Subconsciously I must always have been strongly guided by my nose. At school I liked sitting in the woodworking room because of the smell of freshly planed wood and it was no coincidence that I spent a few summers working in an ice cream parlor in the aroma of coffee and vanilla. I only became aware of my love of scents when I lost my sense of smell and taste after a covid infection in November 2020. It was as if a huge shadow passed over my world. Coffee became a strange black substance, a forest a place with some trees, a new season just a shift in light and temperature.
It’s called anosmia, the absence of the sense of smell. The fact that there is only a scientific name, and not a word with which people can describe themselves, as the deaf and blind have, says something about the undervaluation of our sense of smell. In the past, the nose was often dismissed as unimportant, vulgar and animalistic. Fragrances were mainly associated with diseases such as malaria and the plague.
But even now smell is us least studied and least valued sense. In 2011 indicated a majority of young people would rather give up their sense of smell than Facebook. Many people do not realize how great the influence of smell is on our daily lives and our (mental) health. Smell is essential to taste (about 70 percent of what we taste comes through our nose), those who do not taste well can develop a disturbed relationship with food. In addition, people with anosmia often experience feelings of anxiety and depression sexual problems and according to research leads to loss of smell more often depression than blindness or hearing loss.
Caught behind a low glass, I experienced time without taste and smell. I remembered the specific smell of people and places, but as my anosmia continued, I felt gloomy, flat, and left out. Not being able to smell anything is dangerous and inconvenient, it creates a huge distance from the world to not be able to smell yourself, your home, your loved ones and your pet’s fur. Something in my brain seemed to slowly fade away. That turns out to be more or less true. The olfactory nerve is closely linked to the part of the brain that plays a crucial role in experiencing emotions and retrieving memories. Little research has been done into what long-term loss of smell does to our brains, but it is clear that those who can no longer smell miss an important sensory stimulus.
Overwhelmed by the power and layering of a scent, I cried
I was lucky. After a year, smell and taste seemed to come back in phases and there was sometimes a glimpse of the world as I knew it. After a year and a half I suddenly smelled passers-by on the street. Delicious traces of perfume that I sometimes tried to trace. It was at the same time that I received a perfume as a gift (Luna Rossa Black, Prada). Overwhelmed by the power and layering of a scent, I cried. It was like opening a window in my head. Even when my gloom disappeared, I kept smelling the perfume again and again. It became the beginning of an obsession.
A bottle with a mixture of fragrances dissolved in alcohol, increasing in fragrance concentration (from eau de cologne, eau de toilette, eau de parfum to parfum), until recently that was all I knew about perfume. Now I keep smelling bottles even in my dreams. I spent hours on sites like fragrantica.com and parfumo.com, where users compare perfumes to songs, movie characters, or historical or non-historical figures. Anonymouse: “I can’t prove it but if Napoleon had worn this at Waterloo he would have won!” (Habit Rouge, Guarlain). MartinD28: “As if you are standing next to a drunk man in a church choir.” (Bentley For Men Intense, Bentley)
A new world, all about the pleasure of fragrance: I didn’t know it existed. In addition to smell, the language of that world also fascinates. Or rather: the lack of language. Where we can still reasonably organize and describe colour, taste and music, we often feel in the dark when describing a scent. A fragrance always has the name of the object it comes from. This makes our fragrance palette inadequate. In his book The language of taste (2019) writer Reinier Spreen gives the example of a banana. You can name its color, describe its basic taste and mouthfeel, but the smell? Nothing smells more like a banana than a banana. It makes new combinations of scents difficult to name. Because what does something smell like if you can’t identify it? You quickly end up with comparisons and borrowed terms from other senses. Truumax: “This is a vampire for me. Not Dracula, rather the vampire family in Twilight. Mysterious, dark, somewhat evil, but generally not unsympathetic.” (Noir de Noir, Tom Ford)
Just like with people, you have to hang out with each other for a while before you know if you want to continue together
But even with a precise language, an odor experience remains subjective. Our associations with smells are learned, culturally determined and linked to positive and negative memories. Hundreds of videos and reviews together can never describe a scent as you experience it. For example, one person writes of one of my favorite perfumes: “Disgusting, screeching, disgusting stuff that scorches your nose hairs!” (Encre Noire, Lalique) and smells a musk perfume that many people recommend as if I’m wrapping a dead beaver around me (Original Musk, Kiehl’s). Purchasing a perfume based on descriptions is getting married to a stranger. A bad buy hurts. Once opened, a bottle can no longer be exchanged in the store and in the event of resale, in most cases it is only worth half of its purchase value.
