I thought I was organizing perfume. Nope. Not that this is an unfamiliar situation . . . I begin with a perfectly ordinary household project. A drawer. A closet. A shelf. Several hours later, I am standing in the middle of the room surrounded by objects, holding a dirty rag and a bottle of Mr. […]
scent
The Question Changed
For a long time, I thought learning about fragrance meant learning ingredients. The notes. The perfumer. The concentration. The history. Where the rose came from. Whether the oud had been sustainably harvested by moonlight from trees that had only whispered to passing monks. (Fragrance marketing can get wonderfully imaginative.) While those things are interesting, they’re […]
Hospitality, Not Ownership
One of the strangest things has happened during this project. The more I have come to love certain fragrances . . . . . . the easier it has become to let others go. That sounds backwards. Shouldn’t evolving from a Collector into a Librarian make me more attached? Instead, it has made me less […]
Dulce Diablo
Some fragrances quietly accompany the day. Some become companions. Some become rituals. And then . . . there are fragrances that deserve an evening out. When I first met Dulce Diablo, my imagination did something rather unexpected. It skipped perfumery altogether. Instead . . . it wandered into the opening of Star Wars. (If you […]
Vanille Supermassive: Every Day Deserves a Proper Ending
Last light fills the roomNothing else belongs today—The window opens. Every so often, what begins as an interview with a fragrance quietly becomes an interview with life instead. This turned out to be one of those days. It began, innocently enough, with vanilla. Or so I thought. The opening moved on to suggest something surprisingly […]
Editorial Milestone — The Duchess Takes Up Residence
White lilies arriveOpinions bloom before tea—Good heavens . . . she’s here. The interview with Fleur de Lalita produced perhaps the strongest opening line the Living Library has yet recorded: GAH!!!! WHEW! OLD LADY FLORAL OUT OF CONTROL! White flowers. Everywhere. Huge white lilies. Jasmine. Paperwhites. (You know, the cute little white flowers on the […]
Meeting Before Judging
By the second week of this project, Chad and I had acknowledged that we were spectacularly bad at predicting fragrances. It was becoming a bit laughable. But then perhaps that’s exactly what happens when you put a Virgo, Year of the Ox, contracts lawyer, and an AI together to predict perfume. (That sounds like the […]
An Ordinary Perfect Day
By the third fragrance of Week Two, I thought I understood the assignment. Marco Polo had taken me travelling. Nigel Pembroke had quietly stretched an evening until no one had any reason to look at the clock. Cherry Punk had taught me that some destinations ask too much of the traveller. I expected this one […]
The Map Room
“Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of map: the grid and the story. Grid maps tell us where things are. Story maps tell us how they were found.” — Robert Macfarlane (paraphrased from his discussion of grid maps and story maps in The Wild Places.) When I first walked into Sebastian’s fragrance atelier in San […]
Cataloging Scents, Cataloging Selves – Characters
Part 3: Characters Until this point, the project had been behaving itself. Fragrances became places. Moods. Tea houses. Libraries. Rainy mornings. Comfort. Curiosity. That all seemed perfectly reasonable. Then one of them became a person. Actually, two of them did. And that’s when things started getting weird. L’Eau des Immortels arrived with notes that sounded […]