Memories in a Bottle

“When nothing else subsists from the past, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered… the smell of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us…”
Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

This idea is often referred to as “Proustian memory,” the phenomenon where a specific scent can instantly bring back vivid, emotional memories.
Helen Keller (who lost both sight and hearing):
“Smell is a potent wizard that transports us across thousands of miles and all the years we have lived.”

The poetic stories, we as perfumers can envisage while creating fragrances. Out of our 5 senses, the olfactory (smell) is by far our strongest and can evoke such vivid emotions, both conscious as well as subconscious, that we are literally transported back in time to a place where these memories were created. It’s the kind of magic that scents and fragrances can provoke.

To be honest, it is also one of the pitfalls of our industry. We rely on the fact that there are some elements of subconscious memory in every fragrance created. As humans, and this surely goes back to the times when we foraged for food, we rely on our olfactory memory to determine if something is good or bad. Thus, when a fragrance is too creative, meaning it uses new molecules or characteristics not used before, it will be rejected by the majority of people who smell it, as it does not trigger any past or stored memories, and as such, we reject it. Fragrance houses do not want this, as it may take years for this new “accord” to be accepted by the greater masses and will demote the fragrance to the abyss of fragrance lists for longer than is desired.

As a young perfumer, and the year prior to attending perfumery school, I spent 10 months in Paris with a famous perfumer being his lab assistant. The purpose of this tenure was to familiarize me with some of the thousands of raw materials that would become the perfumer’s palette or tools of the trade.

“How am is supposed to remember this abstract smell with a weird name?” I pleaded with my master.

“Always write down the name and the absolute first thing you think of when you smell it.”

And so, I did – Phenyl Ethyl alcohol reminded me of an Italian salad dressing my mum's friend used to make, Styrax smelled like a tin can of new tennis balls, Cis-jasmone like mushrooms on the leafy forest floor, and so it went on. Remarkably, I still recall these triggers when I fail to remember a specific raw material.

Perfumes really are liquid memories, stored in a beautiful bottle, at the owner's beck and call, and used as a time machine to transport you to a beloved time, moment, or place at your command. Whether it is conscious or subconscious, it is always there.

Take Musk as a glorious example of your subconscious predetermining what you feel and think.
40-60% of any detergent liquid/powder is a combination of musk. These molecules are non-water soluble. That’s to say, when your washing machine empties the water, most of the fragrant materials have been solubilized in the water and flow out into the drain along with the dirt.  The most prominent residue is the Musk. So when you crawl into bed at night, the bed freshly made with newly laundered linen, your thoughts go to fresh and clean. This is what you will always associate Musk with, newly laundered linen and clothes.

So, when we put a packet of musk in a fragrance, guess what your subconscious mind will say? ……… that’s right, clean, fresh, and wonderful.

So next time you wander through a perfume or department store seeking your newest fragrance, try to think about the emotions or memories the fragrance might bring to mind or sense. Fragrance selection isn’t a thought process to be decided by your head, it’s an emotional decision to be decided by your gut. This brings me to something my uncle told me many, many moons ago, as a young aspiring perfumer (He is also a perfumer). He said :
“Clas, there are only 2 types of perfumes, great ones and terrible (not the word he used) ones. If you smell a fragrance and you have to think whether you like it or not, it’s a terrible (still not the word he used) perfume. On the other hand, if you smell it and fall in love straight away, it’s a great perfume.”

So my parting words for this time are, choose your fragrance with your heart and not your brain.