The paradoxical business of celebrity fragrances is well documented: Forbes reported that the top 10 celebrity perfumes of 2010 brought in over $215 million in sales in large part from "built-in fan bases that often want to buy the perfume regardless of how it smells."
But it appears famous perfumers like Elizabeth Taylor, Derek Jeter, and Beyonce may have to tweak their scent-selling strategies in light of a new study suggesting favorite smells are determined in part by a human's genetic makeup, MyHealthNewsDaily reported.
"Many people judge [perfumes] in terms of packaging and marketing and not what smells they like," said August Hammerlich, first author of the study which was published online in the International Journal of Cosmetic Science. "Our idea was to bring biology into this question and ask: Can we determine what perfume scents a person would like based on their genotype?"
Hammerlich's perfume study drew on previous research on the connection between smell and sexual attraction, MyHealthNewsDaily reported. Evolutionary biologists found that a certain set of genes known as MHC genes help decide which people are attracted to each other's scents. Two people with dissimilar MHC genes enjoyed each others' scents more than did two people with similar MHC genes- an evolutionary adaptation meant to discourage closely-related animals from mating.
Hammerlich and his team of researchers hypothesized that the same genes might partially determine a person's preference for perfume as well. To explore that possibility, they asked 116 study participants to smell and rate different combinations of scents commonly found in perfumes. Their conclusion? How much a person enjoyed a scent was related to his particular set of MHC genes.
The evolutionary significance of liking one perfume over another is still unclear, Hammerlich said, but it's possible that people choose perfumes that enhance their own natural body odors. Nevertheless, the study is a new breakthrough in a long line of research dedicated to discovering how people's scent preferences are informed and the implications of these preferences to reproduction and evolution.
Back in 1995, Swiss Zoologist Claus Wedekind discovered that scent preferences as determined by MHC gene makeup is linked to the immune system, MyHealthNews Daily noted. In his now-famous "sweaty T-shirt experiment," he asked college-age women to smell T-shirts worn for three days by men sans deodorant or cologne. He discovered that the women preferred T-shirts worn by men with dissimilar MHC genes, and therefore dissimilar immune systems, because markers on the MHC molecule control the immune system response.
But studies that link reproductive compatibility to having dissimilar MHC genes still have a long way to go, scientists say. In Wedekind's T-shirt study, for example, one group of women in particular-- those who were taking the birth control pill -- didn't prefer T-shirts from men who had dissimilar MHC genes.
And of course, psychologist Rachel Herz noted in Psychology Today, there are much larger forces than smell at work in human reproduction.
"If she's in love, he could smell like a garbage can and she'd still be attracted to him."