Photo: Fenella Wells / Flickr

It’s always a difficult job choosing perfume for somebody else, especially when one considers the cost involved. But now scientists can explain why it is that we have so much trouble finding a fragrance that is perfectly matched to a significant other. New research shows that people are drawn to scents that complement their own natural body smells. It turns out that it is almost impossible to decide on the correct product for another but then, it works perfectly well if one chooses perfume for oneself.

Suit yourself

The latest research suggests that those who choose their own perfume become more attractive to the opposite sex. Generally speaking, fragrances aren’t chosen to hide natural body smells – they are chosen to work with one’s own unique smell.

Dr Jan Havlicek of Charles University in Prague told the Sunday Telegraph 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.’

He went on to say that the facts are quite different: ‘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 perfume as a gift is so difficult and why they end up lying in the bathroom not being used.’

Dr Havlicek’s study

During Dr Havlicek’s study , 12 volunteers sprayed a personally chosen perfume onto one of their armpits. Another randomly chosen perfume was then sprayed onto the other armpit. A panel of 21 women was then asked to judge the swabs taken from each armpit.

What was found was that the women consistently favoured the perfume that had been personally chosen by the individuals in question.

Immune response

A taste and smell expert from Cardiff University, Professor Tim Jacob, suggests that one’s immune system has a role to play in what fragrance is chosen. That’s because people seem to be attracted to the smell of those who have different immune systems to their own.

‘This makes sense from a biological point of view as it has obvious advantages for our children who would inherit a combination of both immune systems,’ he was quoted as saying in The Daily Mail.

Tags: fragrances