Perfume is Pleasure

“Please don’t make me smell anything, Laura Beth.” These are not the words to inspire a love of scent or the decision to make a career in the fragrance industry. Yet, a certain suspicion about perfume was Shari Cohn Steinhardt’s legacy.

Not one of those who complain of headaches, allergies and the rudeness of those who indulge, she nonetheless preferred smells that were already there, not the kind you put on.

My mom died in late June and her final weeks were a glorious celebration of the people she loved, food and laughter. She held court and reveled in saying cheerful goodbyes. Her appreciation for sights, sounds and tastes was intense. She rhapsodized about flowers brought by friends, the hustle bustle of hospital life and the gurgling noise of water bubbling in a tank to moisten her oxygen. She loudly proclaimed her appreciation for food, ending months of picky eating - who knew that an orange popsicle could bring such transcendent joy?

Not all food was safe from Shari’s critique, however. There were, of course, the playful death-bed digs about my cooking. “With Laura Beth, it’s never the same way twice… (do not assume, dear reader, that this was a tribute to my creativity)… now Bob…(my husband and her cherished son-in-law)…he always does it the way I like it!”

“But wait, Mom,” I protested, “isn’t this supposed to be a time of reconciliation, you know, where we make peace?” Laughter all around. The point is, my mother was occasionally fussy, but generally elegant. Though not a scent-o-phile, she was an aesthete, a woman of exquisite taste in fashion, food, interior design. She adored beautiful things.

I forgive the rest. And I believe that my mother passed on to me certain tastes in perfume. My grandmother, Sylvia Steirman Cohn, wore scent. My earliest perfume memory was a bottle of Monsieur Worth, a men’s fragrance, on Grandma Sylvia’s mirrored tray. I discovered oakmoss. When I was about 13, my mother returned from a trip to France with a bottle of Yves Saint Laurent’s Y for me. Three generations charmed by chypre.

I have complete peace about my mother’s death and admire her decision to squeeze every bit of pleasure from life, even when death was clearly imminent. I am deeply grateful to her for teaching me the art of appreciation. My love for her goes from the tips of my toes to the tip of my nose.

Unless you do your part and comment, this post will generate more heat than light. While waiting for the experts to show up, I shall attempt to compensate with intrigue for what I lack in knowledge.

I want to know: Why do so many people not look at you like you’re crazy when you say that something smells “green?” Galbanum, cut grass, vetiver, oakmoss, lavender and basil have fragrances we consider to be green.

Color and scent, what’s up with that?

Grass is green, but does that make its smell, when freshly cut, green indeed? Cool, fresh and airy, the sky, the sea, blue, of course. Dry wood, brown; moister, mossy varieties, add a touch of yellow.

Estée Lauder’s Cinnabar and Yves Saint Laurent’s Opium were packaged very effectively with touches of a warm brick red, evocative of an item you might find somewhere more exotic than New York.

Are we simply reinforcing sensory associations linguistically, or is there an intrinsic physical color to the smells?

Forgive me, the reference to synesthesia was a red herring; I am not above pandering to search engines.  Richard E Cytowic, author of The Man Who Tasted Shapes, in his online article: Synesthesia: Phenomenology and Neuropsychology, admits:  “It is rare for smell and taste to be either the trigger or the synesthetic response…I have found no other in which sight evokes smell; and…I have found none in which smell itself is the trigger.”

But maybe I will stumble onto some truth about scent and color by accident. In the worst case, the fiction is a pleasant diversion.

Robert Tisserand, in the classic tome, The Art of Aromatherapy, asks: “What are scents if not invisible colours? In Krippner and Rubin’s The Kirlian Aura it is suggested that if the sense of smell is connected with electromagnetic waves, one might expect the skin to be sensitive to odors. This is not as farfetched as it may sound. We know that the skin is especially responsive to essential oils, but much more impressive is the fact that some people can see with their skin.” He goes on to talk about Rosa Kleshova, whom the Soviet Academy of Science certified as capable of reading newsprint with her hands and elbows, and describes the ordinary Russians who are trained to distinguish colors by touch, with red being sticky and yellow, slippery.

How does this relate to our conversations about perfume? I covet your thoughts.

Just Axe! Women will tell you that men who smell good look better too. Axe is the American name for a popular deodorant called Lynx in Europe.

The Economist reported that women find men who alter their natural scent with fragrance more attractive than those who do not. Interestingly, it is not the direct effect of scent on women, but rather, the body language of scented men’s increased self-confidence that drives women wild. The December 18, 2008 issue detailed findings of Unilever’s collaboration with University of Liverpool researcher Craig Roberts and his team.

