Should we or Shouldn't we Say "You Stink!"?

"Why can we never seem to smell ourselves? This has to be one of the greatest mysteries known to man. Back in the day, long before progress jammed us all into metal boxes on tracks and wheels and ferried us to work to spend our days in air-conditioned cubicles, the smell of fresh sweat, the perfume of cowboys and construction workers, was regarded as a signature of hard work and manly labour. Back then, when perfumes and colognes were saved for state occasions and holidays, we took the time to check. We were masters at masking a quick sniff of the armpit; experts at exhaling into a cupped hand; and adept when it came to frustrating our own flatulence." "More than a hundred years ago, American author Elbert Hubbard defined perfume as any smell used to drown a worse one. How little things have changed. Spraying deodorant or perfume or cologne on an unwashed body is about as effective as trying to collect water in a colander. It simply doesn’t work. If, as I firmly believe, we cannot smell ourselves, then we need to rely on our friends and family or even complete strangers to set us straight. But we think it rude to point out the obvious and instead suffer in silence, distancing ourselves from them, cutting conversation short. And so we become complicit in the great unwashed. [...] To tell or not to tell... that is really the question."

Thus concedes Mary Murphy on The Budapest Times. Which brings us of course full circle on many issues pertaining to personal hygiene, the perception of that hygiene based on fragrances/products used and whether there is a sound reason of letting anyone know their personal smell is foul or whether it is an absolute social no-no. Perfume, after all, was since the height of the Versailles used to mask unpleasant odours when no other solution would do in exterminating them. We have progressed from the times when George Orwell famously quipped that the social distinction in the West can be summarized in "four frightful words...the lower classes smell" (in The Road to Wigan Pier, 1937, chapter 8). He nuanced it by saying that "here, curiously enough, the Socialist and the sentimental democratic Catholic of the type of Chesterton [ed.note: seeing dirtiness as self-mortification] join hands; both will tell you that dirtiness is healthy and 'natural' and cleanliness is a mere fad or at best a uxury". Even Murphy insists "As I was growing up, the neighbouring farmer, even starched to within an inch of his life in his Sunday best, always smelled of cow manure and boiled bacon. "

Of course such social stigmata today in developed countries at least are taken to be the absolute peak of racism and bias towards specific groups and no doubt they are. After all, there is no one more insistent in deodorising the stench of manual labour by using heaps of soap or in bringing their shoes to an impeccable shine than the laborer, eager to shed the "image". The rise of "clean" fragrances (so on trend since the 1990s) could be also interpreted in the social climb-up-the-ladder in the last three decades, at least in affluent parts of the Western world, of people who would otherwise face a life on a rural environment that would involve the smellscapes they are now eschewing in favour of the exhaust, the rained upon concrete and the cubicle farm. The American urban landscape (excluding specific exceptions) in particular is not only more egalitarian, but -perhaps in accordance- more sanitized in what concerns olfactory miasmata as well. It's probably no coincidence that some of the sexiest ads on TV concern deodorants!

But is it only social attributes which present their own challenges smell-wise? In Popular Music From Vittula by Swedish author Mikael Niemi, the narrator, Matti, reminiscences about his Arctic-circle upbringing offering vignettes from his youth, for instance when he and a friend sneak into an old gym in which middle-aged women are exercising doing aerobics: "Bum sweat cascaded over blubbery backs, the air was alive with a whiff of pussy. … Women fell like two-ton bombs, lay slithering in the pools of sweat on the varnished floorboards before scrambling up on their feet again, indomitable. The room stank of marshy swamps and menopause." I can just see the sour face you're making right now, oh dear menopaused reader! And why should something so natural, so unavoidable, so -darn it!- feminine, like menopause, be linked to olfactory impressions that are of a less than pleasant or appealing nature? you ask. It shouldn't. But there you have it.

Sometimes despite our best efforts and despite every possible stigma or lack thereof, we are oblivious to the scents emanating from our own body. Both our physical smells and our added-upon scents which are largely relying on tastes, odour preferences and accumulated empirical data received through positive and negative associations from our entourage. Sometimes, we just plainly stink for whatever reason. Objectively or subjectively, assuming we're not dealing with a drama queen being irritated by our very own presence, rather than smell.... The question is: Do you tell? In polite or covert ways? And would you want to be told? In polite or covert ways? Or anything in between?

The podium is up to you!

Painting Haunting by Brian Despain.

Mapping Scentscapes: How to Do it

"Perhaps the earliest attempt to make an urban smell map dates back to Paris in the 1790s, when new ideas about both political equality and hygiene combined to send physician Jean-Noël Hallé on a six-mile odor-recording expedition along the banks of the Seine. His map-making technology consisted of nothing more than a notebook and pencil -- and, of course, his nose."

