Perfumery Radar 2.0: A Step toward Fragrance Design and Classification

Abstract

Product design and engineering is one of the novel paradigms of the 21st century, aiming for the development of novel added-value products for consumers. Its application to the fragrance business for the purpose of enhancing the design and performance of perfumed products is of prime interest because nowadays three-fourths of consumer goods contain fragrances in their composition. Furthermore, fragrance design and classification is still performed on a trial-and-error basis which consequently increases products' time to market and consumption of raw materials. The Perfumery Radar methodology was developed in the recent past as a tool for fragrance design and classification with predictive capabilities. In this study, we extend it to the Perfumery Radar 2.0, which uses typical olfactory families used by the industry but also introduces outer and inner layers for a detailed description of the odor space of fine fragrances. Furthermore, we fully validated this methodology with sensorial classifications of perfumers using several formulated fragrances with known compositions and physicochemical properties with very good predictive accuracy. Finally, and for the first time, we applied the Perfumery Radar 2.0 to 36 commercial fragrances differing in gender (feminine, masculine, and unisex) and covering the odor space. Correlations between olfactory families or odor descriptors with gender trends as well as with richer olfactory families such as chypre and fougere were also derived.