Here’s how the study went. Two groups of men were given identical-looking spray containers, one with a scented deodorant, while the other was devoid of scent and deodorant properties, a dummy. Researchers did not know which containers were which, double-blinding the study to eliminate potential bias. No research subjects knew the purpose of the experiment, so participants with the deodorant dummy did not question its impotence.

Psychological tests conducted over several days showed that self-confidence of the men with real deodorant had increased by their own report. And here comes the “Lynx effect” – this occurred to the point that women watching short videos of deodorized and scented men, without smell-o-vision, found them more attractive. The operating explanation is that these men carried themselves in a visibly more appealing way and female observers caught the vibe. Still photographs of men in the scented and unscented groups did not provoke differing reactions in the women.

The Economist concludes: “To attract a woman by wearing scent, a man must first attract himself.” Cool cats are onto the Lynx effect.

Turns out, perfume is not all fashion and glamor. Research shows that our preferences are biological. Remember Lou Reed’s song from the original motion picture soundtrack of White Nights?

When I see the way you paint your lips and I smell your perfume
When I see the brand new color that you’ve dyed your hair to
I know, you know, it’s more than physical
My love, my love, my love, love is chemical

White Nights featured not only the endearing and iconoclastic tunester Lou Reed, but also the fancy feet of Mikhail Baryshnikov and tap prodigy Gregory Hines. I do not, as you may fear, digress from perfume. Once upon a time, our Russian ballet prodigy launched his own celebrity juice. Now discontinued, Misha Perfume for Women featured topnotes of peach, bergamot and lemon, a heart of jasmine, rose, raspberry, carnation and cinnamon as well as basenotes of vetiver, patchouli and amber.

Other than the simple explanation of chemical attraction, why do we prefer the scents we do? For ourselves? For others? In its December 18, 2008 article, “The scent of a man,” The Economist reported that women in an experimental setting prefer the sweaty t-shirts of men whose major histocompatibility complex (MHC) is most unlike their own. Dr. Manfred Millinski and Dr. Claus Wedekind researched this phenomenon at the University of Bern in 2001.

I am no more interested in science than you, so hang tough with the lingo for a minute. For fellow liberal-artsy types, MHC is good to mix between sex partners, as the children of unions between diverse MHC carriers will have relatively strong immune systems. In cattle terms, women like men who smell like they come from different stock.

Now what do women want from their own perfume? Millinski and Wedekind asked “Would you like to smell like that yourself?” and “Would you like your partner to smell like that?” to tease out the distinctions. Perfume preferences women express for themselves are directly correlated with their own personal flavor of the human leukocyte antigen, or human MHC (last big words I’ll use, promise!). A woman chooses perfume to amplify and broadcast her own genetic composition. But the partner, you recall, should smell of something “other,” not of “self.”

The punchline for perfume shoppers: Buy your own. According to The Economist, we are best equipped to select scent for ourselves and for close blood relatives.

My friend Alice has decided to seize the day. Not just today. Every day. She went swimming with turtles in the Galapagos and threw her own 40th birthday party. You would not put your money on Alice in a foot race, but she drives a Jaguar. This, technically, makes her “fast.”

Alice hinted that my blog posts might be getting windy and had the extraordinary perspective to suggest her recent episode with Boucheron Jaipur would liven things up. Jaipur is one of Sophia Grojsman’s creations, a sister of White Linen, Calyx, Paris, Bvlgari Pour Femme, Yvress, Eternity, Trésor, White Diamonds, Beautiful and the new Outrageous, among others. It contains plum, apricot, peach, violet, rose (because Sophia never met a rose she didn’t like), locust-tree, heliotrope, peony, iris, white musk and sandalwood. Nose Jean-Pierre-Mar collaborated with Grojsman on the scent.

Red herring!!! It doesn’t matter what Jaipur smells like, but you should know that this is a perfume with pedigree, just as Alice is a person of great class. Kinda dry sense of humor, sometimes, best not to be the object… But overall, regal, generous, patient, intellectually gifted, a culture maven and great cook.

Alice told me two weeks ago, with great equanimity, that she broke her bottle. “Your Jaipur!” I gasped. “Yes,” I could see her smiling though we spoke by phone. “The one you let me smell?” “Yes.” “The one I loved?” “That one,” Alice said in a consoling voice. I was confused by her reaction - no, by the lack of a reaction, and continued to probe.

