WHAT DOES YOUR CHOICE IN PERFUME SAY ABOUT YOU? (or is this the question?)

What does your choice in perfume say about you?

This is the question you may ask at first, if you're just starting out on your fragrance journey. Or perhaps a personal scent isn't something you've been too interested in - you've always just worn what has most easily come your way.  The answer to the question of meaning behind scent is filtered through a different membrane by each person who experiences it, because our memories are personal; they're directly linked to the olfactory nerve.

We do seem to have a generalised scent filter on some levels, for example we generally perceive fresh, light, heavy, intense, soft. However, while you may love top notes of basil and citrus, conjuring thoughts of walking through an artisanal market in Italy, an easy stride, curious mind and a certain lightness of being about you, someone else may have a complete aversion to aromatic notes, and the possibility of any imagery around it besides "eugh" ends there. The history behind this aversion is fascinating and often not entirely explicable - a discussion worthy of its own blog post, another time. 

There is really no way to know if another person is able to translate the part of yourself you're sharing through your choice in fragrance, at the exact same axis where your individual scent experiences meet those you may share collectively (as families, geographically, culturally, through religious ceremony). Another person might find your fragrance choice pleasing, but the way they experience you, with it, could take on a slightly different essence or meaning for them. It is safe to say we can never have the exact same cerebral experience as someone else.

And this is why the question is not what is my fragrance saying about me?

But rather what or how do I want to feel when I wear my fragrance? Which part of yourself, of your own essence, would you like to enhance? 

Above all, these questions are prompts for you to delve deeper into your own experience of yourself - to get to know yourself a bit more. What you like and don't like. Which parts of yourself you want to express. How do you want to communicate with others? How do you communicate with yourself? Are you afraid of your inner thoughts or are you curious about what would happen if you experimented a bit more with scents that are not familiar but are also not unpleasing?

Or the kind of scents that you've suddenly realised you aren't sure about because you've been told they aren't favourable. Or some cultural sub-text attached to certain scents that has made up your mind before you've even tested them on your own skin.

So yes, in some ways, what does your choice in fragrance say about you? But more so, what do you say about you? What makes you feel more you? Because at the end of the day others will come and go, but you are here with yourself every moment of every day. Honour that. 

I'm here to explore, question, be enamoured and humoured by life, and I hope to keep sharing ways and producing things that encourage you to do so too.