Smells have a unique ability - to bring to life vivid, emotionally colored memories. About every third perfume text tells us about this effect, which is also called Prustian. Proust himself, describing the avalanche of images caused by the sweet spirit of cookies, used the concept of "involuntary memory", and although we still do not understand everything about its mechanism, no one doubts the existence of a connection between flavors and experiences. We decided to find out what this connection looks like in people who have turned it into their craft, and asked them to comment on the same list of emotionally significant words - in terms of smells.
TEXT: Ksenia Golovanova, author of the telegram channel Nose Republic
Spyros Drosopoulos
Baruti
Spyros Drosopoulos
Baruti
The first love
Roses and body cream.
friendship
B-B-Q.
School break
Dust and tangerines.
Favorite movie
Darren Aronofsky's "Fountain" smells like Japanese incense.
Anxiety
Sweat.
Domestic animal
Foul smell from the mouth.
Death
Cadaverine (a substance found in protein breakdown products. - Rome. ed.).
Sex
It just smells very good.
Victory
Champagne.
Depression
Mushrooms.
Anna Zvorykina
Anna Zworykina Perfumes
The first love
First love smells for me as a person, flesh, and not perfume. A completely independent olfactory image, almost without impurities - except to add a little tobacco smoke and snow to the warm smell of the skin.
friendship
I got a ton of tubes with fragrant values from friends, and I think of them with great gratitude when I wear the best flavors in the world: vintage Diorella, Mitsouko, Parure, Nombre Noir, Cabochard and many others. They are like a friendly shaking of hands through time and space.
School break
The book removed from the backpack, where the pens and the bag of sandwiches were, still smelled like a book. This is if we talk about a good change - but it's unpleasant to remember the smell of a school cafeteria.
Favorite movie
The last favorite, though not new at all, is After Life by Hirokazu Koreeda. A very restrained picture and a slow change of plans, but I still want to pause and watch: an acorn and a ginkgo leaf, a column of steam over a boiling kettle. To me, this movie smells like old wooden furniture in a damp room and tart green tea.
Anxiety
My alarm smells of metal and dust. And the lack of air is more likely the absence of odors than the smell.
Domestic animal
When I went to second grade, my parents bought me a poodle so that it would not be scary to be at home alone. The smell of domesticated animals is the smell of poodle's hair, dry and pleasant like shortbread. We named the puppy Jackie - in honor of Gerald Durrell's first wife, I adored his books.
Death
The concept of death for me is associated with the smell of ash - dry, spicy, soothing. And also with the smell of the forest. Robert Frost has a line about it: "The woods are lovely, dark and deep." And the smell of death-forest is just that - sweet, woody, dark, deep.
Sex
The scent of flesh and sea, fused together in a crucible of white flowers. Several years ago I was able to compose it from the salty and spicy olive absolute, indole jasmine, jasmine roc (distilled product according to the traditional Indian method.-- Rome. ed.), roses, nutmeg, cumin, vetiver and sandalwood.
Victory
Victory smells to me everything that sunlight could smell: warm limestone, citruses and young white wine.
Depression
Depression is more likely to be associated with a lack of odors, with emptiness. If we talk about fatigue, apathy, mental pain, then they have the smell of a concrete entrance, not ugly dirty, but also not very clean: dust, plaster, old oil paint.
Andreas Wilhelm
Perfume.Sucks
Andreas Wilhelm
Perfume.Sucks
The first love
The first girl I exchanged liquids with was a laboratory assistant at Jerzy Baigrowicz, a chemist at Givaudan, who synthesized javanol (a substance with an intense sandal scent. - Rome. ed.). At that time, I was engaged in gamma decalactone in the biochemistry department and constantly smelled like peaches. Therefore - peaches and sandalwood.
friendship
Friendships smell like geosmin, birch tar, gun grease and marijuana - I got along with my best friends thirty years ago when we were Boy Scouts.
School break
DarVida salted crackers, carrots and cucumbers are the snacks my mom collected for me.
Favorite movie
The Darjeeling Train smells like India - spicy, warm, slightly brutal.
Anxiety
It's hard to say, I'm not an anxious person at all. But I noticed that some people, when worried, smell like rhubarb and grapefruit.
