{"id":26686,"date":"2022-08-26T10:19:37","date_gmt":"2022-08-26T06:19:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/me\/?post_type=articles&p=26686"},"modified":"2022-08-26T10:19:37","modified_gmt":"2022-08-26T06:19:37","slug":"final-destination-the-art-of-olfactory-teleportation","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/me\/articles\/final-destination-the-art-of-olfactory-teleportation\/","title":{"rendered":"Final Destination: The Art of Olfactory Teleportation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Words by Suzy Nightingale<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
DIPTYQUE Kyoto<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s an experience we\u2019ve all had \u2013 that moment of being rooted to the spot in reverie as a passing scent suddenly flings us back, completely unbidden, to a particular time or place we\u2019ve not consciously remembered in years. Recently, for me, it was opening a jar of fennel seeds while cooking. My kitchen became the banks of a shore in Croatia, closing my eyes and smelling wild fennel on the warm, salty breeze as dusk fell. A happy memory, tinged with the ache of longing for travel, to return, or fall in love with a place I didn\u2019t know, make new memories. During the pandemic, sales of fragrance have continued soar, in line with our own world shrinking and the ever-gnawing need for escape. Because inside some of those scent bottles is the key to teleportation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe evocative powers of smell can characterise past experiences with nostalgia,\u201d explains Dr Kelvin EY Low, associate professor and deputy head of the Department of Sociology at the National University of Singapore. \u201cSmells form effective cues in one\u2019s memory recollection of a particular location or destination.\u201d This inextricable link between perfume and our recollection of a place is due to what\u2019s known as our \u2018olfactory memory.\u2019<\/p>\n

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WIDIAN Hili<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It isn\u2019t merely some poetic notion, there\u2019s a scientific reason scent and memory are so inextricably linked: \u201cScents are the only sensations that travel such a direct path to the emotional and memory centres of the brain,\u201d reveals John McGahn, an associate professor in the psychology department of Rutgers University in New Jersey. All other senses are routed via the thalamus \u2013 a kind of sensory switchboard in the brain \u2013 but smell is directly connected to the amygdala and hippocampus, where memories and emotional responses are stored.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why a memory rekindled by scent is \u201cexperienced as more emotional and more evocative,\u201d said Rachel Herz, assistant professor of psychiatry and human behaviour at Brown University in Rhode Island. This metaphorical placement of ourselves occurs even if we\u2019re smelling a perfume that doesn\u2019t remind us of anywhere. The brain doesn\u2019t like such randomness (and we don\u2019t like to feel so emotionally adrift), so it will compensate by suggesting a series of familiar colours, textures, temperatures and \u2018that\u2019s a bit like\u2026\u2019 scenarios until we have pinned it, like putting a flag in the olfactory map of places we\u2019ve conquered by knowing them.<\/p>\n

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PENHALIGON’S Cairo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But like many others recently, I\u2019ve become a junky for newness, desperately seeking solace in somewhere other than my surroundings. I began the various lockdowns by swathing myself in the comfort of the familiar \u2013 classic fragrances I\u2019d worn previously, the signature scents of loved ones; but eventually their amicability became anathema, an olfactory restriction that throttled me. Instead of building mere castles in the sky with my imagining, I wanted to create whole worlds unknown to me, populate them with possibilities, allow my mind to wander even if I couldn\u2019t. As the world shrank around me, so began my quest to travel via my nose. Or rather, by borrowing the noses of various perfumers who\u2019ve captured destinations in their fragrant formulae.<\/p>\n

These metaphorical travel diaries of sentiment are the starting point for an increasing number of scents based on places, or the sensation of travelling itself. The very beginning of her creations, explains Herm\u00e8s in-house Christine Nagel, is always \u201ca place that moves me, a landscape imprinted on my mind, a memory suddenly resurfacing\u2026\u201d Among her eaux de toilettes of the Hermessences collection, two \u2013 Cardamusc and Musc Pallida \u2013 are oil-based \u2018essences de parfum\u2019. They feel like emotional compass points in perfume form, intended to be worn alone or used as a base-boosting thrum of grounding comfort for other fragrances. Cardamusc wraps hot sand in the silvery cool of moonlit silkiness, while Musc Pallida captures a desert mirage, the neutral colours cocooned in the wet, velvet throb of humanity it radiates on warm skin. I\u2019ve not travelled as much as Nagel but wearing her compositions, I can \u2018see\u2019 these places in the droplets I smooth over my pulse points.<\/p>\n

