The human nose can get used to anything. And not only get used to it, but develop a strange affection for it, too. To paraphrase Kahlil Gibran, "Who can leave a place where he has felt sorrow… without regret"? All sensory impressions, perhaps especially olfaction, that most emotional and nostalgic of senses, can leave impressions upon us which take on a certain preciousness in the fullness of time.

 

 

I think of places I have worked. Take a nightclub, for instance. By closing time, such a place smells of spilled beer, green olives and cocktail onions,  sweat,   bathroom cleansers, the acrid smell of disco floor  “fogmakers”, ozone from loud speakers, stale cigarette smoke (and a clogged air conditioner trying to make sense of it all). None of these scents is especially pleasant… but they add up to form a chord that smells like: a wonderful time had by many people, romance, sex and of money made.

 

 

 

I am intrigued by the new aesthetic in niche perfumery which seeks to capture “ambient” elements…. to create a perfume that smells like a physical place. Sure, it may be said that Jacques Guerlain, in his L'HEURE BLEUE, was trying to capture the scent of a garden at twilight in late spring, but few will say that that this marvelous scent is realistic… few gardens glow with notes of anise, vanilla, tonka and “play-doh”. No, L’HEURE BLEUE is impressionistic— it seeks to capture an emotional impression.

 

 

But contrast this with a more contemporary fragrance like Eau D'Italie's SIENNE L'HIVER. This perfume goes beyond merely using fragrant oils to create a fond “sense impression” of Sienna in the wintertime. No, there are elements within this amazing perfume that literally smell like freezing old stone, still blue snow, dead yellow grass and the smoke from coal fires. Nowadays, noses have at their disposal the means to not only pay tribute to, but to actually mimic certain ambient elements.   

 

True scent lovers are thrilled by this trend, because they have begun consciously to notice the scents in everyday life around them— ambient scents—that can stamp their emotional “books” with a deeply felt intimacy. They have no problem in wearing an “ambience”… as a bodily perfume.

 

 

Some older fragrances— say, Sisley EAU DE CAMPAGNE and Miglin PHER'OMONE— definitely gave us the feeling of a country day and of a tidewater pool,  respectively. I can't help but think that the people who dislike PHER'OMONE have never stood at a real tidewater pool and drunk in the tender, wet, eternal, helpless smell of it.

 

 

What do you make of fragrances with unabashed automotive notes, like the gasoline in Dior FAHRENHEIT or the black tire rubber (or is it antifreeze?  A/C coolant?) In Bvlgari BLACK?

L'Artisan DZING!  Has hay-like notes that almost remind one of horse manure…TIMBUKTU almost seems to have a suspicion of lion spoor in it, along with the swaying savannah grasses. État Libre D’Orange’s  CHAROGNE reminds me strongly of how hospital gift shops used to smell in the 1960's. Etro MESSE DE MINUIT gives a startling impression of an airless, damp old church or castle. 

 

 

At present I am dazzled with Miller-Harris L'AIR DE RIEN. Devised to smell like Jane Birkin's favorite things: sweet pipe tobacco, old abandoned houses, parquet wax, a chest-of-drawers, now empty, which once contained an array of things. It certainly does smell like all these things. To me, it smells like a decade: the 1970's. (Other online commentators have, amazingly, said the exact same thing!)

 

Now how can a perfume smell like a decade, I ask you?

 

 

  

 

 

Does Time have a smell?

 

 

–Guest Contributor, David Lincoln Brooks, Editor of THE SPRAY CHEST.com