You can design almost anything using a computer these days and one of the more unusual things that computer can do is to design perfumes and fragrances. Such a service has been available for some years on the Internet offered by companies in the US and UK . Although the US Company, Reflect.com no longer trades, the UK company fragrance for you ltd. is still very much in the fragrance business.

fragrance for you claim that designing your own fragrance is easy and fun to do. Visitors to the company website are invited to prove the point by entering their personality and life style details into a form and the answers entered are used as the data to drive the computer program and so derive a fragrance. When the questionnaire form is complete, it takes only two or three minutes, a description of the fragrance that has just been designed is displayed on the screen.

The process is seen by the visitor as simple and as the company claims, fun to do. Answers to the questions on the website form are translated into odour compounds there are 103 odour codes or compounds in total and the computer blends those compounds in such a way as to avoid clashes of scents which do not provide a pleasing combination. The fragrance when finished comprises the usual three notes comprising the "fragrance Pyramid" the top note or head, the middle or heart and the lower note or base. This basic form invented in 1889 has changed not at all over the years and continues to be the basis of perfume architecture today.

The top note contains the most volatile of the perfumes ingredients and this lasts no more than a few minutes before evaporating. The heart or middle note rapidly overcomes the quickly evaporating top note and comes to the forefront revealing the principle fragrance, the heart, which is supported by the base notes and which contains the longest lasting, that is the slowest evaporating oils and binds all the fragrances in combination together. The base notes may well last a day or even more while the heart note lasts perhaps three or four hours. The task then is to find a suitable description to convey in words the nature of the fragrance created. Typically this might be "ffy reference number 40597. A light fresh modern fragrance with a bergamot, cardamom, fresh pineapple and papaya top note and a white jasmin heart backed up by a musky amber accord"

Finally computer allocates the questionnaire answers into the traditional families or fragrance groups of citrus, floral, fougere, chypre, woody, amber and leather and these group words are found in the fragrance descriptions that are presented to the customer. Product quality is ensured by purchasing the fragrance oils and compounds supplied by one of the world's leading perfume houses CPL Aromas plc based in the UK who supply many of the fine fragrances found in department stores and perfume halls across the world.

The fragrance computer program is a complex piece of software capable of defining many millions of combinations of compounds. The program is now highly developed and is copyrighted to fragrance for you. The advantage of using the computer program is that it has brought the possibility of having your own fragrance design delivered in a classic style bottle named with the wearer's name and even a photograph to everyone. No longer the province of the rich and famous the computer designs are there for everyone to use and enjoy.