What the Nose Knows - Avery Gilbert [8]
The fragrance notes themselves are city inspired, in that the top notes we describe as being powered by “living liquid air.” It’s fused into a matrix of metal aldehydes and it captures the feeling of shiny steel and glass in a modern urban environment. It is very fresh and almost metallic on top; then it dries down to warmer, more sensual suede and woody notes on the bottom.
That’s an impressive prose poem. Buried in it are two actual smells: suede and wood. Suede is fairly specific—one imagines the smell of a supple jacket or new pair of shoes. Woody, on the other hand, covers a lot of territory: pine, oak, cedarwood, redwood, cypress, and don’t forget sandalwood. If Mr. Young Stylish and Hip wants to know what this new cologne smells like, he’s just going to have to smell it for himself.
Imagery Voice combines ordinary adjectives (fresh, woody) with technical terms (aldehydes) and envelopes them in emotional verbiage (“the feeling of shiny steel”). The result is the marketing equivalent of a Jell-O mold at a church dinner.
NOTICEABLY ABSENT from the world of perfume is the identifiable voice of the independent critic. There is no Roger Ebert of scent. A scientific polymath and self-appointed expert named Luca Turin once tried his hand as a freelance perfume reviewer. Turin is serious about the aesthetics of fragrance and not a shill for any manufacturer. But his capsule reviews tend to be highly stylized. Here’s a whiff: “Après l’Ondée evolves only slightly with time: its central white note, caressing and slightly venomous, like the odor of a peach stone, imposes itself immediately and retains its mystery forever.” Turin makes Après l’Ondée sound both impossibly abstract and off-puttingly tactile. Meanwhile, a reader still doesn’t know what it smells like.
Perfume wearers need a style of commentary that blends the aesthetic and the technical, like the road tests in Car and Driver that talk about sporty handling and trunk space in the same paragraph. In 2006 the New York Times tapped Chandler Burr as its first-ever perfume critic. Burr rates perfumes with a conventional five-star scale and a writing style that tilts heavily toward the aesthetic: “This is the scent of the darkness that inhabits a Rubens, a warm, rich, purple blackness; Pomegranate Noir is like a box of truffles with the lid on, sweet bits of darkness, waiting.” (OK, but what about the horsepower and mileage?)
Practical-minded perfume fans might prefer “Andrew,” who pens cheeky analysis for the English newspaper Metro. Here’s his take on Live Luxe by Jennifer Lopez: “It’d take a very brave/mad woman to wear this one. Ridiculously sweet and fruity, this is the fragrance equivalent of going out dressed as Carmen Miranda with a fruit cocktail poured down your cleavage. Invigorating but not for use in an enclosed space.” Andrew recommends it “[f]or ladies who like to make an impression.”
How come we have Cigar Aficionado and Wine Spectator, but no Perfume Enthusiast? This is a magazine publishing niche waiting to be filled. In the meantime, perfume bloggers are popping up all over the Internet: IndiePerfumes, Anya’s Garden of Natural Perfumery, SmellyBlog, Scentzilla, to name just a few. As elsewhere in the blogosphere, this evolving community is a mixture of the personal and the professional, the serious and the whimsical. But the passion for fragrance is always there. These writers are pioneering new ways of describing scent. I think their efforts may produce a vibrant, robust, and very useful way of organizing the world of perfume.
The Big Enchilada
Perfumes, flowers, and wine occupy the sunny heights of the smellscape. Beyond lies the Dark Side, a swampland reeking of burnt rubber, rotten eggs, and the silent but deadly guy on the No. 33 bus. Few people aspire to study stench—there are no maestros of malodor. And yet, if we are truly to understand the sense of smell, we must account for the