The lilac Enfleurage essential oil absolute has a scent that will last up to 12 hours on a paper test strip. On the skin maybe a hint is still remaining after four hours. So it is not a great long length of time. It is gentle and fleeting and creates a very intimate cloud of lilac scent in an aura around the person.
There are fixatives that may be added to the pure lilac oil, that Perfumers use to blend and make the lilac oil last longer. I can add a fixative too, but I do not do that, as my claim is that you are getting 100% real and unadulterated lilac essential oil which is extremely rare and I want to keep it pure. It is a raw material that skilled natural Perfumers can use to formulate. Most lilac products on the market are fake…either a blend of synthetics or a blend of other unrelated natural essential oils such as lily, rose, jasmine, and then a few fragrance derivatives may be used to make it smell more like lilac. Even lilac pomades of the 1900s were synthesized using styrax, benzoin, and other compounds on the fat substrate to resemble lilac pomade.
So the real thing is very different. It is a living nectar exhaled by the flowers while they are kept alive in the chassis. They cannot be crushed or pressed to extract the smell. The flowers have to breathe their scent on the fat so that it absorbs into the fat and can be extracted later into the essential oil or left as a luxurious lilac pomade. It is a wonder to me that we can capture and collect enough of these vapors to form any amount of essential oil. But we do!