Sissel Tolaas of course doesn't merely rely on antiquated methods. In her quest to olfactorily map urban landscapes (has already mapped Paris, New York City and Mexico City and is currently working on Kansas City). Tolaas however uses Living Flower Technology in situ: Dr. Braja Mookherjee, a scientist at IFF, one of the world's largest fragrance and flavor companies. Mookherjee was obsessed with capturing the exact odor you experience when you put your nose up to, say, a living jasmine flower, rather than relying on an extract, or "absolute," as it's called in the perfumery business. In a paper (pdf) published in 1990 -- the same year IFF trademarked Mookherjee's discovery as "IFF Living Flower Technology" -- Mookherjee described his dissatisfaction with natural oils and extracts"

Writer Nicola Twilley writes in an extensive (and informative) article in the Atlantic: "My scratch-and-sniff maps show how New Yorkers' smell, rather than what. To make them, I extrapolated data from the as-yet-unpublished results of an extensive study that tested the responses of four hundred New Yorkers to sixty-six different smells over a two-year period from March 2005. The experiment was conducted by Andreas Keller and Leslie B. Vosshall at the Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior, The Rockefeller University. "Our main goal was to try to find the difference between different variants in the DNA and different ways that people rank the smells on a seven-point scale from extremely unpleasant to extremely pleasant," Keller said. "We collected our subjects' demographic information just to control for those types of influences."
Nonetheless, that demographic information revealed some fascinating and significant differences in smell perception between men and women, young and old, and different ethnicities. For my map, I chose twelve of Vosshall and Keller's most interesting test smells, from complex natural extracts such as nutmeg and vanilla to single-note synthetic molecules such as octyl acetate, which is the basis for many artificial orange flavors as well as a key ingredient in Chanel No.5."

Read more on how to map a city scent-wise following the link above.

Christophe Laudamiel on How Smell Works

How does our brain pick up scents? Fractally it seems and not even trained noses get everything at once. As acclaimed perfumer Christophe Laudamiel says:
"[Smell perception of fragrant molecules] is processed like patches, like facets. And even the best experts can smell only five to eight facets at a given time," explains Laudamiel during his Big Think interview. "For the brain to register a facet, you have to have at least several components for each facet which together are going to give this signature that then you will recognize as coffee. But you won't be able to recognize the different things that you would see in coffee. Some of them, if you take them one-by-one... smell like raw potato, another one is going to smell like smoke, another one like toasted bread, another one like earth, and et cetera." And goes on to add that when creating Aura for the Thierry Mugler coffret he composed for the issue of novel-adapting film "Perfume, Story of a Murderer", asked to recreate the scent of a virgin, "he focused on the scents of milky elements like rice and the soft and velvety scents of water lily and apricot skin. Of course, to add a little human je ne sais quoi to the fragrance, he also added an a few aldehydes, which helped to mimic the notes that our decomposing skin emits regularly".
Read the rest of the article on the Big Think link.


Pic from the film "Perfume, Story of a Murderer" via jdnightghobhadi/livjournal

The 20 Best Ever Perfumes List

The Daily Mail has devoted an article by Elsa McAlonan to a selection of the 20 best ever perfumes for women. The selection includes:

Anais Anais by Cacharel
Angel by Thierry Mugler
Beautiful by Lauder
Blue Grass by Elizabeth Arden
CK One by Calvin Klein
Classique by Jean Paul Gaultier
Coco Mademoiselle by Chanel
DKNY by Donna Karan
Eau Dynamisante by Clarins
J'Adore by Christian Dior
Je Reviens by Worth
Joy by Jean Patou
L'air du Temps by Nina Ricci
Lime, Basil and Mandarin by Jo Malone
No.5 by Chanel
Opium by Yves Saint Laurent
Poison by Christian Dior
Rive Gauche by Yves Saint Laurent
Shalimar by Guerlain
Youth Dew by Lauder

Certainly there is an emphasis on tried-and-true classics, but also the effect of best-selling status entering the equation (CKOne, Beuatiful, Coco Mademoiselle etc). Each and every one on this list is a perfume that has sold millions of bottles over the years.

What say you? Which would have been your picks for a top-20 best ever list?

Jacques Polge, Egoiste, Blue, Sex and Clean: an Interview

"Egoïste is about seduction. I have a funny anecdote about sex and smells. An American woman once asked me if French people took showers before or after sex. I answered, “After, of course.”

"Bleu is the opposite of Egoïste. Egoïste was inspired by a woman's fragrance* [Bois des Îles], whereas there is nothing feminine about Bleu. I wanted to do something very direct. You know, men's fragrances are still very linked with shaving. When I find myself in planes, at some point I always see those business men coming from the bathroom smelling of aftershave. So Bleu is spicy, woody, and dry. There is no fantasy."

