How engaging your sense of smell can change your life
According to a niche perfume brand founder
I often get asked, 'How did you get into perfume?'
I often get asked, ‘How did you get into perfume?’ Sometimes I'll give the short(ish) answer: "I was a fashion and beauty editor so reviewed perfumes for magazines, and had my own aromatherapy studio, so I launched a functional fragrance brand with lessons from both jobs'. And sometimes, I'll go deeper, depending on the audience, and start to sound like one of those Jesus freaks with a mic on the high street because my love of perfume can't be boiled down to a neat elevator pitch.
I see a life lived with scent like doing yoga or cold-water swimming
I see a life lived with scent like doing yoga, cold-water swimming, or slowly following a recipe on a Sunday afternoon - actions that don’t seem necessary to our survival but help us be in the moment and fill our otherwise, sad little cups. Developing a scent practice is one of those: 'I am alive. Isn't this life weird, layered, and luminous' things you wonder how you ever lived without, and who doesn't want more of those?
We all have a 'scent DNA': a Proustian web of smells that we've been exposed to throughout our lives. A sorting system that lives somewhere in our olfactory bulb, sorting fragrances into good, bad, etc. Everyone is different, and some are more developed than others.
I can tell in seconds if someone has lived a sensory life by their responses to my perfume line, the notes they pick out, and the stories they share with you. Like when it comes to food or music, everyone's olfactory appetite is varied, and I love nothing more than uncurling scent memories or preferences and dislikes from people and connecting them to their age, and life experiences.
I sat with hundreds of people in my sensory perfume studio in Berlin and showed them aromatherapy and other scent molecules, I tracked their reactions and listened to their stories, and that's how I developed the 'perfume personality quiz' for my brand, and the four scents linking to four ‘types’, The Dreamer, The Lover, The Traveller, and The Thinker, because I believe there's so much more to what we like than 'woodsy or florals'.
Over this series of posts, I hope to guide you on how to build a scent practice, essays on fragrance and trends and life, and how to make scents of it all.
Image from a sensory perfume workshop by @caryshuws