Sarasota Herald-Tribune - Jun 7, 1975
Being a woman, a perfume chemist and a registered pharmacist, careers often dominated by men, Nancy Hayden has given a lot of thought to what makes a fragrance a success when you wear it. She comes up with some new ideas that are helpful in the present economy. “At perfume counters, women may try a number of scents and then decide on one they want to buy more or less on the spur of the moment.”
“Instead they should wait until the perfume evaporates after it is put on a pulse point. It takes about 10 minutes for the “top note” to evaporate, the first notes the olfactory senses pick up. Then you get the middle of the perfume and after about one hour the real perfume comes through,” she explained.
Then too, he says, if you are blonde, you have fewer oils in your skin so the lighter perfumes tend to lift off your skin better then, say, oriental-type perfumes which are heavier. Oriental scents and heavier florals woodsy or mossy notes are better for brunettes. In warmer weather there s more interest in lighter, citrusy scents with “green” airy top notes. Heavier scents with more base notes are likely to have more appeal in winter, she observed.
Some years ago, Mrs. Hayden originated a highly successful musk perfume by adding a “top note”, the first olfactory sensations that the nose picks up. She is fragrance director of Jovan.
“Musk is very difficult to smell. What happens to most musk users is their olfactory sense is desensitized. They cannot smell it on themselves,” she says.
“People often write us that they have been buying musk for years but can no longer smell it. But it is really always here creating an aura.”
One of her biggest challenges has been brewing scents for men, who are turned on, she says, by “animal scents and sweet vanilla-like notes.” The most successful men’s fragrances have incorporated sweetness, she claims. But men are not too sure of their own preferences and often choose “what is selling.”
“The most important thing in the man’s fragrance is to include notes that appeal to women., she says. “A man wants you to know he is wearing a fragrance.”
She thinks women wear perfume basically for their own enjoyment. It serves to fill out the wardrobe. But most women do not have definite taste in fragrance. If they can smell the perfume they are satisfied. Often they will choose it because it smelled good on another woman., definitely the wrong way to select perfume, Mrs. Hayden says, because “ it must suit one’s own skin chemistry.”
We live in an age when fragrances should be recognized by the olfactory senses. Somebody else should pick up a discernable quality. We want our good taste noticed in everything we wear.
In concocting perfumes the concept often precedes the fragrance, she says, although they put together a grass oil because “ a green trend is here,” one reason we hear so much about green in scents.
She tries not to duplicate what has been done in the trade. On the other hand she must, ask herself whether “this is a masterpiece but will not have universal appeal.” She had worked for perhaps nine months on one fragrance and one week before production the company decided not to manufacture it, she says. She wanted them to wait a while “but nobody wants to create and wait. They want initial sales returns.”
Of the classic florals, lilac is the best seller, she says, with lily of the valley a close second and modern flowers, third. Flowers that can be identified are far more popular than mixed flowers which have an uncertain identification in her opinion.
Mrs. Hayden, 32, blonde and beautiful, is married to an eye doctor. She was graduated from University of Illinois College of Pharmacy and received her degree in chemistry from the University of Cincinnati. She worked in pharmacy while attending college but found that though “the hours were great, there was no place to go as a pharmacist unless you owned your own store.”
On the other hand, industry has always fascinated her and she wanted to team her technical skills with marketing.