"I started my career in the United States. Perfumes were then made of both good-smelling and bad-smelling ingredients. But the bad-smelling ingredients, when used in a certain way, brought something sensual and interesting to the final scent. The first time I arrived at work, they told me, “You want to work here? Then smell this.” They made me smell chives. With American puritanism, all these kinds of fragrances disappeared".

*Hence its original name, Bois Noir. Only offered in Chanel boutiques at the time, Bois Noir was in production for only a few months in 1987 before it was withdrawn from the market, later to be replaced with the more widely available Egoïste.

Thus reminiscences Jacques Polge, the master perfumer at Chanel since the 1980s and responsible for the marvel that is Egoïste. Read the entire interview following this link.

Related reading on Perfume Shrine:
Bleu de Chanel (new fragrance for men),
Pushing Boundaries in Perfume advertising,
Why the French grow up to love smells while Americans don't,
Top 10 Masculine Fragrances.

Link brought to my attention via nowsmellthis/twitter. Pic of Bois Noir bottle via basenotes, still from Egoiste ad from my archive

My Wife Smells Since Changing Perfumes!

"My eye tastes bad art the way a restaurant critic tastes boiled duck confit in an orange chipotle sauce, with revulsion and pure anger. My nose is even more refined, as it can smell burgeoning mould on a Njursholm moose milk cheese from over 30 feet away. So, when the second Mrs. Mullpenny, Margarette, started using a perfume that I deemed to be like apricots farting, I swung into action immediately.
As it was soon to be Navidad, I spent a considerable amount of money and bought everyone on staff at Mullpenny Manor bottles of that wretched parfum. When they began wearing it around the house while doing their duties, Margarette immediately deemed her scent to be pedestrian and switched to a more overpowering bouquet, so as to drown out the smell of our help."

In a hilarious article in the format of a 'Dear Abby' column, Steve Murray on the National Post {click the link} replies to a husband's query on how to solve the problem of his wife's body odour suddenly surfacing through her change of perfumes (a matter of body chemistry if you please, from the male perspective).

Definitely worth a read..and many (unfeminist) belly laughs!!

Photo via askaden

Sony Wafts Welcoming Scents

The electronics giant we all know, Sony, employs a special blend of smelly essences in its stores diffused through scattered electronic devices in order to welcome women and men projecting feelings of ease and quality. The special blend includes essences of vanilla, mandarin, bourbon and other secret ingredients.

This is what we learn through an article in the ABC News: "Gino Biondi, the chief marketing officer for ScentAir, the company that developed the scent for Sony and makes the diffusers, says the smell of vanilla puts women, typically intimidated by electronics, at ease, while the mandarin denotes class. The bourbon is there for the guys. "It basically enhances the environment for a first great impression," says Biondi, whose company serves everyone from Express clothing to Mandalay Bay Resorts".
But scent in general aids consumerism. A study appearing in the Journal of Consumer Research, affirms that scents improve consumers' memory in relation to products, according to scientists at the University of Michigan and Rutgers University. The co-authors Aradhna Krishna, May Lwin and Maureen Morrin claim that scented products perform better in info memory tests vs. non-scented products. "This occurs even though the product scent is not reintroduced at the time of recall, and even when memory is assessed as much as two weeks after product exposure."

Martin Lindstrom, author of "Buyology: The Truth and Lies about How we Buy" gives some examples of how specific odours act subliminally and how they're used: Vanilla is considered comforting due to its evoking breastfeeding milk, therefore "making you feel childish, young, energetic" while wood reflects a back to nature, earthy, solid, classic set of values. On the other hand fruit is summery, thus making people feel "more open-minded, happy and sexual", while lavender affects the heart beat by slowing it down thus making people linger longer in the stores. Cigars and leather are the perfect choice for banks and law firms, apparently, as these odours reflect "conservative values" (supposedly people in power having the money to afford the smell items, I'd presume, so you feel like you're in the hands of authority and successful monetary churning). Several companies from fashion to cars (and even real estate) work with these guidelines in mind and the trend is only going to expand.

Pic via blog.se-nse.net

Eau de Bruce (Willis): Scent of an Action Hero?

The latest celebrity to join the ranks of celeboscents (fragrances produced with the added cachet of bearing the name of a celebrity) is Bruce Willis, inextricably tied to his Die Hard days (pity, does no one recall the masterpiece that is Twelve Monkeys?) The new scent being launched today across Europe captures his "strength, self-assurance and single-mindedness". This translates into a smell that combines cedar, vetiver (an east-Indian grass), pepper, grapefruit, orange and geranium leaves, we're told. The NYMag is rehashing the linked BBC article which follows, precluding that it wouldn't smell that good anyway. To my mind, withholding judgement until sniffing, the really interesting -and potentially problematic- thing is how this would play in a demographic (the one hankering after celeboscents is routinely aged 16-25) which is so far removed from the actor's own age and "golden years of fame" (the 1990s)