Pretty straightforward case, as it happens, of a dropped bottle that broke and did not miraculously heal itself. Additional details did not change the basic outlines of the situation. Glass all over. Perfume all over. A bathroom and walk-in dressing area redolent of Jaipur.

How was Alice coping? “Oh, it’s wonderful! Every time I walk anywhere near it smells just like Jaipur! I don’t even have to spray it on.”

Alice’s perfume bottle is not completely empty. Her bathroom floor is completely full.

Carry on Alice. Go for broke!

P.S. Alice - need 40th birthday party photograph for inquiring readers.

He wanted my advice on a new scent for his wife. We ruled out the orientals and woods. Nor did this seem a case for fruity, herbal, green or marine scents. My spousal interview quickly revealed that she, like her husband, was a self-contained individual, not the frilly, romantic type. Clouds of rich floral bouquet would not do. I offered a fragrance I admire and enjoy, always describing it as a dignified woman in pearls.

He inhaled Bvlgari Pour Femme. Suddenly his face reddened, eyes glistening. “What’s wrong?” I asked, confused. “I want it!” he said with extreme seriousness. “What was that?” I prodded, shocked by his obvious physiological reaction. “Oh, nothing,” he replied, avoiding my gaze momentarily, “something just caught me.” I realized then that the scent of Sophia Grojsman’s perfume had brought him to tears. Bvlgari Pour Femme contains Grojsman’s unique blend of orange blossom, rosewood, bergamot, ylang-ylang, prelude rose, violet, mimosa, sambac jasmine, tea, musk, vetiver and iris.

I will never know the specific memory or precise emotion triggered by this scent. To the untrained eye, it appeared to be the purest, deepest love and admiration released under the spell of Bvlgari Pour Femme. Thank you, Sophia.

Last night at Connecticut’s Bee and Thistle Inn, peerless for comfort, cuisine, arts and culture, I met a dashing man who shared his love for Aromatics Elixir. He got that faraway look as he spoke of the perfume, and confessed to foisting it on his wife, though she is not a fan.

I recalled hounding a woman in a tropical climate, only to learn that the complex but ethereal scent attracting me was the very same. It smelled just right, even in the hot sun. Yet many who try this Clinique scent initially act like they’ve just gotten a whiff of some heavy like Youth Dew or Opium. The furrowed brow, the pursed lips and the inevitable comment about old ladies and/or my grandmother.

On another occasion when I asked a stranger about the marvelous fragrance, it had a funkier, hippie-vibe. Hint: patchouli, but hush-hush, the very mention of that leaf, despite its refreshing mint-family connections, clears any room.

This story has a purpose beyond perfume critique. Back to my new friend at the Inn. He was enjoying an evening at the rugby club with friends, all male. In burst a woman in trauma, just attacked on the street outside. She was emotionally out of control and no one could get her to talk. This went on. Finally one of the men, a burly police officer off-duty, commented: “You’re wearing Aromatics.” Immediately the assault victim snapped-to, and became herself.

So much talk about the personal memories triggered by scent and the places they take us. Now the idea that scent memories of another can foster healing in someone so in need. How strong is our desire to be known, to be recognized and remembered! This is the attraction of a “signature scent.”

Sandy smelled something funny. Everyone knows that fragrance can bring back memories, stir emotions and project style. But sometimes a scent is just fun, and funny! Sandy is Ticket Empress at The Connecticut Forum and participated in an fragrance event held there for mature youth.

My inability to sleep in the middle of the day has always been a sore spot. Even the high-performance motivational types say a short nap may be the best route to those world-changing things I have planned.

On Sundays, in particular, I coldly eye my husband and two sons. Sprawled out all over the house, they rub my nose in their Sabbath peace. Silent, oblivious, effortlessly demonstrating the Art of the Nap. My emotions range from envy to something less charitable. Desperately wishing to be as far out of it as they are, with ill-will towards all, and loudly, I go about important business.

A 1951 book by Paul Jellinek, The Psychological Basis of Perfumery, categorizes scents according to their effects on us: Narcotic, Erotic, Refreshing and Exalting. It has been a long week. The first effect catches my eye. Something to soothe and numb, to induce sleep or stupor. What is not to like?

Into a very small blue bottle, filled almost to the top with jojoba oil, I mix a little essence of amber, rose absolute (the very best Bulgarian type) and a touch of bergamot oil from my friend Bill Luebke at Goodscents Wrists, neck, backs of the hands. Take me away… It has been several months now. Hoping that this public announcement will not break the spell, I share that the potion has worked every time. True, I use it only when fully committed: I will go to that special place. Still, the scent of sleep has not yet failed!