbed.
The fragrances were then graded by a panel of 21 women, and it was found that the perfumes that the panel decided were the most pleasant were consistently the ones that the subjects had chosen for themselves as opposed to those randomly chosen. This further enhances the fact that if women purchase fragrances for themselves, then they are far more likely to enjoy using them.
The conference that will be taking place in London next week is organised by the International Fragrance Association, and will be expected to present a wide range of new information from this most unique industry, with perfume and aftershave the main topics of discussion.
Dr Havlicek commented that:
Perfumes have been used by people for thousands of years and the prevailing view has been that this was to mask our natural body odour to make us smell more attractive. In fact, what we have found is there is a strong individual interaction between perfume and body odour. People choose fragrances to complement their own odour. It is probably why buying Dkny Perfume as a gift is so difficult and why they end up lying in the bathroom not being used
Another academic high flyer who will be commenting on this situation is Professor Tim Jacob from Cardiff University, who is also an expert in smell. He noted that that perfumes and other fragrances could potentially end up being impacted by our immune system. He commented that:
Our own personal body odour is determined by our immune system. Indeed we tend to be attracted to the smell of people who have different immune systems to ourselves and we don't like the smell of those who have a similar immune system. This makes sense from a biological point of view as it has obvious advantages for our children who would inherit genes that give a combination of both immune systems. There is statistical correlation that shows there is a link between our immunotype and our fragrance preference. It seems that you chose the perfume that reflects your immune system.