In an article appearing on BBC, there is extended commentary on how the industry of celebo-scents works, out of which we have weaned the most memorable quotes:
One in five of women aged between 16 to 24 wears a celebrity scent [in the UK], according to market researcher Mintel. "It's about buying into a lifestyle they aspire to", it says. "Celebrities nowadays are looking for as many way as possible to monetise their fame," says Hamish Pringle, director general of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising and author of Celebrity Sells. "The attraction of doing a fragrance deal is that toiletries and cosmetics are more amenable to celebrity endorsement than some other less personal products. Plus the perfume houses have got more scents and bottles on their lab shelves than you can shake a stick at and they think putting a celebrity on the label is a really easy way to stand out from the crowd." Roja Dove links this to the celebrity-mania that infests our society, arguing that perfumes have always reflected societal mores. But things are getting a little prosaic too.
"Smell is a really powerful sense and one people really underestimate," says Prof Jacob. "The celebrity perfume market depresses me because it is short-sighted. The fragrances are usually thrown together and sold off the back of a big name. They're simply an excuse for not trying to create something truly original and beautiful."

Last but not least, let's once again break the myth that celebrity scents began with Elizabeth Taylor in the early 90s and Jennifer Lopen in the 00s, as Denise Winterman notes in her otherwise very interesting article. We have established on our own site (click for The Cult of the Celebrity Scent: Perfume History, with photographic proof no less) that that was not so, through numerous examples of celebrity scents from the past expanding their own brand, namely themselves. It's just that the phenomenon has mushroomed beyond all control nowadays...

Pic of Bruce Willis with baby via sofeminine.co.uk

Natural Perfumers Featured in the NYTimes

"The desire to smell good — without the aura of chemicals — did not seem to wane in the flop sweat of the recent economic panic. Ms. McCoy sells her creations at $60 to $125 for a half-ounce — not cheap. Yet “since 2007, I’d say my sales have increased 25 percent every year,” she said. The great majority of these perfumers buy all their ingredients from natural scent companies, in stores or on the Web, and then blend them at home. But Ms. McCoy also uses a heady variety of homegrown scents from her lush garden in Miami Shores, Fla., a village just north of Miami. Mandy Aftel, who helped spur the modern natural perfumery movement with her 2001 book “Essence and Alchemy,” said she has “observed an absolute explosion of interest.”

In a very interesting article chronicling the rise of all-naturals perfumery that relies on small batches of harvests and growing one's own plants for tincturing, appearing in the New York Times online by Micheal Tortorello, we come across names which have occupied these pages before, namely Anya McCoy and Mandy Aftel, gurus of natural perfumery. The article named "Making Flowers into Perfume" can be accessed here and contains such priceless imagery as comparing overflowing, lush jasmine vines at McCoy's "like chest hair on a ’70s sex symbol that cannot be kept under the collar".
Congrats to the natural perfumers mentioned and a shout-out for Mandy and Anya, well-done ladies!

The World Cup Found its Scent: Eau de Stade

No, no, not lockers and athlete's sweat on the green grass of South Africa literally (although do read on, there's interesting mention of all of those), but a fragrance specifically made for the football World Cup which is about to begin capturing the imagination of the world.
Pop sensation Rachel Steven is the face and here are the details: Eau De Stade is designed to combine the smells of the football field and the host country South Africa in a unisex fragrance designed by Sky+HD in advance of the finals and aimed as a limited edition, being sold for a limited time only. As well as essential oils sourced from South Africa, it features "the smell of fresh grass, leathery notes and the musky hints of sweat" (told you so!). Top 'nose' John Bailey of The Perfumers Guild Limited conjured up the new aroma: "Salty notes have been used to encapsulate the smell of the fresh sea breeze in Cape Town- known as the 'Cape doctor' - alongside woody, smoky hints to represent the nation's passion for barbecues, and also Tagette, an essential oil sourced directly from South Africa" he tells us.
Let's raise our glasses in hopes of the sweet smell of success for the team each one of us is rooting for!

Out starting today, June 1st 2010, at Soccer Scene's World Cup pop-up store in central London.

Info & pic from various online press sources

Christopher Brosius: "In this country, a lot of people wear perfume for everyone else"

A very good profile of Christopher Brosius, the man behind Demeter fragrances and CB I Hate Perfume innovative scents is published on the Wall Street Journal by author Paul Glader. (click the link to read the article).

"In this country, a lot of people wear perfume for everyone else," said Mr. Brosius, 47 years old. "People wear my perfume for themselves first. Everyone else comes second." A former architectury student, Brosius now makes 36 blended perfume (costing between $65 to $275 for different sizes) and caters to those with eclectic tastes and those who....hate perfume. Well, not really, but the concept is of a perfumery that trancends the seductive, the keeping up with the Joneses and the aspirational social climbing.
What I especially liked is that "Regardless of demand, he says he wants to keep his perfume staff at five or fewer. 'This is, really, a luxury business,' he said 'Part of that means remaining small.' The recession dented his sales last year, but now he says growth is back on the rise, and he is considering a move to a larger factory and, perhaps, a storefront in Manhattan. He's also thinking of launching a clothing line."

