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Dive into the world of fragrance and elevate your scent evaluation skills. Whether you're seeking personal insight or crafting a poetic narrative, our comprehensive guide will help you master the nuances of scent description.
From focused observation to creative metaphor, these steps will enhance your ability to perceive and articulate the intricate beauty of every fragrance. Explore the multi-dimensional structure of scents, build a network of connections, and let your senses guide you to a deeper understanding of the olfactory world.
Tip #1 - Clarify Intent:
Determine your objective for scent description. Are you capturing the essence for personal insight or narrating the fragrance's tale to another? Reflect on the following questions:
- Are you aiming to depict the nature or overall quality of the scent?
- Do you wish to evoke a particular meaning or feeling?
- Are you striving to identify as many technical notes (ingredients) as possible?
- Do you seek to craft a romantic and poetic narrative of the fragrance?
Tip #2 - Sniff - Evaluate - Sniff - Evaluate:
Hold the smelling strip perpendicular to the nose, with the dipped section 1-2 cm from the nostrils. Alternate between sniffing and evaluating. The initial sniff offers the clearest flavor, similar to the first sip of wine. Subsequent sniffs should be short, followed by longer evaluations, allowing the olfactory receptors to recover and detect individual notes more effectively. This process also enhances odor memory.
Tip #3 - Focused Observation
Pay full attention to the scent. Eliminate distractions, avoid smoking, wearing fragrances, or consuming strong-smelling beverages. Take breaks as needed.
Tip #4 - Close Your Eyes
By closing your eyes, you can filter out external distractions and concentrate solely on the act of smelling.
Tip #5 - Smell Through the Mouth
Hold the tip of the smelling strip about 2 cm below the nose and 1 cm from the mouth, gently inhaling through parted lips. This allows the vapor to pass over the tongue and into the throat, offering a different perspective on the scent.
Tip #6 - Build a network of connections
Recommended to make notes of any of the connections, impressions and feelings that you experience during smelling and listening to others ideas. Believe your own senses and asking if your impressions or comments are correct make sure you are not oppressed and discouraged by others.
Tip #7 - Notice Multi-dimensional structure of the scent
Notice any words, images, feelings, or memories that the smell brings to mind. Don’t stuck on first impression. Go further of first feelings, memories. If it reminds you the scent of soap, think may be the soap was just scented with one of common ingredient in the fragrance, If it reminds you of Airplane (yes, there is a lot people having such matching), think may be it was a scent of one of the passenger wearing similar fragrance and so on and so forth.
Tip #8 - Notice descriptions of smells when you see or hear them
This could be advertising ("lemony fresh", "fresh pine scent"), poems, or fragrance inspiration descriptions.
Tip #9 - Use fragrance families
Single Floral. Dominated by a scent from one particular flower. Describes as feminine, understated, simple.
Floral Bouquet. Combination of individual flower notes. In a perfume compound base notes may include woods, greens, etc. Describes as romantic, feminine, poetic.
Amber or "Oriental”. Features the sweet slightly animalic scents of ambergris or labdanum, often combined with vanilla, tonka bean, flowers and herbs. Describes as exotic, mysterious, warm, sultry.
Woody. Dominated by woody scents, typically sandalwood and cedar, sandalwood. Used primarily in men’s fragrances. Described as earthy, sensual, soft, harmonious.
Leather. Family of fragrances which features the scents of honey, tobacco, wood and wood tars in its middle or base notes and a scent that alludes to leather. Found most frequently in men’s colognes. Describe as dry, smoky, warm.
Chypre. Complex fragrances compounded with a citrus top note and a mossy base. Describes as complex, rich, lasting.
Fougère. Characterized by its sharp herbaceous and woody scent used as basis for most popular men’s fragrances. Describes as natural, woodsy, rich.
Tip #10 - Use adjectives
Adjectives can describe the general, overall quality of the smell. Airy, acrid, aromatic, astonishing, balmy, balsamic, beautiful, bubbly, celestial, cheap, clean, cool, delicate, delicious, delightful, dewy, divine, exotic, exquisite, faint, familiar, favorite, fine, floral, fresh, green, gentle, great, graceful, heady, heavenly, heavy, holy, immortal, light, lovely, mild, musky, musty, natural, overpowering, overwhelming, peculiar, pleasant, pleasing, powerful, precious, pungent, pure, putrid, rancid, rare, refreshing, rich, sickeningly sweet, soft, sparkly, spicy, spiritual, smoky, smoldering, stale, strange, strong, subtle, suffocating, toxic scent, unique, warm, wild, wispy, wonderful, zesty are all adjectives that could pertain to smell.
Smell origins may take the form of a noun (the smell of leather) or an adjective (a leathery smell). The adjective may describe the effect where the noun describes a specific source.
Tip #11 - Use imaginative adjectives
If you have any pictures in your mind while smelling fragrance, describe the picture, e.g. “Light airy fresh in blue sky and after-rain dewy scent”.
Tip #12 - Use nouns
Often a smell will conjure thoughts of its source. Does your smell remind you of strawberries? Like fresh rain?
Tip #13 - Be specific
Smoke smells different depending on it source. Can you tell the difference between cigarette, cigar, and pipe smoke? Could you recognize, by smell, burning rubber or a vehicle that was burning oil?
Tip #14 - Be creative
What does spring smell like? What does sky smel like? What does black color smell like?
Tip #15 - Use verbs
Verbs are strong, direct, active words. Smells can waft, distract, hint, permeate, suggest, confuse, conjure images, cool off, give warmth, increase feelings, brings happiness, makes calm, command attention, or intrude upon the consciousness. Use verbs to describe the source of the smell. Here are some actions that you might associate with smells: baking, frying, digging, sweating, burning, rotting.
Tip #16 - Visualize what the smell does
Does it creep into your nose? Wrap around you? Follow you? Makes you fly? Flashbacks you into childhood? Bombard your nostrils? If It Makes you better, what way is it?
Tip #17 - What is it not?
Frequently, especially for new evaluators, it can be quite difficult to overcome the initial mental block in smelling, that period of orientation when the smell is, not as yet, recognizable. When this happens if the evaluator systematically goes through a list of various classifications of smells (Michael Edwards pic.) and identifies whether the characteristic is present then the negative results are as revealing as the positive. Does it have Floral notes? - Yes/No, Does it have Fruity notes - Yes/No.
Tip #18 - Borrow words associated with other senses
Smell doesn't have a lot of vocabulary of its own, but many other senses do, and they can suggest the quality or nature of a smell.
Sight. Can a smell be bright or dark? Can a smell be pink or green? Can it be clear or hazy? Can it be fast? Slow? Sluggish? Smooth?
Sound. Can a smell be dissonant? Harmonious? Loud or quiet?
Touch. Can a smell be sharp or dull? Even or jagged? Smooth or rough? Heavy or light? Cool or hot? How would you physically react to the smell? Would you relax or stiffen, pucker, or make a face?
Taste. Smell is closely associated with taste, so tastes are a good choice if they fit. Is a smell sweet or sour, salty or bitter? Is it chocolaty, fruity, or yeasty?
Tip #19 - Consider what feelings and emotions a smell evokes
Smell can conjure associations with particular events or general thoughts or emotions.
Is the smell startling or jarring? Soothing or comforting? Earthy or natural? Chemical or antiseptic?
Smell is often strongly associated with memories, but this is only useful if you're describing the smell to yourself (such as in a journal) since you can't know what somebody smelled in their memories.
Tip #20 - Use metaphor
If you're writing poetry or trying to evoke an emotion, metaphor might be a good device. A smell can't really grab someone by the nose or stab someone, but this might be a powerful description.
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