The chypre as a genre of anticipation… you’ve flipped the script, and now I can’t unsmell it!
Allow me to rehash something that I scribbled a while ago:
It’s pretty remarkable that the words we use to describe scents can cut both ways: on the one hand, they can sharpen our attention and refine our capacity for discernment, helping us to more precisely identify and describe what we are smelling; on the other hand, they can also manipulate and even deceive us into sensing what might not necessarily be there, by the sheer power of suggestion.
I think that this ambivalent cognitive relationship with language is part of what makes olfaction, as a sense, so unique, confounding, and mysterious. And I think that it’s part of the reason why we find perfumery so aesthetically gratifying.
Yes — and you've named something I think is structurally weirder than it gets credit for. Olfaction is supposed to be the pre-verbal sense, the one that bypasses language. But perfume criticism turns out to be one of the most language-bound discourses there is. Once enough people write "autumn forest" next to oakmoss, the word starts smelling for you. The lichen never gets to speak for itself.
The reason I love that you wrote this is that I think it cuts both ways. Sometimes the right word sharpens the nose — finds a thing in the perfume you hadn't noticed. And sometimes the word arrives first, with its cultural luggage, and the nose just signs the paperwork.
I wore Diorama and as I walked through the common in my town center, and it all made perfect sense. There were even an oak tree with catkins, and I thought of you. Chypres for spring, it shall be.
The chypre as a genre of anticipation… you’ve flipped the script, and now I can’t unsmell it!
Allow me to rehash something that I scribbled a while ago:
It’s pretty remarkable that the words we use to describe scents can cut both ways: on the one hand, they can sharpen our attention and refine our capacity for discernment, helping us to more precisely identify and describe what we are smelling; on the other hand, they can also manipulate and even deceive us into sensing what might not necessarily be there, by the sheer power of suggestion.
I think that this ambivalent cognitive relationship with language is part of what makes olfaction, as a sense, so unique, confounding, and mysterious. And I think that it’s part of the reason why we find perfumery so aesthetically gratifying.
Yes — and you've named something I think is structurally weirder than it gets credit for. Olfaction is supposed to be the pre-verbal sense, the one that bypasses language. But perfume criticism turns out to be one of the most language-bound discourses there is. Once enough people write "autumn forest" next to oakmoss, the word starts smelling for you. The lichen never gets to speak for itself.
The reason I love that you wrote this is that I think it cuts both ways. Sometimes the right word sharpens the nose — finds a thing in the perfume you hadn't noticed. And sometimes the word arrives first, with its cultural luggage, and the nose just signs the paperwork.
I wore Diorama and as I walked through the common in my town center, and it all made perfect sense. There were even an oak tree with catkins, and I thought of you. Chypres for spring, it shall be.