\u201cVery often it\u2019s my travels that are the source of my inspiration,\u201d agrees Sonia Constant, a perfumer who happens to be Nagel\u2019s sister-in-law, now founder of her own house, Ella K. Adventuring with a Leica camera and Moleskine notepad; rather fabulously, she also carries a miniature \u2018head space\u2019 machine, which captures the air around unfamiliar plants, later to be deciphered by a computer and used for future creations. The sacred site of Pushkar in Rajasthan was one such visit, its essence later expressed in Rose de Pushkar. Constant says she wanted \u201c\u2026to capture that sublime moment when the roses and their petals scattered on the surface by the pilgrims of the day, and still floating in the twilight, are reflected in the lake\u2019s sacred waters below the full moon.\u201d Smelling it now, so majestic with oud, fire suffused with something silvery, and hearing how she works, I can\u2019t help thinking of her \u2013 and by wearing it, imagining myself \u2013 as a kind of fragrant Indiana Jones, swinging across caverns on rose-swagged vines. I\u2019ve never been there, or trapped Rajasthan\u2019s scents beneath a bell jar; but I can know what it feels like, I can map out the journey on my skin.<\/p>\n

Moonlight may not have a scent, but the feeling of it can be transposed to the wearer through the perfumer\u2019s manipulation of the aroma molecules, and the brain\u2019s eagerness to make sense of them.<\/p>\n

\"\"
ELLA K Rose de Pushkar<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When perfumers\u2019 attempt to capture a place, it\u2019s more than a simple snapshot they\u2019re trying to express. \u201cI\u2019ve been lucky to have travelled extensively,\u201d says Clara Molloy, co-founder of MEMO, \u201cbut I find that my favourite travels are when I dream, and my imagination takes over.\u201d Another woman who never leaves home without her trusty notebook, to sketch her impressions of places the scents are inspired by, together with husband, John, they see MEMO fragrances as \u201cforging their identity around magical destinations and potent raw materials\u2026 the promise of a magical journey, extended beyond its end and constantly re-travelled.\u201d Spraying Argentina, I\u2019m thrust into the pulsating heart of the country, perfumer Alienor Massenet\u2019s pepper-flecked rose and jasmine essences an unashamedly dramatic embrace of ingredients reflecting a culture I\u2019ve not experienced first-hand but can feel pulsating at the nape of my neck. You see, it\u2019s the equivalent of understanding an artist\u2019s rendition of the way the light kisses the landscape, as opposed to the emotional sterility of recognising somewhere on a picture-perfect postcard image.<\/p>\n

The particularities of the light of Paris, for example, is the alchemy that illuminates Maison Francis Kurkdjian\u2019s Grand Soir & Petit Matin duo, two scents I\u2019ve found myself returning to frequently. Evoking the experience of wandering the city at different times during the same day, Petit Matin is pale sunshine piercing the dawn with luminous litsea cubeba sparkling lemon, a gentle stretch of amber-washed lavender greeting the day. Grand Soir, meanwhile, swaggers with warm vanilla, resinous benzoin and darkly simmering cistus resin \u2013 the amber glow of a sunset gilding windows dark gold, the flickering flames of candlelight glimpsed in restaurants. I\u2019ve staved off panic attacks by meandering those same streets many times from my home office, danced beside the Seine, in my mind, wearing these; because sometimes only Paris will do when the far more mundane reality of where you are has its fingers around your throat.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m intrigued at the way a scent can re-write a less pleasant memory, too. My experience of Berlin was a cold, wet holiday with a sullen boyfriend and a gaggle of his pals, full of simmering resentments and rain-drenched rows. Wearing Gallivant\u2019s fragrant expression of the city, I forget the horrible details and focus instead on the one moment I treasure. In Gallivant\u2019s portrait it\u2019s about \u201cnature, being outdoors, all the incredible greenness and trees, a freshness with the lakes around the German capital,\u201d founder Nick Steward explains. \u201cBut there\u2019s also this interior life, something northern European with a bit of a colder edge. Classical like a certain Berlin architecture, but with a Bohemian underbelly.\u201d The crisp verdancy surprises, a kick of grapefruit\u2019s zing segueing to the spiced yet slightly aloof grandeur of the heart, that and the earthy base reminding me of the avant-garde club we emerged from blinking into incongruous sunshine, walking back hands entwined, throats raspy from smoke machines and all-night laughter. The only truly happy memory of that trip, but one I can elongate indefinitely in fragrant form, returning whenever I take the top off that bottle.<\/p>\n

