January 1, 2024

Through the Nose

Did I need another hobby?

Arguably not. I already have writing, reading, drawing, animating, gardening, and archery, and I’m going back to fencing. Plus I have a job, a 100+ year old house to look after, and, you know, important relationships to maintain.

Well, I give myself a pass on the fencing, because I’ve designated that my middle-age exercise regime, and I do need one of those.

But now I’m preparing to take up perfuming, and that is straightforwardly ridiculous.

It’s not cheap, or profitable, and it includes roughly none of the skills I’ve previously developed in my 40 years on this planet (barring the time I hid a peanut butter jar full of water and yard clippings in the garage for a full summer to try to make my own scent at age 7)

It does let me buy a bunch of little bottles and pipettes to play with, like a kids idea of a scientist’s lab. My daughter calls my ideas my “potion recipes” which could not possibly be more endearing.

And I’m feeling a big internal draw to work on something that can’t be instagrammed. It’s not for digital consumption. I can tell you what scents I put in, but the rest is up to your imagination.

Perfume is ephemeral and hyper-local. I miss that.

And as Covid tightens around my social sphere again, there’s something hopeful and aspirational about the idea of making something that you have to be near me to actually experience. I’m dreaming of being close enough to smell and be smelled. It feels weird to say that, but that’s where I’m at.

I imagine being back at conventions, sitting behind my table with a stack of books, some stickers and patches, and maybe a few tiny vials of scent based on my work.

Yes, of course I do want to tie my new hobby in with my other creative endeavors.

Whenever scent comes up among writers, you hear about it being the sense most tied to memory. And it is. That’s real and to this day the smell of dust and crayons will throw me back 35 years. I can’t smell tea rose without thinking of my grandma, who had a terrible sense of smell and so absolutely drenched herself in her signature scent whenever she went out. You’d get in a car with her and it would absolutely punch you in the face.

I love roses. I hope to plant a ton of them eventually. Maybe even breed a few, just for kicks, if I can find the time. I like how they look and smell.

And actually, roses make the perfect avenue to discuss the aspect of scent that I don’t see brought up as much among authors- or people in general.

Scent is tied to memory, but also to culture. I think conversations around scent should honor that more.

I read a lot of perfume descriptions as part of my perfumery research. It was fascinating.

The thing is that there aren’t a ton of commonly used words in English to describe scents. We can reference what things smell like, but, for example, roses have over 200 chemicals that make up their scent, and every breed has a different combination. So I can tell you something smells like rose, but what I really want to convey is the way I think this specific rose will make you feel, mixed with the other scents accompanying it.

In the gap left between the sensory experience and the emotional experience that leaves, culture floods in. We make use of the tools provided by a lifetime of shared references to try to evoke the nature the feeling.

Unfortunately, one of the ways I see that in perfumery is the reliance on frankly really racist and gender essentialist tropes. I read them- and I understand them. I can decode them because I have lived around those sames stereotypes as the people writing the copy.

I guess that must be useful for selling perfume, based on how ubiquitous it seems to be. Can’t say it makes me want to buy the perfumes others are selling.

When they describe roses, they aren’t going to mention my grandma, fumigating a car with the smell of nostalgic summers. But most of them evoke femininity. There’s no great reason for some plants to be girl plants and some plants to be boy plants, but there are references and traditions built into that, so we get roses for women, and cedar for men.

And then they link the roses, not to where they were grown or where the variety was bred, but to the stereotype of a place. India or China for exotic sensuality, England for cottagecore sweetness, France for richness.

They aren’t describing the rose. They’re creating a connection between your cultural connections and the scent they want you to expect.

I have seen some pushback on this, by the way. Mainly from smaller producers who aren’t trying to market on the same huge, prestige-based scales as the old guard.

It’s all down to the abstraction of scent, which I love, even if I would like it to be handled differently.

For example, I wouldn’t try to reproduce the actual scents of a story or character. That’s not a better option.

Yael would actually smell of low allergen detergent, regular body odor and whatever was the fruitiest iteration of axe body spray xe could get their hands on.

That isn’t a perfume I want to make.

But as a concept Yael smells like metal and frost, with deep burnt sweetness and bright open citrus. And that is a scent I would make or even wear. It’s the emotion and metaphor of scent that makes this so fun.

I’m even using it as a fun way of starting to develop some characters for a secret new project I haven’t talked about here yet. I’m toying with writing something with my wife/editor and abstraction is a fascinating way to explore the base of a character together without getting hung up on details.

(I will give you a hint though: I’m spending tonight, New Years eve, drinking good mead and eating cheese while we watch Pacific Rim. And that’s because of this potential project.)

So, follow me on Tumblr or, maybe, someday, find me at a convention to see how my perfumery goes. And stay tuned here to see what happens with the secret project, if it goes anywhere.

As always, please feel free to write back. I am always fascinated by what someone's ideal custom perfume would smell like, just as an example. You can also just tell me about how you feel about Pacific rim or mecha or whatever.

Otherwise, Until next time, take care and Happy New Year,

Lee Brontide

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