We all read perfume reviews, some of us also write them. That´s what we do. We are addicts, sorry, perfumistas, after all. But is what we read really indicative of the scent?  Is what we write a true representation of the real thing? Can we translate what we smell?

Perception is subjective. (I talked about this here.) So what we say about a smell is subjective too. Nothing new so far. How I interpret, analyze or categorize and associate is highly personal and different from anybody else.

But still we read fragrance reviews. Why? Knowing it could not be true for me, I still want to know what my favorite bloggers say about this or that. And there is the point! My FAVORITE bloggers, these are people with whom I can identify in some way. Whose writing style or sense of humor resemble my own, who I admire and look up to or who I know always love what I hate and vice versa. (These last folks, called evil scent twins, are really helpful!) Therein also lies the problem of trusting what we read a little too much, often resulting in unsniffed impulse buys, we later regret. (Does anybody know what I´m talking about? :))

So, how do we translate a sensory impression of smell?

When I smell a perfume my eyes close automatically. I look inward and an image arises, a picture of a place, a person, a color, a memory…This is the first step, we translate an olfactory impulse into a visual one. That is how our brains and/or our souls work. The soul expresses itself trough images, just think of dreams, that is its preferred modus operandi (I´m a psychotherapist, so bear with me here). The translation of imagery into language is what we are used to do from the very beginning, when we learn to speak.

When it comes to smells there is one additional step involved in the translation process, that crucial step is full of our individual inner pictures. Bringing these to the surface is a beautiful thing. That is why I love perfume. Maybe that is also why we love to read other peoples reviews. To hear what they have to say, what they think, but also what and how they feel, how life experiences have shaped them, how they became what they are.

We feel a sense of kinship when we share similar experiences and emotions. Perfume is very near to our real beings, the core of what we are, because it is able to elicit primal responses in us, that seem to have been buried under the mass of daily drudgery and the hard shell many of us developed to better cope with lives, that constantly demand a lot of us, most of which is far removed from our real desires.

Perfume (and smells in general, of course) have the ability to let us connect with ourselves and others on a primitive level (that word is often interpreted misleadingly though, it just means a level that exists before language is used), it brings us into contact what our emotions, memories and desires.

When we use what a perfume elicits in us, there is stuff for a truly great review…

Picture sources: trade2win.com, crystallinks.com some rights reserved, thank you!