Rant Alert: Why do we keep bringing up science when discussing fragrance?

I had a conversation with a lovely perfume enthusiast the other day. We started to discuss a perfume I made. Immediately she brought up why & how we smell, the brain, & how humans needed scent for survival eons ago. It occurred to me just how common of an occurrence this was. These topics are certainly interesting. But why do they get brought up all the time when discussing perfume? If I started to tell you how much I love the high warbling note of Tom Verlaine’s guitar in “Foxhole” by his band Television, I doubt you would say, “yeah it really hits your aural cavity and stimulates the history of how the sound of cymbals denoted regal celebrations.” We just discuss the song, sound, lyrics, meaning, cultural context, and more. With perfume not as much, why?

Perhaps we’re thinking about fragrance all wrong. So much perfume talk is a jumbled mishmash about memory, emotion, & science – all potentially interesting. I just don’t understand why they are the de facto discussion points ABOUT perfume.

We don’t need to be afraid to discuss the beauty/story/aspects of a fragrance without mentioning some diet science we gleaned somewhere. A bottle of perfume is a liquid painting ready to explore. We don’t need to be surprised by that last statement. It can be as common as saying wow this Dylan song really brings me to upstate NY. Maybe, that song was recorded in Nashville, but it sounds like upstate to you for a myriad of reasons. The song is not an authentic reproduction of the sound of the wind blowing through the Catskills, it just brings you there. That perfume you love might bring your mind to the mountains too (we don’t need to mention that memory is next to scent in the brain).

Read the linear notes of a classical record. Read a movie review. In the former you will find out about the composer – perhaps a contextualized account of the artist’s life, something about their approach or about the piece itself. What it does musically, what the work is about or the cultural context from whence it came (even if the composer did not specify). Too, a film review might dissect the purpose of the film, the editing, acting, script, and more. No one is saying “the way those 24 frames per second made it look like the actor was moving across the screen was riveting!” To be fair, there is a great niche of perfume enthusiasts, journalists, & scholars that is writing about perfume like music & film. But we need more!

I do realize one reason why brands themselves discuss science or psychology with scent: the need for marketers of products to tell a story for a product that has little or none. This is a harsh dual truth – perfume is art, but also a product. But so what! So is a record. Marketing fine art is a business too. I have to think this need to validate the very purpose of perfume by its makers leads them to promise mood enhancement, sex appeal, and the like all supported by science (or more often pseudoscience). But we don’t need to validate it. Let’s hear what the perfumer was going for, not the same old “this perfume captures the feeling of my grandmother’s confidence putting on her make up, my hero, that will make you feel sexy & also relaxed & isn’t it just so interesting that the hippocampus of the lizard brain made with the premium cruelty free ingredients from the south of France and is an alluring fantasy by the best French perfumers who can make you feel like a celebrity flying on a dragon.” I would guess that no matter how banal a perfume is, it would be worth hearing from the person who made the fragrance a bit about what they were thinking when they were in the lab.

Maybe you say perfume isn’t that deep. Sure, many might not be. But a perfume can in fact tell a story, be an invitation to world build, or a push to explore something new, all done with perfect artistry like a composer. Perfume certainly has the potential to capture a perfumer’s idea. It definitely has a unique way of manifesting the idea: wordless, structured beauty arising from the interplay of oils each with their own unique aroma. This alone is worth experiencing with keen observation. We know that many perfume lovers come to feel defined by certain scents (“this is my scent”, “I wear this on fancy nights out”, “this is what I wore to my wedding”). That scent that is you, might actually have been made as a strange idea the perfumer had on holiday in Mexico. Cool to know right?

How we discuss ingredients as an industry is another thing that perplexes me. We hear about the same 50-100 materials over and over again. Oh, your perfume has jasmine, rose, sandalwood, bergamot, & vanilla!? It has “a rare accord of myrrh & tonka.” What does that mean? Why is it rare? How does that combination work as an aromatic leitmotif in the overall composition of the perfume’s idea? Does it represent a table in an Eastern market? Is it a juxtaposition of balmy sweetness with dry amber because the perfumer is recalling a sweet desert memory? These are things I want to know. As a music nerd, I like to know that Jimmy Page played a tele on early recordings instead of his iconic Les Pauls, but what he played is even more interesting. If we can discuss why and what is happening in Heartbreaker, I’m sure we can hear more about Homme for women eau de eau de toilette extreme, but not that extréme, only slightly more extręme than the last flanker.

We should get to know raw materials for how they conjure real objects & phenomenon. I was just skateboarding to work and smelled a distinct whiff of opoponax in the air. I realized I was smelling a car’s exhaust. Now I know opoponax can be part of an authentic reproduction of the smell of car exhaust should I need it – even as a small sketch in a larger fragrance about a city. Before today, I would not think “opoponax” when I think “concrete jungle,” but it makes sense – opoponax has a grey stoney-gassy element somewhere in its quixotic throw.

Sorry rant over. Perfume is an artwork that you can walk around in & dream!