On that last part, Avery Gilbert had the most hilarious comment (and artwork to accompany it): "I met Brosius once at a Fragrance Foundation event in New York where he was wearing a cape and black leather pants with what appeared to be a silver-studded codpiece". Codpieces or not for this new venture, let's hope Brosius maintains the perfume business anyway.


photo of Christopher Brosius via Sniffapalooza Magazine

L’Oreal Trademark Victory: End of Fragrance Dupes?

According to Business Week, the Court of Appeal’s judgment in London today "follows a decision last year from the European Court of Justice setting out how far L’Oreal, the world’s largest cosmetics maker, can go under EU law to block marketing of copied scents. The U.K. court said it had a “duty” to apply the European ruling. “The ECJ’s decision in this case means that poor consumers are the losers,” Judge Robin Jacob said in the ruling. “Only the poor would dream of buying the defendants’ products. The real thing is beyond their wildest dreams.” " Hmmm...maybe they haven't heard of obsessive compulsive collectors who amass everything! But I digress.
“There is a bit of a message that the price of the real thing may be excessive and that the ‘luxury image’ may be a bit of a delusion,” Jacob said in the ruling. Naturally as the dupe costing 4.30$ for the 100ml bottle is abysmally low compared to the 100 pounds or so for the real thing! L'Oreal however insists that we're talking of 120million in loss revenue.
According to Hamish Porter the judgement has been an "an “indictment” of the European court’s approach to protecting well-known brands".
You can read the whole case following the link at the top.

Photos from the Moroccan Abode of Serge Lutens

W magazine goes inside perfumer Serge Lutens's secret Moroccan hideout in the heart of the Marrakesh medina, asks questions (via Christopher Bagley) and posts a pleiad of gorgeous photos (by Patric Nagel) in their June issue. Curiously, the hideout of the grand master of artistic direction is just that ~a secret hideout. It's been constructed for the last 35 years, yet it hasn't been lived in yet! Lutens has trouble coming up with a clear explanation, attributing it to filling the “awful, horrible emptiness that we all have.” He says, “There are times where you just have to be completely occupied; otherwise you fall apart".
The house is respendid with orientalised motifs, Berber jewellery and fibulae, Syrian chairs and paneled coloured windows alongside an impressive memento mori desk. All around a big walled garden full of exotic blooms like daturas, tuberoses and brigmansias. Anyone who knows the admiration Perfume Shrine holds for the Lutensian universe knows we're thrilled...


The interview includes such Lutensian gems as “I felt like the director of the pyramid at Cheops” (on the 500 people working on it), “You could call it obsession. But obsession is a necessary part of creation” (on getting carried away on the building process) and “It’s happened very quickly, like a hysteria. Everything’s a hysteria with me” (on his amassing moody Orientalist art-pieces from the middle of the 1980s onwards).


But maybe the most interesting of them all (and the most romantic) concerns smells: The greatest perfumers of them all aren't perfumers, but rather the bees, the winds, the rivers, carrying and mixing scents in space...In a home like this one, this is tangible reality more than poetic fantasy.

Visit this link to read and see the Serge Lutens slideshow.

And might we remind you that two new fragrances by Serge Lutens are coming up soon: Boxeuses and Bas de Soie. You can read about them here.

Photographs by Patric Nagel for W Magazine.

Dr.Turin on the Science of Smell

The MIT Tech, the online paper at the university Dr.Luca Turin is currently serving as a participant in DARPA’s RealNose project [it aims to simulate the mammalian olfactory system apllying the vibration theory], has an interesting short interview by Nina Sinantra with the man himself.
In it he explains how he first became interested in the research of smell, how he got inspiration for the vibrational theory from pioneers Malcom Dysonand and R.H. Wright and what he envisions/hopes for the future.
You can find the link of the interview here.

Midnight Gardens: the Inexplicable Pull of Nocturnal Blooms

"Daphne du Maurier’s nameless heroine in Rebecca describes the blooms at Manderley estate as “crimson faces…slaughterous red, luscious and fantastic…monsters, rearing to the sky, massed like a battalion, too beautiful…too powerful…not plants at all.” With this in mind we’ve decided to design our own haunting garden, one that smells sweetest, like cloves and honey, and whose flowers only come to life in the darkest hours of the night".


Part of an exciting article by Jaclyn Gallucci on Longislandpress.com which you can read here in its entirety, it reprises the haunting nature of some of the headiest and most impressive blossoms around: the night-blooming flowers! Moonflowers, night phlox, tuberose, four o'clock, woodland tobacco, August lily, evening stock and ebb tide rose all make an appearence with little snippets of history, gardening info and olfactory descriptions. Recommended reading!