Smell before you buy something. That sounds logical, but not everything is for sale in a physical store and retailers are sparing with samples. Many collectors offer a few milliliters of their own bottles on the marketplace. This kind decanters ordering – small glass or plastic atomizers neatly wrapped in bubble wrap for shipping – is by far the best way to get to know a perfume. Just like with people, you have to hang out with each other for a while before you know if you want to continue together. Many scents develop on the skin: a difficult acquaintance can still grow into a great love, and exactly what seemed charming at the start can turn against you in the long run.
I tried about two hundred decants. Designer perfume from fashion houses to car brands, cheapies, classics and niche fragrances (from exclusive and more experimental perfume houses). I immersed myself in different perfumers, notes and fragrance types.
I learned that perfume can be much more than a strong, sweet or masculine touch, that it can confuse, amaze and move you. I smelled old woods, wet stones, the perfect apple pie, macarons, I smelled my school’s woodworking room. I didn’t smell better, but I did become more experienced, more critical and I learned to recognize well-known synthetic scent notes. Ambrox is the replacement for ambergris, aldehydes that tingly, soapy experience of Chanel N°5, calone is that watery, melony note that made Issey Miyake famous in the 1990s with his L’Eau D’Issey.
Fragrances may be absolute chaos, but a perfume is not. It’s music for the nose. It is not for nothing that the ingredients are called nuts and the result is called a composition. Leather, earth, herbs, incense, tea, tobacco, fruits, peels, spices: each note can be used to accentuate or deepen that composition. It takes some (self) research to find out which nuts there are and what you like and don’t like. The gummy resin galbanum, for example, or vetiver, a grass with long roots that gives many perfumes the smell of hay or wet earth.
Am I a macaron or a hinoki forest?
Recognizing those notes loose in a perfume mixture is difficult, if not impossible, for an amateur. Molecules that together make a new smell quickly form a noise in our brain. Language and marketing must give us something to hold on to by providing that noise with an identity. The presentation, the color and the name control our fragrance experience. The design of the bottles should seduce us in the store. From sterile, laboratory-like bottles (Le Labo) to torsos (Jean Paul Gaultier) and lacquered pumps (Carolina Herrera). Designer perfume is often still classified by gender (who smells blind is remarkably often wrong), the world of niche fragrances is almost entirely unisex. A scent is a scent, you can decide for yourself whether it suits you.
But what suits you? Am I a macaron or a hinoki forest? Do I have a fresh, warm, or spicy personality? Classy, mature, sophisticated, all words that often pass by in perfume descriptions. Who doesn’t want to smell sophisticated and sophisticated? BigJarOfHoney: “I feel rich wearing this, I immediately curl up in a leather armchair, pour myself a drink, write poetry and want to go duck hunting!” (1899 Hemingway, Histoires de Parfums).
If we are to believe the perfume commercials, we use perfume to convey social status and smelling good is especially seductive to others. Yet it is a misconception that fragrances are bought solely to decorate and please others. People who are more aware of smell mainly buy their perfume for themselves. To bring a loved one closer again, for example, to feel at home, to relax, to sleep better. Perfumes are sorted by color, outfit, occasion, mood, weather and season. Users aim their bottles at pillows, sheets, bags, chairs, sofas, on the internet I saw a woman perfume her books for a more intense reading experience.
Since I can smell again, my life has acquired an extra dimension that I no longer take for granted. Smell brings you into essential contact with your environment. It is atmosphere, emotion and intimacy. In addition, it is a powerful time machine. Smell allows us to recall places we’ve been, people we’ve lost or forgotten. We let ourselves be moved by visual art, carried away by music, why not by a scent composition? A thing of beauty is a joy forever, wrote John Keats. I cannot prove it, but the poet must have perfumed himself before he wrote those famous words.
Image Janine vanOene – veggies.