Domestic animal
My cat Fridolin, whom I still love dearly, smelled very pleasantly of fur. To this day, twelve years later, I clearly remember this fragrance.
Death
I was at the funeral of my Turkish friend's father, and the room where his coffin stood smelled of cadaverine and scented neroli water - it was used to prepare the body for burial.
Sex
Depends on the partner. Sweet, warm, musky, salty scent reminiscent of ambergris. I love it.
Victory
In modern perfumery, "female" victory smells like hedione (a substance with a jasmine scent. - Approx. ed.) or jasmolactone (a substance with a floral scent with fruit and coconut nuances. - Rome. ed.), and "masculine" - ambrox. And for me, victory smells like my children: when I return from another trip, the first thing I do is sniff their heads.
Depression
I myself have never experienced it, but once in the tram I felt a strange, unfamiliar smell, emanating from one of the passengers. And then my psychiatrist friend said that some antidepressants change the smell of the human body - maybe I caught something like that.
Giovanni Sammarco
Sammarco
The first love
Gardenia.
friendship
Carbonara pasta at a common table.
School break
Smelly toilets are urine and eternal filth.
Favorite movie
It smells like chips - I didn't go to the movies without them.
Anxiety
2-methylundecanal (fresh, slightly citrusy scent with a metallic shade. - Rome. ed.).
Domestic animal
One day my cat broke a bottle of Carnal Flower, Frédéric Malle, and smelled of tuberose for weeks on end.
Death
Hemoglobin. Of all the smells I know, this one is the most disgusting.
Sex
Gardenias, jasmine and scent … no, I won't.
Victory
Jasmolactone, a real miracle.
Depression
Wet ground, geosmin.
Matvey Yudov
chemist and perfumer
Matvey Yudov
chemist and perfumer
The first love
This is the easiest thing: my first love smells like dusty lacquered wood on a piano, and to a lesser extent, a tape recorder. Dried lemon balm, flowering linden trees. Peach chewing gum. All sorts of fragrances are well remembered: Duru soap and cherry Nivea, some stupid pink shampoo.
friendship
Friendship smells like inorganic: wet lime, salicylates, cashmeran, aldambrum (a substance with a characteristic smell of a hot iron. - Approx. ed.). And also herbal liqueur like Jägermeister.
School break
Apple pies from the canteen. Wet chalk, old, vanilla-sweet textbooks, and twisted tables. Also iodine and ammonia - many will understand what I mean.
Favorite movie
Your favorite movie smells like smoke and burnt paper, tanning beds, beer, hospital, exhaust fumes, flowers, train station, office kennel and licorice. In general, he is very rich in all sorts of scented images. I wonder if it is possible to guess from this description, what kind of film are we talking about?
Anxiety
Anxiety smells differently all the time, otherwise you get used to its smell and it ceases to be alarming. Burnt plastic, chloroform, camphor, leaf alcohol. Some perfumes smell distinctly of anxiety.
Domestic animal
The animals smell like musks with a drop of lactone, sometimes maritime (a substance with the smell of wet wool. - Rome. ed.).And sometimes with something piercingly synthetic - a new plastic bag or nylon tights.
Death
Currant leaf and tar. Well, it's trite: candles, wet wood, corvalol.
Sex
Sex, perhaps, does not smell. Although no, it has a subtle tangerine peel scent. Another thing is that it is asymmetrical: tangerines do not smell like sex.
Victory
Victory smells like paprika and lingonberries. There is another rather specific smell - you can smell it when you unfold a roll of foil.
Depression
Depression smells like maltol, vanilla, coconut. Sometimes it seems to me that in perfumery today it is depression that sells best, and not sex.
Maria Golovina
Holynose perfumer
The first love
Sunscreen lotion with coconut gardenia fragrance, mimicking the scent of traditional Tahitian monoi oil - the scent of Aloha Tiare, Comptoir Sud Pacifique, a perfume that I used when I was seventeen. Many years later, I smelled a living gardenia flower, and it smelled completely different - feijoa and mycelium.
friendship
Two friends, a Russian woman and a Chinese woman, by a strange coincidence, adore the same scent - Burberry Weekend. Now this composition automatically inspires confidence in the carrier and at the same time nostalgia for youth.