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DIOR Eden-Roc<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The truth is, we all constantly re-write the stories of our lives, and delving into the dressing-up box of scent helps a lot, but only if we cast ourselves firmly into the heart of the image the fragrance suggests. \u201cA perfume comes to life when it is worn, a place when it is lived,\u201d says master perfumer Francois Demachy. When tasked to create a homage to the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, for its 150th anniversary, he composed Dior Eden-Roc \u201cby imagining myself arriving at the hotel by the sea.\u201d Rather than merely evoking the grand fa\u00e7ade, he wanted to create a perfume that felt like a lived experience. Bathed in sunlight, licked by salty air, the pale rocks and lush verdancy of vegetation nestle a final woody accord that feels gently borne aloft on the wave-lapped rocks. In wearing the fragrance, one can sense not only the place but picture yourself there as a physical possibility. Have you ever visited in person? It doesn\u2019t matter. You can bundle your anxiety there and have it stretching on a fluffy towel before it realises what you\u2019ve done. Sometimes half the trick is stopping those negative thoughts in their tracks, and as a failed meditator I\u2019ve never found anything that works as well as an evocative fragrance can.<\/p>\n

I shall travel in person again, but until then my dressing table is dizzy with possibilities for escape. I can wander Abu Dhabi\u2019s archaeological floral gardens via Widian\u2019s Hili \u2013 a bouquet of white blooms dusted with spices, the velvety base soaked in coconut and vanilla, or feel the spray of cascading waterfalls at Australia\u2019s Byron Bay thanks to Goldfield & Banks Bohemian Lime. Perfumer Alexandra Carlin transports me to Kyoto for Diptyque\u2019s fragrant evocation of the art of ikebana \u2013 a spiritual balance beautifully expressed through incense for shin (heaven), rose for soe (humanity), beetroot and vetiver for hikae (Earth); while Penhaligon\u2019s Cairo invites me to imagine the heat smouldering with Damascan Rose, a Mediterranean melting pot of gilded saffron and spiced cedar. Sometimes I eschew reality through time-travel \u2013 Constantinople celebrating this ancient \u2018Queen of Cities\u2019 at nightfall, opulent iris nestled on salty shores, seams of liquid vanilla rippled by moonlight, while Paco Rabanne\u2019s Olymp\u00e9a Blossom takes me to Ancient Greece, wearing a crown of budding roses and a diaphanous gown. Why not? Far more glamorous than my actual dressing gown.<\/p>\n

For Aesop\u2019s Othertopias perfumer Barnab\u00e9 Fillion chooses to traverse \u201crealms both real and imagined\u201d; allowing me adventures to wild shores via marine-fresh Karst, set sail on a wooden ship with buccaneering Miraceti, and explore Er\u00e9mia\u2019s more tangible, petrichor-soaked urban jungle. Am I saying a spritz of these fragrances is as good as a holiday? Of course not. But they are handy tools to grab when you need an instant emotional getaway. I\u2019m hungry to be romanced by daydreams of elsewhere, and when you\u2019re silently screaming at the thought of being trapped inside those same four walls another week, you need something that works instantaneously. Think of your next fragrance choice as the equivalent of turning up to the airport without any luggage and asking for a ticket to \u2018anywhere at all.\u2019 That final destination is just the beginning of your next adventure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31739,"featured_media":26692,"template":"","format":"standard","categories":[47,35,4254],"yoast_head":"\nFinal Destination: The Art Of Olfactory Teleportation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It\u2019s an experience we\u2019ve all had \u2013 that moment of being rooted to a spot as a passing scent suddenly flings us back: olfactory teleportation.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/me\/articles\/final-destination-the-art-of-olfactory-teleportation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta 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