Photo collage by Jessica on Polyvore

Traditional Handmade Soap Making: An Old Craft

"Soap making in Lebanon is an old craft established more than a thousand years ago. Handmade Lebanese soaps have been sold through the ages to the Arabian countries and Europe. The Badr Hassoun family has been involved in soap making for 800 years. The family’s houses and shops can still be seen in the Khan Al-Saboun or Soap Khan.[...]In the old days, the “attar”, perfumer and “ashab”, herbalist worked together to prepare medicated soaps infused with herbal remedies. Essential oils were mixed with medicinal herbs to make special soaps which treated dandruff, acne, eczema and hair loss. Badr Hassoun believes that these mild soaps have an advantage over modern remedies, because they are less likely to cause allergies or side effects".


A most interesting article appeared on Arabnews.com concerning the tradition of handmade aromatic soaps in Lebanon. You can read the whole article here.

pic via 360dewan.com

Frederic Malle's Picks: Ready?

According to the latest column by Frédéric Malle, head of Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle niche line, "The Fragrance Guy" in Allure Magazine, it's just the state of things that several synthetic ingredients are necessary to replicate natural scents. On his column Malle discusses how the science of aroma-chemicals is able to reproduce scents of nature more accurately than previously thought possible, through artistry approximating reality almost photorealistically. In the state of today's perfume market, where often aromachemicals act as the sole (or predominant) ingredients in perfume formulae, you'd think that they would have the mimicking of nature down pat. But perhaps that's not the point...

His interesting group of fragrant picks includes:
1.Diorissimo (lily of the valley bia hydroxycitronellal),
2.Eau de Fleurs de Cedrat (citron hesperidic cologne by Guerlain), 3.Lauder's Pleasures (soapy aldehydes and crystalline replicated peony and lilac),
4.L'Artisan L'Eau d'Ambre (the warm of fir resin) &
5.Carnal Flower (tuberose with an eycalyptus note which naturally occurs in the flower) from his own line. Fascinating to contemplate the relevance as Carnal Flower is reportedly the fragrance with the highest ratio of natural tuberose absolute in the market.
An eclectic bunch to be sure!

tuberose pic via indiamart.com

Scent used to push BMW products

BMW Canada is now using scent to sell financial products. Yup, you heard this right! In a rare and unusual display of originality and invention (not diametrically antithetical to the digitalised notions of scent use we had introduced on these pages the other day) BMW Financial Services under its Canadian agency of record, Candari, has produced an autoshow handout card that looks like magazine scent strips.

"Joy" is the brand's global platform tagged in the ad as "Joy is the scent of a new BMW". The recipient can open the fold-over tab which then releases a leather aroma, produced by New York-based scent marketing company Scentisphere. The concept was introduced in last week's Montreal International Autoshow.
According to Marketingmag.ca: "It was important for the ad to be 'visceral' because financing isn't as interesting a topic to car show visitors as new engines or designs, said Brent Choi, chief creative officer at Cundari. 'They're not as interested in purchase options, but we wanted to continue the BMW allure and excitement', despite the unglamorous nature of the product".

Expect to see it distributed at the Toronto International Autoshow in February, and again at the Vancouver International Autoshow in March.

Related reading on Perfumeshrine: Digital Scents & Teleolfaction

Perfumers have the European Commision Irritating the Hell out of Them

Thus is -more or less*- titled the article by Nicole Vulser entitled: "Les créateurs de parfums ont la Commission européenne dans le nez" on Le Monde, which I was alerted to by erstwhile perfumer (and combatant) Sandrine Videault.
In it the matter of IFRA restrictions is rehashed with the emphasis on perfumers who are almost at the brink of a revolution (their words) because of them. IFRA, the International Fragrance Association, as you probably know if you've been following this blog, is a self-regulatory body which every June publishes a list of ingredients that have been deemed by a panel of doctors, allergiologists, specialists on envionmental matters and assorted experts as worthy of banning, restricting or heavily rationing. Based on these findings published the European Comission decides on what laws to implement for the cosmetics and perfume industry. To clarify matters on what this body is exactly I'm quoting: "The European Commission acts as an executive of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union. The Commission operates as a cabinet government, with 27 Commissioners. There is one Commissioner per member state, though Commissioners are bound to represent the interests of the EU as a whole rather than their home state. [...] The Commissioners and their immediate teams are based in the Berlaymont building of Brussels". Furthermore, there is the RIFM [Research Institute for Fragrance Materials] annual report which provides info and supplements. The interesting part is all major companies are part of RIFM and IFRA, as well as every aromachemical company (and therefore their subsidiaries and bought-out smaller aroma-producing firms from Grasse etc.)
This is no laughing matter, as it proves the matter is much more complex than the much brandied about opinion that it's all about money, substituting expensive naturals for synthetic substitutes. Several synthetic substitutes are also heavily rationed, you see, and the conglomerates also control companies who are living and breathing in naturals!

