Perfumery 101 for Children: C'est pas sorcier les parfums Lifts Taboo: Kids are Told the Real Price of Perfume {Perfume Images, Movies & Ads}

The French TV educational series for kids, C'est pas sorcier (lit. It's easy, really or Science Made Easy), devoted to explaining science to primary schoolers has a very good film on perfume as an industry and an art. It's in two episodes and features well-known figures of the trade: perfumers Jean-Claude Ellena, Francis Kurkdjian, Jacques Polge...

Ellena summarizes for instance at one point the tastes for perfume in Japan, France and the United-States in 3 key words: Discretion, Elegance and Power, respectively. A perfume meant for the US will be 10 times more concentrated than for Japan due to a cultural preference for power, he says.

Even the somewhat taboo topic of fragrance pricing is tackled head on. The show presenter explains that when you pay 100 Francs for a bottle of perfume, you pay 10 Francs maximum for the perfume itself - it could be less - the rest being budgeted for the flacon, packaging, advertising etc.

The correst gesture for harvesting May Rose, the solvent extraction process, the difference between a concrète and an absolute, the distillation and enfleurage processes in Grasse etc are among the many comprehensive features covered in this episode which lifts the veil simply and clearly on an ancient industry which is ever evolving: children watching the show will understand readily that perfumers today compose on their computer keyboard thanks to their olfactory memory using a language that is acquired like that of colors and by using both naturals and synthetics.