About Perfumes And Fragrances

The Power Of Smell

Fragrance is an emotional subject.those we like and don't like and those we associate with others from our past and present.an iconic fashion designer christian Dior once said"long after one has forgotten what a women wore,the memory of her perfume lingers'
So why is smell so intricately linked with memory and emotion? the answer is both scientific and individual.the part of the brain that processes what we smell.the olfactory bulb ,is also the same part of the brain that stores our emotional memories.the olfactory bulb transmit smell information from the nose to the brain.plus a sense of smell is developed before any other senses,so it is the most powerful .
I am drawn to lavender as my beloved grand mother wore a lavender based fragrance and used to buy me bottles of lavender oil when i was child.the smell takes me back to a time of great happiness and security.
But we are not born liking or disliking certain smells (although some studies suggest that certain preferences happen in the womb) Rather ,through conditioned learning,smells become associated in our brain with people ,times and places.smells unlock emotions and sensations.this is not always a conscious memory and often we cannot pinpoint why a certain smell triggers a certain emotion. .

A Scent Can Make You Shudder

One person who has an instant reaction to certain fragrances is charlie Anderson.she is a fashion stylist who dresses the UK princesses Beatrice and Eugenie and used to work for the late iconic fashion editor Isabelle Blow.'Isabella blow was daily drenched in fracas.when i smell fracas on someone now it still makes me shudder.Isabella was lovly but very complicated and dis pressed so i never knew what mood she'd be in,I'd here her footsteps and smell her coming and would sit at my desk thinking please be in good mood whereas I smelt Eden on a lady recently and i wanted to hug her.
As author Patrick suskind (perfume:The story of a murderer )noted,"odors have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words,appearances,emotions or will. the persuasive power of an odour cannot be fended off.it enters into us like breath in to our lungs,it fills us up,imbues us totally.there is no remedy for it.
One of the world's most successful beauty bloggers,Jane Cunningham (www.britishbeautyblogger.com)feels that fragrances are reflections of mood,"One day you need something sensual and extravagant ,other day's you will want to smell fresh ,light and unencumbered.given the variety of moods we can feel it's no wonder that women always have more than one scent.
She is also a big fan of personalized perfumes as you can then capture the scents you love in a bottle."bespoke fragrances are the perfect way to enhance those moods that you just can't find the right perfumes for,it's also incredibly empowering to have your own signature scent the that embraces all the notes you love :like a couture dress for the senses"

For this reason fragrance houses sometime deliberately launch a product to be evocative of a particular smell to draw us all in .wallpapers an international style and design magazine ,has launched its own fragrance called paper passion.this fragrance deliberately captures the scent of freshly printed books.even the packaging ,designed by Chanel fashion king Kari lagerfeld ,is a real book with secret compartment in the middle where the perfumes bottle is encased.in the front of the book are short essays about paper by lagerfeld and others,as lagerfeld says ,Beautiful paper is for me the top of luxury ,i am paper freak .it's physical passion.I cannot live without paper.touching perfect paper has something sensuous about it."
So one has to wonder if somewhere in lagerfeld's childhood paper figured highly?

Your Smell Is As Personal As Your Fingerprint

Another fragrance launch woman by Donna Karen ,is said to "make us feel beautiful ,no matter what "See how the marketing is linking feeling with the scent in the bottle?so the ingredients are meant to "make us feel beautiful 'the bottle it self was designed by superstar architect Zaha Hadid,who again uses emotion to describe the scent."A woman and a man all coming together-for me,that is the power of women."
Celebrated perfumer Roja Dove (www.rojadove.com)owns the haute parfumarie store within urban retreat,Harrods,London and is officially launching in Dubai mall the soft opening happened on august 12 and he will come Abudhabi on august 12 and for the Dubai too.
He says If you put vanilla under a young baby's nose the vanilla will make the child smile and look happy and relaxed.it is a psychogenic substance ,with the power to gives us pleasure".
Smell is fundamentally about attraction or the opposite to pull you near or away.when you walk around a shop and someone sprays a scent on your hand you will either smell it again or pull your hand away instantly.
We can also use different smells consciously to improve our lives.if you have a stressful journey ahead of you it may help to take your own blanket or pillow.if you need to be awake all night finishing a work project then citrus or peppermint scents are said to help.and also i recommend rose and neroli scents if you want to feel calm and black pepper if you need to give yourself a push of energy.
Rojas own fragrance memories are guerlain l"Heure Bleue(launched 1912),which takes him back to when he worked for Guerlain and went to Paris to train as a perfumer and his own roja dove par fum aloud (launched 2010),which remind him the three years he worked in the middle east.he says "shaikh Mohammad al qurashi from the house of Aoud introduced me to the qualities and types of aoud and truly understood and learn t from him.so when middle eastern clients smell my aoud they always wonder how i managed to capture such a smell evocative of their life.
Carmel Allen ,editor in chief of GDR creative intelligence ,a trend forecasting company associates many key moments in her life with different fragrances ."I only wore diorissimo by christian Dior from the age of 14 through 27 as I married young and when we split up I couldn't bear to wear it any more as I needed to start a fresh .the fragrances magi e no-ire by lancome reminds me of my mother,who died three years ago.her handbags always smelled of the leather linings mix with silk cut cigarettes,polo mints and magi e no-ire.it makes me cry if I smell it at air ports now.finally Antaeus by Chanel reminds me of past romance.now i always spray it on my wrist when I walk past a Chanel counter.Happy memories.

Capturing A Childhood Aroma

Linda pilkington ,owener of fragrance house ormonde Jayne (www.ormondejayne.com) has always developed her fragrances from the starting point of memory and unusual scents.her fragrance champaca by ormonde Jayne came about from linda's love of the smell of basmathi rice as my childhood was filled with the aroma of it cooking and I know find it a warm and cosy scent to be enveloped in.to me it is the smell of coming home so that is why i used it as a note in my fragrance .
One of linda's other fragrances Ta'if by ormonde Jayne is based on a rose from Saudi Arabia and linda says.I was inspired to create Ta"if when i was near a hilltop village in Saudi Arabia where the Ta'if roses naturally grow and our hosts served us dates all the time to eat.so for the ingredients I paired the rose with dates(plus saffron)to create the finalfrgrance.now the smell of Ta"if always take me back to that magical time .
So scents have the ability to make us happy and sad.nostalgic and invigorated and without our sense of smell the world would be a less interesting place for all of us.