Not a question, a great big thank you. Your work on the mechanics of smelling, and your kind encouragement made my life worth living after a car smash left me totally anosmic. The coloury candour and clarity of your writing and the world-class excellence of your research inspired me to relearn how to smell. Yes folks, it can be done! Back to total aromatic sensitivity and the world is a beautiful place. Thank you Luca and thank you Tania.
18 months of a daily exercise which involved reading about a frag in your A-Z that I had some memory of, then re-imaging its aromas, the place/person/event I remembered it from.
Ormonde Jayne Ta'if is so good with the dates. Has a sweetness to it. Maybe your daughter would like it? Also Regimes des Fleurs Little Flower is a great fresh rose fragrance. Not inexpensive, though. Fragrance prices these days... 😮
A question about a particular smell that I absolutely detest. The smell of weed. Some cities reek of weed and I can’t stand the smell. It’s literally repulsive to me and I would like to understand why ? What’s the molecule that makes me reject it ? Cigarette smoke gives me terrible headaches but nothing like this primal repulsion. Thank you for your enlightenment.
I love your work, and bless you every day for directing me to D:SOL Ladano.
My questions is: why does my dog's neck smell of flowers (jasmine, maybe) when he wakes up? It is definitely not fabric conditioner (the Devil's Bath Oil). The other dog smells of digestive biscuits, like a healthy cow.
My beloved black cat smelled wonderfully, a complex smell, really a perfume in itself. His (beloved as well) sister didn’t smell like that. I think it just happens with animals.
First off, thank you so much for being at once so incisive and humorous in your writings on perfume and smell!
Down to business: What's your opinion on Chanel lately, in general? They've made some funky decisions recently, namely the 2016 reformulation of their les exclusifs from edt to edp, and within the last year have outright discontinued all their extraits (except N°5, which is now only available in those monstrous 225 mL bottles). Meanwhile launching a Bleu de Chanel "L'Exclusif" is... a curious choice.
Also, if you'll permit a bit of a tinfoil-hat question: Do you think there's a relationship between the "Big 5" aromachemical firms (E.g., Givaudan, IFF, etc.) and the increasingly unreasonable IFRA bans? It doesn't take too much imagination for me to see a potential market incentive for aromachemcal firms to advocate for restrictions, which would in turn stimulate research into "compliant" (read: not yet banned) alternatives.
Thanks again, Luca! Really grateful for your work; rescuing modern perfumery from the mires of Macy's counters and restoring faith that, despite all, perfumery is not yet dead. Happy sniffin' :)
Chanel are brilliant at walking the tightrope between high luxury and mass market. Aside from Le Lion, which is good but way too strong, their stuff has been a bit meh of late. Chris Sheldrake has retired, so they’ve lost a genius at the helm…
Re: the big 5 and IFRA. