gus_saltmarshin Woods, Mosses & Roots · Auckland ·
Question
We plane a lot of cedar in the boat shed and it smells sweet and sharp, nothing like pencils. Is the cedar in perfume even the same tree?
hana.neroli Often not. The cedarwood page says most cedarwood oil is distilled from junipers and cypresses, and only small amounts from true cedars like the…
ingrid_berlinin Wearing Fragrance · Berlin ·
TipBehind the ears is a classic spot, but I wear closed headphones since fifteen years and the pads sit right on it. By evening the cushions smell of orris and my skin of nothing. Now I spray the base of the neck instead. /Ingrid
dex_in_brooklynin Everyday Smells · New York ·
Snapshot
ok so the bakery under my building turns its exhaust fan on at five and the whole block smells of crust and scorched flour. you're welcome, Brooklyn.
teddy.tonka The bakery by my coffee shop in Austin does the same. Best alarm clock.
priya.cardamomin Giving Fragrance · Toronto ·
Exercise
Thread of the week: a scent portrait of someone on your gift list, done before you set foot in a shop. It's the exercise from the Class on giving fragrance without guessing , and nothing goes on skin. 1) Write down five smells that person seeks out: what they…
kemi.cocoa My mum: cocoa, nutmeg, Sunday rice and peas, the cocoa butter on her hands and the sorrel she steeps at Christmas. Amber, amber, amber, then floral.…
frankie.incensein Ambers, Spices & Gourmands · Chicago ·
ReadingFun fact, with a source: Wikipedia's musk article says nearly all the musk used in perfumery today is synthetic , and that trade in the natural stuff, from the male musk deer, is regulated under CITES. The same article sorts the lab musks into nitro…
jess.in.philly The lab kind is my whole personality. Warm cotton straight out of the dryer, and then I stop noticing it by lunch.
wren.and.mossin Woods, Mosses & Roots · Asheville ·
QuestionI keep reading that oakmoss is 'restricted' in perfume, and nobody says by whom or why. In my garden it's just a gray lichen on the oak branches that I'd never think twice about. What happened?
maeve.moss The oakmoss page goes through it and it's two sets of rules, the EU law on one side and the industry's own standards on the other, and the EU banned…
Class no. 8 · 8 min read
Training your nose means smelling often, in pairs, and putting a word to each smell: research shows that recognising odours is a skill that improves with practice. By the end of this class you will know how to use a blotter, run a blind test with your spice rack and look after your nose when it gets tired.
mags.lavenderin Seasons & Celebrations · Norwich ·
QuestionMorning all, A question for the tree people while there's time to plan. Last year we had a Nordmann from the farm up the road, lovely shape, kept every needle to Twelfth Night, and smelled of almost nothing. My nan's tree, years back, filled the whole front…
brynn.pine Balsam fir, every time. The whole parks crew says so.
juniper_julesin Woods, Mosses & Roots · Portland ·
ReadingStudio notes: I read the club Class on the seven fragrance families and then the Wikipedia page on the fragrance wheel , back to back. The French list has oakmoss anchoring the fougères and the chypres, while the wheel has a subfamily called Mossy Woods. Less…
hamish_heather Same with whisky, every shop sorts its shelves its own way. You learn the map and try not to loose the plot.
ash.and.emberin Welcome to the Club · Calgary ·
Introduction
Electrician in Calgary, and I go out on calls with the volunteer fire crew. Smoke I can tell apart: spruce smoke, grass fire, the wet char once it's out. Flowers, not so much. Figured I'd start from the woods and work my way out. Where should a smoke guy…
hamish_heather Begin with birch tar, a campfire in a single note , you'll not loose your way from there.
nnamdi.vetiverin Wearing Fragrance · Nottingham ·
Question
Two sprays of vetiver before work and by lunch I can't smell a thing on me. My mate at the next bay says I still smell of it when we clock off. Who's right?
frankie.incense Wikipedia's page on olfactory fatigue, also called noseblindness uses the restaurant example, the food smell that fades for you a while after you…
ambrose_leatherin Ambers, Spices & Gourmands · Northampton ·
Memory
Right then. Our foreman in the clicking room smoked a pipe at break, and his tobacco smelled of hay and marzipan, nothing like my dad's roll-ups. I never knew why until my granddaughter put a tonka bean under my nose on Sunday. Same smell, near enough. The…
bev.boston My late husband's aftershave had that hay and almond smell. Now I have a word to look for.
priya.cardamomin Learning to Smell · Toronto ·
Challenge
Thread of the week: describe rain without saying fresh, clean or petrichor. It has rained in Toronto for three days straight, so there's plenty of material. 1) Go outside, or open a window, while it's raining or just after. 2) Write what you smell in your own…
aroha.rain Hot tarmac after a spring shower: wet coins and warm bread crust. Its my favourite smell in Wellington
Class no. 7 · 7 min read
The Osmothèque, a perfume archive in Versailles, holds 4,000 fragrances, 800 of them no longer sold, and remakes lost ones from their original formulas. Here is what it keeps, why perfumes vanish and how you can still smell them.
priya.cardamomin Citrus & Fresh · Toronto ·
ChallengeThread of the week: rank the citrus in your fruit bowl from sweetest to sharpest, by nose only. 1) Take two or three citrus, whatever you have in. 2) Scratch each peel with a fingernail and smell it, no tasting. 3) Post your order with one word of your own…
dex_in_brooklyn ok so: orange (candy), lemon (dish soap, sorry), lime (green flame on the burner). your welcome
pip.rhubarbin Citrus & Fresh · Wakefield ·
Discovery
Snapped one of the last stalks of rhubarb in the school garden and it smelled exactly like a freshly mown pitch. The club's rhubarb page explains that cut-grass smell : six-carbon compounds, the same family that gives cut grass its scent. Round here the…
juniper_jules Studio notes: that green is the smell of greenware drying on the shelf, wet and sharp. Anyone else?
wren.and.mossin Florals & Bouquets · Asheville ·
Question
A neighbor gave me one stem of tuberose from her pots before the first frost. It's on the kitchen table and I can smell it from the porch. Green at first, and now almost like coconut milk. Is it always this loud?
mags.lavender Yes, the tuberose page calls it overwhelming and heady, and says perfume uses it in moderation for that reason. I had one in a vase once and it was…
bev.bostonin Wearing Fragrance · Boston ·
Memory
I keep my late husband's gray cardigan on the bedroom chair. When the heat kicks on in the fall, lavender and something like fresh hay still come out of the wool. What is that hay smell, does anyone know?
dougie_newcastle That'll be a fougère, pet. Lavender up top, and the hay is most likely coumarin, the new-mown hay note .