I saw this article a while back and haven’t had time to post a link until now, but I wanted to include it in our series of posts on the genetic variance in the sense of smell (other posts on this topic can be found in the Olfaction category and have the tag “genetics” )….
A recent article in Inside Science describes more evidence that people experience scents differently. (Perfume In Progress has followed this research topic for a number of years; you can find a series of posts about it by searching for the #genetics tag on our posts.) In this experiment, researchers broke the common smell of potato chips into three main aromatic…
Julie of The Redolent Mermaid blog just posted a review of the new SSS Amber Incense. Her blog, which has a pretty new format, features reviews with gorgeous product photography and fun DIY project tutorials. I also wanted to post a link to a recent article about scent perception because we’ve been covering that topic…
I’m making progress on all fronts here (dishwasher installation is in progress at this moment, I’m researching medical insurance, we’re hosting some family visits etc). I’m working on Amber Incense in my spare moments. I’m very appreciative to see that Robin included Incense Pure on her fall 2014 incense list yesterday along with some other…
First I wanted to say thank you to Ida for her lovely review of Ambre Noir on Fragrantica yesterday! I’ve heard from a number of people over the years that they like to use Ambre Noir as a layering fragrance, which makes sense to me. I’m still testing the new floral scent and tinkering a…
First I wanted to say thank you to Ida for her lovely review of Ambre Noir on Fragrantica yesterday! I’ve heard from a number of people over the years that they like to use Ambre Noir as a layering fragrance, which makes sense to me. I’m still testing the new floral scent and tinkering a…
Things are settling down here after the holidays, though I’m trying to tackle the year-end paperwork. I’m also test sniffing the latest ylang/tuberose/jasmine mod. I enjoy white florals in winter because they bring a little bit of summer when the days are short. I noticed a 60-second Science Talk audio about the genetic influence on…
I’ve been talking about this for years on my blog based on my experiences with testers during the process of creating scents, and the studies keep coming in to support what we perfumistas have suspected for ages: our different sets of scent receptors in our noses make us smell scents differently. A study by Monell…
I’m sorry I’ve been scarce lately. I’ve been busy getting ready for next week’s event at Jessup Cellars in Napa as well as keeping up with orders. The photo above shows the making of carded sample sets for the Jessup event (before sorting into sets of five). I’ve seen a few interesting reads in the…
I’ve been talking about the topic of scent perception for several years on this blog, and here’s another interesting, though limited, study showing that we each smell things a little differently. Thanks to Robin at Now Smell This for the link. This investigation found that almost everyone was anosmic to some ingredient in the study,…
Now Smell This linked to an interesting article today on Yahoo News titled Super Sense of Smell Not Innate (by Marlowe Hood on Wed March 9). The article discusses how perfumers gain much of their ability to detect and identify scents through years of training and experience rather than being born with these skills. The…
Thanks to Nathan Branch for mentioning this link to an article about how we perceive the same scents very differently. We’ve talked about that phenomenon on this blog before and I always find it an interesting topic. Another recent interesting read can be found in this post by Victoria on the Bois de Jasmin blog…
Thanks to Nathan Branch for mentioning this link to an article about how we perceive the same scents very differently. We’ve talked about that phenomenon on this blog before and I always find it an interesting topic. Another recent interesting read can be found in this post by Victoria on the Bois de Jasmin blog…
A few weeks ago, Robin on Now Smell This posted a link to a series of videos for a symposium called Headspace that covered topics on “Scent As Design.” I played the videos in the background while I worked on something else, and I found part of one of the four to be interesting enough…
It’s amazing how different the same scent can be to different people, and just last week I had another vivid example. Someone emailed me to say that she’d received her samples and was enjoying most of them but was confused by Winter Woods because she perceived hardly any wood and instead mostly smelled sweet musk…
It’s been a busy week and I’ve not done much blending, but this evening I’m finally working on the woodsy amber. I plan to work on Bouquet Blanche tomorrow. I always find it interesting to see the variation in how people perceive aroma ingredients, so I enjoyed reading Luca Turin’s October Duftnote about an aromachemical…
I thought this was an interesting post on another blog by scent scientist Avery Gilbert about research into why we perceive the same scent molecules differently: Is Fragrance Preference Written in Your DNA? He begins by saying “How is it that the same odor molecule smells strong to one person and not at all to…
I’ve found it very interesting to see the variation in how people perceive a scent, and part of the reason for the variation seems to be that for any given note or ingredient people have different sensitivities and tolerances to it. What is often called “skin chemistry” also plays a role, but even if you…