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Pyramids, lies and mythos of Modern Perfumery

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MY-HOUSE-IN-LEFKE-2
From my house in lefke.

If you believe that olfactory pyramids published by the industry are meant to give you information about the ingredients or about the smell of a perfume you are really ingenuous.

Pyramids are but a marketing tool used to persuade you into buying frags.

If you believe that the ingredients listed in the pyramids are in the fragrances you just missed the point. Pyramids are to make you dream a of a wonderful world where perfumes are made with real musk, real amber and real rose…

If it is written “Lavender”, it does is not meant the extract of lavender flowers, it means “lavender note” such as the one you find in dish wash soap. It smells nothing like lavender but it is, let us say, “legal lavender” because if it is not written “Lavender essential oil”, it is a “legal lye”. Read more

Philosophy of perfume (part 2): The language of scents

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frankincense

How natural raw materials are different? Part one of three 

1). There is a language of scents based on olfactory archetypes. A basic, instinctive, deep and compelling language in which meanings are emotions.

How do smells get associated with emotions? Through our olfactory memory. It memorize them through the emotions that were experienced in its presence.
This is the part that we share with animals, we identifies smells as being simply good or bad in function of the emotional context in which they are perceived. Often with basic emotions such as fear, hunger, anger, joy, satisfaction, love…

This is why we may love some smells that other people hate, because we lived opposite experiences with that scent. Read more

Perfume notes, mystery of the sense of smell

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In perfumery a mixture that smells different from its components is called an accord. However the nose retains its capacity to analyse the accord in order to detect each component.
This is very stange.

Let us remark that the accord will be perceived as a smell of its own by everybody, but only the persons who know the ingredients will be able to analyse the accord.
Analysis of smell requires the help of the evolved part of  the brain, particularly the orbitofrontal cortex and the language center.

I have met people who are able to detect the presence in a perfume of the smallest part of an essence that they abhor, rose or Frankincense for instance.
Their nose does not detect the smell of rose or frankincense in the perfume, there is too little of that in the perfume to be detected, I know it well enough, having composed the perfume myself.

What they detect is the emotion that these smells associate. Read more

Mechanism of olfactory memory

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Psycho-Aromatherapy is by Robert Tisserand

The perfumer invites people to smell perfumes, this can be a daily routine.I have a customer who smells the raw materials for his fragrance. I have it tried out by the barman next to my office, I diffuse scents during my didactic conferences. My pockets are always full of perfumes, I do not miss an occasion to spray them on other people’s hands, I leave behind me a sillage that stuns people who do not know me.
A perfumer never has to ask to someone what he thinks of the perfume: he has just smelt it is enough for him to observe and read the faces. Facial expressions are infinite, liking, repulsion, appeals to me but I wouldn’t wear it, doubtful, skeptical, intrigued, reminds me of something long ago but I do not know what, reminds me of something that I don’t like.

At the end the expressions are only of two categories: smiling and negative. If the person smiles it means “good”, if the person does not smile she will never buy a scent that will not make her happy, unless she wants to rid of the scent and make a gift to someone.

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