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Bill Troop's avatar

Love this including the last wise sentence on marketing which is more important than ever yet surprisingly little understood. Speaking of dissection, how about making a stab at Aromatics Elixir, past and present, with its reputed 700 ingredients? Surely no nose could be expected to come to grips with that in forensic detail but even hitting the high points would be interesting to many.

Jamal's avatar

Aromatics Elixir does not have 700 ingredients.

Bill Troop's avatar

I'm sure it doesn't! But I think I'm right that the original marketing materials made that claim? Might it have been true at one time?

Jamal's avatar

Even the present product description says " combines more than 700 ingredients to create a confident, sensuous fragrance." However this has never been true, including today. The formula is not 700 lines. Now if you stick it into gas chromatography will you get 700 lines? Yes, you could, just like you would with most fragrances on the market with a sufficiently sensitive apparatus. So the claim can't be proven false in court but is totally untrue, which is a marketer's dream.

Bill Troop's avatar

I am sure you are right, and would love to hear your analysis of this perfume.

Bill Troop's avatar

Clinique's website is still making that claim, as improbable as it sounds.

Ricardo Neves's avatar

The same goes to Habanita,

600 ingredients claim

Bill Troop's avatar

Interesting! Could this be because several complex bases were used? (something like, one line, containing 50 ingredients?)

Jamal's avatar

I think this is fictitious as well.

Bill Troop's avatar

I am sure you are right. After all, even if these scents were had several bases in their composition (and that surely is improbable), how on earth did you get to 500 or 600 or 700? If the claims were true, I would love to meet the nose who could tell if one of the ingredients was missing. Quality control would be inconceivable, no?

Jamal's avatar

These old fragrances would have had bases in them but even flattening the formula, to get to 600 would be improbable as you have overlap between bases and the formula. Moreover, a GCMS does not indicate 600 individually dosed materials.