Showing posts with label articles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label articles. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 1, 2021

My Cultural Path: The Making of a Perfume Historian

 

I suppose it was all pre-mapped out for me in a way, but like Indiana Jones famously said “there’s no X marking the spot.” I found the way to being a perfume historian while enjoying myself.  

Thus begins my autoethnography article for The Autoethnographer, a new publication which focuses on how I mapped out a path for myself combining historical and archeological studies with perfumery. Dr.Marlen Harrison invited me in an interview to describe my fragrant beginnings and the cultural axis on which my olfactory impressions were formed.


In narrative inquiry we come across subjects shaping the matter through their own “digestion” of facts, so to speak. It’s a very interesting approach to fragrance especially, because beyond the scientific facts, which can only be unlocked with gas chromatography and a mass spectrometer, personal tales give a more telling and more engaging sense of what any perfume is about.

 

Personally, and I might be wrong, I do not believe that it is even possible to entirely exclude one’s own approach to inquiry. There can be no author-evacuated history, because the historian is a product of their own times, they belong to a school of methodology, etc. This is why history is not an exact science like chemistry, but it is also what makes it fascinating; it’s different reading different books.

One is always in motion with history, events of the past are in a constant interaction with the present. 

 These lived experiences are hard to shake off. And they do tend to come up whenever I think of smells, because they inform my perception, so in that sense they become autoethnographic. When I smell a purely “American” perfume I tend to expect something clean and impressive in terms of claiming an area of a square foot around the wearer. When I think of Far Eastern scents I expect the woody and airy incense of the temples of those regions, or of the humid jungle seeping into the mix. Sometimes the final impression is juxtaposed with those primal expectations, so the aesthetic approach in writing follows two paths, one of fruition and one of refusal.


Please read my entire piece here on the Autoethnographer. 


Sunday, February 15, 2009

The Real Nose: Interesting Article involving Luca Turin and MIT

According to the Perfumer & Flavorist magazine, Flexitral Inc. and MIT will be in collaboration to Create the “Real Nose”.
"Flexitral Inc. (Chantilly, Virginia) will provide a principal investigator, founder Luca Turin, to the MIT RealNose project funded by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). According to DARPA, “The key to the program concept is that by simulating the entire mammalian olfactory system (from air intake to pattern recognition), revolutionary detection capabilities will be created. The primary goal is to create a more advanced model of the e-nose, one that can detect specific substances at increased distances and with higher accuracy (essentially, to be as reliable as a dog).” The program will utilize Turin’s well-publicized “vibration” theory of olfaction".

The full article appeared on the Jan 14th issue of Perfumer & Flavorist magazine.

Saturday, December 31, 2005

Articles/ Discussion index

2007 fragrances round-up: what makes for the popular vote?
2007 and 13 honest & cynical musings
Allergies and Perfume: Your Scent is giving me the hives/allergies/a migraine/asthma
A perfume for Sirens
Art by Women: an Equal Opportunity Manifestation?"
Art Revered for the Sake of Reverence?
Art in perfumery: an essay
Art in perfumery part deux
Average Person vs. Perfumista
Back to the Future (of Fragrance this time)
Beautiful Bottles in time for Christmas 2006
Best of the next: what lies ahead
Chic: perfumewise, that is!
Colour of the juice: delivering more hints than you thought
Continuing the saga: what future of perfumery?
Cult of the Celebrity scent: fragrance history
Dirty Secrets of the Grey Market and Fakes
Eau Flirt: Can a Perfume Make you Appear More Attractive?
Economic Crisis? What Economic Crisis?
End of Ebay sales
Experiement to put an itchy rash on the butt of science
Famous people on the wedding day and their scent: Eva Longoria
Gimmick or Innovation and at what price?
Givaudan iPerfumer application:  Cutting-edge or demystifying?
Glorious Stink: why smelling dirty is not as you imagined
Hope for the average perfume buyer (still)
How far can one's allegiance to a brand go? (vis a vis the Galliano/Dior case)
How many of you have been wearing less than a dollar perfume?
How much can the niche fragrance market bear?
Is Perfume Political? You bet!
"It smelled so good and now I'm not loving it as much!": on Perfume Reformulations
It's the end of the world as we know it
Jacques Polge for Chanel
La Parfumeuse Chauve (the bald perfumista): a play in three acts
Lies and Misdemeanors
Luxury Market amidst the Recession & Other Bedtime Stories
Mitsouko death...
"Noir" in Fragrances: The Power & the Mystique
Old Lady vs. Older Woman: the Perfume Wars
Perfume appreciation and the Quest for objective beauty
Perfume and the Perfumed: When Icon& Fragrance delightfully clash
Perfume in Public Places: etiquette or paranoia?
Perfume preferences & How Body Chemistry can Affect Fragrance
Perfumery Restrictions and Why Everything we Say in Public Matters
"Put all the perfume you want on a smelly beggar, it will spoil the perfume" Seriously?
Powdery and Dry in relation to Perfume
Rich people: what do they smell of?
Quest for the great dry citrus
Rest in Peace Jacques Helleu
Sally sells sea "sel" at the sea shore
Season specific fragrance wardrobe and Rotate your fragrance so you don't stop smelling it: Fact/fiction?
Sex and the parfum
She's only got 2 and a half expressions for Pete's sake!
Should we or shouldn't we say "You Stink!"
Signature fragrance: Its indefinable allure
Soapy Fragrances: More than Just a Matter of Clean
"Stop Dousing with Musky Perfume" (from Facebook)
Take it back
The Guerlain Conundrum
The Origins of the Olfactory Theory of Shape?
The politics of perfumery: Jean-Paul Guerlain makes a faux-pas
Top 13 Worst Perfumes? Come again?
Too Many Launches? Some perfume history
Romancing the Scent: part 1, part 2
Valentine's Preparation: Movie and a Fragrance
War of the worlds: natural vs. synthetics
When someone usurps your signature fragrance
What fragrance would these Oscar winners wear?
What type of perfume collector are you?
Who are we wearing perfume for, really?
Who is questioning the Guide?
Why crusading against perfumery restrictions is an exercise in omphaloscepsis
Why do perfumes smell the same?
Why do French (and Europen) people grow up to love scents,  while Americans don't (social anthropology)
Yes, but is it original?

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