To design a fragrance it is important to first know what kind of scent you are interested in. The major categories are: floral, fougere, oriental, chypre, ozonic, gourmande with many overlapping sub categories. Using a scent profile questionnaire we can help guide your initial direction and which ingredients are most suitable. Once the fragrance direction is understood we can then design your perfume according to strength and carrier.

Using the scent profile we guide you to the ingredients most likely to be aligned with your tastes. Use your own nose to sample the raw fragrance oils and keep aside those you like. We then create a custom perfume recipe from your selection. It is perfume just for you. The formula indicates how many drops for you to mix your own perfume right there, directly into the bottle.

Once we have created a fragrance formula it is possible to use it to design your own aftershave or cologne. This is an exciting opportunity to make men’s fragrances that are truly rich and beautiful away from the constriction of marketing norms and gender clichés. It is all about you.

There are very few places where you can go to make a high quality, classically structured perfume. The Fleurage Scent Design Studio is a private by appointment suite in the Parkrise Building Surfers Paradise. It is not a retail “make your own fragrance store”. This allows us to provide uninterrupted personal attention when guiding you through how to make your own fragrance. Our location in Surfers Paradise is central Gold Coast, a few hundred meters from the beach. A beautiful opportunity to turn the one hour booking into a create your own perfume experience day.

Making natural perfume with essential oils is the traditional form of perfume making. It has a history going back thousands of years to Egypt and the Middle East. Making your own perfume with only essential oils is possible by doing simple blends. To make a classically structured perfume with balanced top notes, heart notes and base notes requires much more skill and understanding of often very precious and fickle ingredients. This is Master Perfumer level skill with botanical oils. Call us to discuss if you wish your fragrance to be purely botanical essential oils.

Mixing colognes is a similar process to the perfumes, cologne oils are the same as the high grade perfume oils we use. We find men like making cologne using modern fragrance oils with essential oils, the results are very satisfying to the contemporary palette. Sometimes more satisfying than essential oil cologne blends.

The perfume making process involves deciding on the type of scent to be made, the strength of the fragrance, (parfum extrait, parfum, eau du parfum, cologne or eau de tiolette) and its carrier. The perfume formula is the recipe for the raw juiice. For individual bottles it is measured in drops of fragrance oil. The raw juice is then added to the carrier, either PG 4 (perfumers alcohol for perfume making) or oil if you are making perfume without alcohol (oil based scents). Alcohol perfumes are then topped up with 10% water and can be ready to use after 24 hrs. Oil based perfumes need to sit for a few weeks for the oil to absorb the fragrance from the ingredients.

Stunningly beautiful fragrances can be made with essential oils. Lilac perfume, gardenia perfume, green tea perfume, jasmine perfume, rose perfume, tea rose perfume and vanilla perfume. To create classically structured perfumes that have balanced base notes, heart notes and top notes that play out over time is the traditional art of perfumery. Fleurage has an extensive range of pure botanical parfums made by our master perfumer. These are incredibly rare and are made by hand in very small batches.

The term “natural perfume” is open to various interpretations, we take it to mean perfumes made from pure botanical essential oil ingredients. Think classic European perfumery prior to the first world war. Essential oil perfume made this way is extremely rare today for a number of key reasons. The essential oils are very expensive. The quality of the ingredients varies from crop to crop and location. The oils are getting harder to secure either reliably or sometimes at all. The oils are complex structures that sometimes do not blend sucessfully with other complex oils. For these reasons most fragrances encountered today are not essential oil based. If you would like to experience this lost art please contact us at the Scent Design Studio.