La vie en nose: a lifelong obsession with all things fragrant.

I’ve always been bewitched by fragrant things. The honeyed sweetness of the lilacs in the way back part of the backyard, the sharp green tang after my dad cut the grass, the odd leathery earth smell of the millipedes in the cracks of the pavement, the warm golden smell of the wooden window casements — these are the smells of my childhood. The tiny drawers at the very top of my mom’s dresser, filled with white leather gloves and small square silk scarves and old postcards, my summer music camp with its tall trees that sighed in the wind and its screened in porches —  these were universes full of fragrant journeys .

These early olfactory discoveries gradually blossomed into a more focused curiosity about perfume and, when we moved to France 18 years ago, a splendid and remarkable world of perfume as art started to reveal itself. As my interest grew, the Internet, naturally, became a source of knowledge and a trigger for searching out new fragrances, new perfumers, new approaches to perfume, new ideas, new theories about olfaction.

For as long as I’ve been seeking scent and all things fragrant, I’ve also been fascinated by language, systems of communication, poetry, the power of words. These two threads, language and fragrance, have recently intersected as a result of an intensive diploma I just completed to become a créatrice de parfums, a perfume creator. Here I learned that one of the foundations of understanding how to create or construct a perfume is first to master the matières premières, or raw materials, and the most direct way to this mastery is to build a personal vocabulary for each material. The link between olfaction and memory is so strong and so direct that the vocabulary that you’ve assigned to the raw material provides the brain with a concrete pathway for apprehending the material. In other words, words themselves are key to unlocking perfume!

I’m an American mama, transplanted in Bordeaux, France. I love books, classic children’s literature, in particular. I have a kiddo attending university in England, and an adored Spinone Italiano dog. And I’m crazy about perfume and all things perfume-related. Stay tuned here at La vie en nose for perfume reviews, conversations about raw materials, random thoughts and ideas about olfaction and scent, and my adventure(s) creating perfume. On y va …