Yesterday I had a consultation with fragrance specialist Roja Dove in the beautiful Urban Retreat in Harrods. To be honest I did not really know what to expect from the man described as the world’s sole ‘Professeur de Parfums’. Would I be intimidated by his flamboyance, his expertise? Well, just a little…. but it was a fascinating experience from which I learnt a great deal and by the end of my hour with Roja I did almost part with my hard-earned cash for a piece of perfume heritage. Thankfully I saw sense however and refrained from the £175 price tag and the recommendation to ‘buy two to store away for a special occasion’. I’m just grateful that I didn’t end up falling for the most expensive perfume in the world, if I remember right I belive it retails for the small sum of £115,000! Valentines day gift anyone?
During the consultation Roja took me on a journey starting with a brief history of smell.Now I didn’t realise this, but when we are born the part of the brain that controls our sense of smell is empty. We are born with the ability to smell, but we are not, of course, born with the ability to name what it is that we are smelling. What happens instead is that the brain will memorize each new molecule as we encounter it and will store it away in our brains, filed by experience. One of the first smells we encounter as a newborn is the smell of our mother, and as hungry babies we learn to associate the note of vanillin in milk with the relief that feeding time brings. As we age, when we reencounter a scent we often recall the first moment we experienced it, and thinking about it now it all makes sense, when I smell Crayola Crayons or Play Dough it transports me back to being a young child, those smells are so nostalgic!
After discussing the power of smell and its filing system, we got on to the fun part where I got to sniff out my perfect scent…. Roja prepared three blotting strips with different fragrances on, I did not know the families they belonged to nor what fragrance house they were from, the only thing I was to use to identify my favourite was my nose! It was fascinating how each of the fragrances changed as time moved on, how after smelling one of the blotting strips altered the smell of the previous one and enabled me to identify / experience notes I had not been aware of before. This went on for about 10 minutes until I settled on the strip that I favoured, which turned out to belong to the Oriental fragrance family.
Oriental Fragrance A blend of warmth and mystery. Musks and precious woods are complemented by exotic essences.
Oriental Fragrance Lifestyle: Mystical, luxurious, dramatic, sexy, sensual. Mostly worn in the evening
Having identified the family of fragances that I liked the most, Roja then got together another 25 blotting strips with various perfumes for me to engage with. I know all it sounds like is that I sat there, sniffed a couple of perfumes and worked out the one I liked the most, but actually it was a lot deeper than that. With each new sniff of a blotting strip the fragrances entered new realms, I smelt things that I couldn’t identify at first and began to understand just how powerful my sense of smell is.
This whole bluesky project was born out of a desire to understand the role of our senses in branding and this last exercise has highlighted the extent of the job I have given myself. In the world of perfume we rely quite heavily on what the products look like and their advertising, so much so that smell can often be of secondary importance. If buying Chanel No5 can help us live a life like Nicole Kidman or Keira Knightly then we can grow to like the smell!
The perfume that I ended up falling in love with is a perfume called La Voce, inspired by opera singer Renee Fleming, on looks alone it is not something I would normally have gone for. If i’m being honest I probably would have walked right on past it, but it smells absolutely divine and one thing this experince has made me realise is that its time to smell with our noses not with our eyes!
KT x
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