Several perfumery ingredients have been banned over the years: The animalics (castoreum, real deer musk and civet) certainly have for long. (Any niche perfumer using covertly using them must be relying on old stock bought at previous decades). Heavily restricted is oakmoss (see two articles on this), Peru balsam, coumarin derivatives, fig leaf absolute and benzyl alcohol (a very common ingredient in several perfumes, classic and modern). Also rationed are geranium essence, jasmine (to extreme limits under the upcoming IFRA 44th Amendment), lavender (gosh, lavender, the 1st aromatherapy oil proposed to just about any novice), cade oil (used to render natural leather notes) and the extract from tea leaves.

That leaves the majority of classic fragrances already mutilated, which brings us to the frantic hunting of vintage specimens as long as the reserves hold. But what will happen next? When these dry up will it mean that several of the perfumes with which generations grew up will have no possible footprint in history? This is a sad and foreboding proposition, much like thinking that Galleria Uffici is vacated in lieu of posters depicting the images that were once "real". The matter is complex, as François Demachy points out that "some perfumes were developed because there were no penalised constraints". More or less it meant that perfumers were mapping territories and were free to roam however they pleased on the world of naturals and synthetics. Guerlain's Thierry Wasser laments: "Among the perfumes we sell, the oldest is over 150 years old. If some day Brussels opposes the essence of rose, what am I to do? There is rose in almost all our perfumes… It is a heritage we need to defend" adding "Jean-Paul Guerlain composed Parure for his mother. We were obliged to discontinue it because we could no longer use the ingredients necessary to produce it. It’s heart-breaking.” The French are certainly very proud of their patrimonie olfactive (olfactory heritage) and that factor might come into play if some "preservation project" gets whipped up for the safe-keeping of historical perfumes. L'Osmotheque is a perfume museum but maybe something on a larger scale with other attributes that would allow more people of different walks of life to be able to partake in this rich tradition. Maybe have some recreations of historical fragrances on display (but not sale, since they won't meet with the criteria)? Maybe devote a line of recreated perfumes in some form that doesn't come in contact with skin or gets pulverised into air? I don't how this could be implemented, I'm just thinking aloud.

The matter of restrictions poses threats to modern perfumes as well (and not only those manufactured within the European Union, because very often the licenses and the sales directive involves Europe too, the most sophisticated luxury-consuming market of them all). Sylvie Polette, the marketing vice-president of Parfums Jean-Paul Gaultier, says: “Brussels will be killing off part of the profession: We aren’t able to rebuild everything in the same manner. This will instigate research, but it translates as a real constraint.” Frédéric Appaire, international marketing manager of Paco Rabanne states: "Our palette is diminishing. This is comparable to telling a painter he’s not allowed to use red, then blue or yellow".

Luckily for us these two prominent perfumers, under the aegis of LVMH no less who oversees classic fragrance houses, Thierry Wasser, in-house perfumer of Guerlain, and François Demachy, overseesing perfumer at Parfums Dior, are quoted in what is essentially a serious reference French newspaper, Le Monde. This means something, as it was often referenced that the industry "had been caught sleeping on the wheel" when these regulatory bodies were first founded, as per the words of a renowned perfumer.
It is also perhaps of some significance that there is a strong rumour that Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of the UK, after having quit M6, will be counseling for the giant LVMH luxury house in 2010 with a monetary recompensation that will run "into the six figures" (according to British Telegraph magazine and reported across the media). His aim will be to open the luxury brands into new markets, which basically means Asia (and possibly South America), come to think of it. Blair is already a JP Morgan consultant for Chase and Zurich Financial. The move ~if to be materialized, as it is neither confirmed nor denied for now~ recalls the announcement of Claude Chirac in the direction of PPR and the more recent one of the return of Patrick Ouart, counselor to Nicolas Sarkozy, as right-hand to Bernard Arnault at LVMH.

Whatever the case might be, there is some commotion happening across the luxury industry (LVMH in particular) which might be translateable into changes that might be beneficient to us, the consumers. On the other hand, if there has been speaking up, it most certainly has been with the proviso that every single quote has been carefully monitored by headquarters, as is the usual practice. Which might defeat the purpose, indicating part of a strategy. Let's wait it out and see.

For a complete list of IFRA restricted materials click this IFRA link. And here are the materials in use as of 31 Dec.2009.

For French-reading readers, here is the Le Monde article, in its entirety.

*The idiomatic phrase, which is very a propos in French (as "nez" means nose and also perfumer) indicates a major annoyance.

pics of Belayrmont building via wikimedia commons, Ed.Munch painting The Shout via last.fm.

