Art lovers who wander into Dillon Gallery in Chelsea this week will have virtually nothing to look at, but plenty to smell—from a freshly grated lemon peel, to a musty cave, to a ripe banana layered with the feral odor of a ... monkey.
— From What's That Smell? A Fragrant Downtown Exhibit Makes the Case for Scent Art at the Wall Street Journal. The exhibit features "scent sculptures" by perfumer Christophe Laudamiel; you can find more details at the Dillon Gallery website.
This fall, niche line Humiecki & Graef will launch Blask, their eighth fragrance…
So it is like a Dalmatian dog, you don’t look at it as being a listing of 100 dots; you see it at the end just as a dog. And you can see how if you have this dog, on the black and white picture, you can remove a few dots from the dog, you will still see the dog and then at one point when you remove two or three dots, the dog is going to disappear in the whole picture. So that’s what we do in perfumery. We put enough of those dots to recognize a certain facet, a floral facet, a woody facet...
— Perfumer Christophe Laudamiel, from Creating the Scent of a Virgin: A Lesson on Fine Fragrance Perfumery at Big Think.
Update: Joe points out that to see the actual quote I clipped above, you have to click on the links in the Big Think article — those links will take you to the interview.
Most of perfumanity has experienced a variation of the same nightmare. You find a fragrance that unlocks something in you, a scent that speaks a language that is personal and saturated with feeling. A sample is included in a package from a friend or in the sizable and random order that somehow made it from an online shopping cart to your mailbox. Sniffing the vial or a patch of skin carelessly lavished with the liquid, you are pierced to the heart… and you laugh, cry or do whatever you do when overcome with emotion. (My reaction is apparently to blush furiously.) The fragrance has been discontinued, of course. Inevitably, too, it had a niche distribution and has never been reliably available through internet discounters or it was the most weirdly confidential scent in an otherwise mainstream line.
Frantic, late-night searches of the web reveal that you have more soul mates than you ever could have guessed and each of them has already purchased a 1.7 or 3.3 oz bottle of your juice, leaving the online retailers out of stock. The auction sites are merely offering the layering products, flacons or candles. Perhaps you put in the winning bid on bubble soak, even though you don’t own a tub. Over several months, you cobble together a collection of precious millilitres: a mini from seller in Singapore, rare and hideously expensive decants, and the original sample, preserved in museum-quality condition. Haunting the blogs and dead forum threads, you search for smell alike suggestions or rumors about well-stocked stores run by strangely unwitting owners. The Gobin Daudé scents, Comptoir Sud Pacifique Thé, Hermès Doblis… The horror! The horror!
My nightmare has been about Slatkin Persian Lime (Blossom) & Mimosa…
Niche line Humiecki & Graef has launched Bosque, the line’s seventh fragrance. Bosque was inspired by satisfaction, relaxation and quiet sensuality…
Stella McCartney in conversation with Alexandra Shulman (video, talks about new scent L.I.L.Y) http://t.co/VAKYigvK "French parfumier Guerlain on trial over 'race slurs'" article at Telegraph http://t.co/lVDxoZMi Vote for NST's Mood Board on FB and win a Zoya Nail Polish collection! http://t.co/MXHMN7I3