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What the pH of Your Skin Does to a Perfumer's Formula
What the pH of Your Skin Does to a Perfumer's Formula
Smell Training: How Covid Created a Scientific Discipline
A particular kind of terror in losing a sense you never thought about. Not blindness, which the imagination rehearses.
The Synesthetes Who See Smells
A woman in London, a research subject, anonymized in the literature as "S.J.", who sees color every time she inhales. Coffee is a deep, shifting...
Sillage: The Fluid Dynamics of an Invisible Trail
A word the English language never bothered to invent. The French had to do it, because the French pay attention to what lingers.
Olfactory Fatigue: The Bug in the Adaptation System
A moment, roughly twenty minutes into wearing a new fragrance, when the wearer begins to suspect they have been cheated.
Pour Homme, Pour Femme: The Invention of Gendered Perfume
Walk into any department store and the geography of fragrance will instruct you before a single word is spoken.
Niche vs Mainstream: Why the Border No Longer Exists
A particular kind of nostalgia that clings to the word "niche" in perfumery, a nostalgia for a time when the term meant something precise.
The Real Price of a Bottle: Deconstruction of a Margin
A number haunts the perfume industry like a guilty conscience.
Sandalwood: The Tree That Takes Thirty Years to Smell
A tree in the forests of southern India that spends the first three decades of its life in a state of quiet accumulation. Its bark...