School break
There is one irreplaceable fragrance - methyl anthranilate. Without it, it's hard to make the perfect jasmine or Marukawa grape gum, but to me, who grew up in the 1990s, methyl anthranilate reminds of school: its scent is full of plastic, rubber and synthetic fabrics.
Favorite movie
It's hard to say which Hong Kong I love more - real or cinematic, as portrayed by Christopher Doyle and Wong Karwai in Fallen Angels. Hong Kong street eateries constantly breathe out thick rice steam, and every time I watch this film, the smell of cooked rice arises in my nose by itself. I always dreamed of making a composition on this topic and inadvertently shared the idea with a familiar perfumer - fortunately, the Dojima fragrance he created immediately reveals a person who has never been to Asia.
Anxiety
She has a pungent smell of old vegetables, bitter and vegetable, overtaking from somewhere from childhood. In the palette of aromatic materials, the most disturbing now seems to be galbanum, the resin of a plant with an absolutely green, country-like smell.
Domestic animal
My neighbor has a border collie named Adi, who is incredibly smart and quite fragrant. Even after bathing procedures with some fashionable shampoo, he clearly smells of a steel whisk and whites whipped with sugar.
Death
One of the oldest Guerlain fragrances, Fleur Qui Meurt, literally “a dying flower”, tells the story of the last moments of plant life. This thoughtful work in violet-mossy tones gives a head start to the modern niche and reminds that each of us is the same dying flower.
Sex
The best sex is about honesty, getting to know oneself, when I thought that I understood everything about myself. It is accompanied by aromas of fresh raw dough and a spicy mixture of cumin, ginger and coriander. I consider Rochas Femme to be the main perfume statement on the topic of intimacy - a scent of women's skin that disguises itself as a classic fruity chypre.
Victory
Winning is trust, giving up the ego for an idea, the result of hard teamwork. A feeling at the junction of confusion and euphoria arises in me whenever I smell LOT2046 perfume oil - smoky green, technogenic, quiet, but noticeable for those who enter the inner circle.
Depression
Any of the smells that refer to the simple joys of life will do: your favorite shower gel, a hearty breakfast, melting snow, a new magazine. Only you smell all this through the thick dirty glass - the outlines of objects are visible, the memories of how it should smell are vivid, but you cannot really feel the scent as before.
Alexander Perevertaylo
Partisan Parfums
Alexander Perevertaylo
Partisan Parfums
The first love
My first love happened to me in the younger group of kindergarten, the girl's name was Lena.I gave her my portion of dumplings with sour cream, and on walks I gave maple bouquets. First love smells like cottage cheese and fallen leaves.
friendship
Worn boulders of wooden oars, rosin, sunny beaches, a library, dusty buses, temples and someone's apartment - whatever.
School break
School break was remembered for two smells: wax mastic, which was used to rub the floors to a slippery sheen, and cigarette smoke in my hair.
Favorite movie
"A woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown" smells of gazpacho, Aronofsky's "Fountain" - tropical greens and snow, "Black cat, white cat" - brandy and sunflowers.
Anxiety
The alarm smells like the moldy dampness of an unfamiliar basement.
Domestic animal
Previously, these were budgerigars that smelled like bird, sprouted wheat and crayons. Now the Scotch Terrier is semolina porridge, a warm animal and something indole, on the verge of rejection.
Death
Death smells like cremation in Varanasi. An indivisible set of aromas: bonfires, the sweetish, almost edible smell of burning bodies, sandalwood powder, which is poured into the fire without stopping.
Sex
Sex smells differently every time: a partner, salty sweat, skin bitterness and perfume in your hair.
Victory
Winning the sport - I went in for swimming and kayaking - it smells of chlorinated water and the rusty pontoon of the rowing base. In perfumery - my Porto de Rosa, the work on which threw me out of my comfort zone.
Depression
I don’t understand what it is, I didn’t come across her, or maybe I didn’t know that it was her. Depression doesn't smell like anything, so be it in the future.
PHOTOS: Rawpixel.com - stock.adobe.com (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