Digital Scents and Teleolfaction

"One day soon you may be able to capture a fragrance snapshot of your environment and send it attached to a text message or email". Thus begins the fantasy of digitalised scents, the elusive captured into pixels that can be stored and tranmitted, a concept that up till very recently seemed as wild as colonising Alpha Centaur with men.
Still, cell phone companies are on the act already. The winner of 2005 Nokia innovation competition submitted a Scentpohone: One which was able to transmit the scents of the environment of the caller to the receiver of the phone-call. Samsung and Motorola each hold a patent for similar projects. Motorola's 2007 patent is for a small fragrance cartridge which releases aromas into the air taking energy in the form of heat from the telephone's battery, while Samsung's 2006 patent is for a perfume spraying apparatus. The hidden stuff is that patents delay the commercialisation of technologies by antagonistic companies, even though it's generally accepted that this concept will be exploited in the near future such as in the case of smell chip cards (which may be able to encompass 100 scents!) comparable to SIM cards; an idea that would find practical uses for the visually and audibly impaired as well as the scent-enthusiasts.

Listen to this: "Sitting right at your desk, you’ll soon be able to smell the roses—or baking bagels or honey-roasted nuts or crowded subway platforms—using DigiScents’ new iSmell, "a personal scent synthesizer." Now in beta testing, iSmell is a peripheral device you plug into a computer the same way you plug in speakers and printers. If you visited a Web site offering a whiff of fresh chocolate cake, for example, iSmell could pull down the code it needs to mix chemicals in just the right way and then release the designer aroma while you work on the Net. Or you could invent your own scents and add them to e-mails or a short story".[source] This not all too recent: "In 2000, Aromajet developed Pinoke, a device able to recreate smells associated with computer games. Digital signals written into software code trigger the aroma generator to emit precise amounts of the appropriate aroma. The American company also created E-Commerce Kiosk that have fragrance generating devices mounted inside to install the perfumes and cosmetics aisle of department stores. One of the ideas under development is a mother's scent programmed into an aroma generating device placed near a crib to help comfort a baby". [source] Adobe released its Net sniffer, Odorshop in 2007 but it didn't receive coverage. RealAroma's Web site (Real Aroma") advertises a box which ises "Real Aroma Text Markup Language" (and is even functioning on slow modems). Macintosh CEO Steve Jobs has also announced that he aims for future MaC computers to be able to handle odours the same way they're now able to play CDs. Art is also exploiting the concept: Usman Haque designed Scents of Space in 2002, a smell system which allows for 3D placement of fragrances without dispersion (as pictured in the top pic).

Jenny Tillotson, a researcher and designer at the University of the Arts in London, England, is responsible for materialising the concept and she compares it to an olfactory i-Pod (which sounds utterly cool!) "Tillotson produced the world's first interactive scent outfit. She called her prototype dress 'Smart Second Skin'. (You can read about this here) Smart because it senses the wearer's mood, 'second skin' because it interacts with the wearer and their environment". Another gadget produced by Tillotson is the button-sized 'eScent', based on bio-sensors monitoring changes in physiological factors (blood pressure, respiration and skin's electric potential) and signaling the lab-on-a-chip devices when there is some change in the above to accordingly adjust the released scent. "Though currently crude at detecting more subtle mood changes, the idea is that eScent will eventually be able to detect stress or anxiety and then release appropriate scents to soothe the wearer", as three quearters of our emotions are affected by smells, as the research team indicates (Sounds awfully much, doesn't it?), as well as help in coping with certain ailments.
"Another application is eMos, a button-sized gadget which senses the frequency of sound made by an approaching mosquito and triggers the release of a small amount of repellent. Tillotson says that she hopes that eScent and eMos will be on the market within the next five years".

And if that doesn't sound promising enough, there are also at least two companies who use digitalised scents: Storing primary smell blocks in cardridges and then combining them into a special built-in chamber before emitting them in the atmosphere, ScentDome uses this technology for scent-enabled websites as such as ScentTv.tv (a multi-media portal only reachable from the US for the moment), while TriSenx is a software provider for websites, but for now the most popular product is an audio CD almbut with an accompanying scent-track.

Still the possibilities for TeleOlfaction are huge, gaming and entertainment included: Imagine watching a TV series or film or a video/computer game and being able to smell the environment alongside the heroes, a concept already embraced by Japanese advertising since 2008, to astonishingly positive effect.
It looks like the future holds many scented surprises still.

Related Reading (links taken from we-make-money-not-art.com): A special headset that lets holidaymaker experience surround vision, sounds and smells, the IQ clothes , Cyranose 320, an electronic nose device to diagnose pneumonia and sinusitis, SNIF a fragrance patch that release more or less perfume depending on what kind of space you�re in, Zen-sorial car, the Sensory Gateway, robotic Judas roach, 3D scents.

Quotes from an article named "Digital scents" by Mico Tatalovic for Cosmos Online.

pics via greenamerican.us , we make money not art, and scentcom.co.il