jtd

I’ve read a few online discussions about gender and perfume recently. I love to see this because nowhere does gender seem more arbitrary than in perfumery. Now I love perfume, and consider it an art-form, but I don't expected it to move the dial on gender. Perfume is more likely to fall in line...

I’ve said it before: as a rule, flankers suck. It's not hard to understand how and why they suck. The goal is sales and the impetus is marketing . When goals are reiteration and demographic targeting, and the risk is straying too far from the known, creativity will be difficult to pin down. How is it then...

I find the discussion of gender and perfume fascinating but frustrating. However well-considered an understanding or a finding might be, it’s hard to consider in terms of evidence. Gender is as basic as language, but where is it? Where do you find gender? Fragrance is easy to ‘place’,...

Diorellish (the the current reformulation of Diorella) smells OK. On first impression, it smells a bit like Diorella, the lateral borders being in about the same places, but the depth isn't there. Graph Diorellish in two dimensions and the X-axis appears mostly...

Roudnitska is known for his perfumes, for his influence on the state of the art of perfumery and, more than many other noses, for his discussion of the art of perfumery. I don’t know all his work. I’m not an historian and there has been...

The ‘foodie‘ focus of modern perfume started in the late 19th century, coincidentally at the start of chemically synthetic perfumery. We tend to highlight the abstract perfumes from this era, such as the fougère, the chypre and the oriental. The fougère has long been defined by its lack of food...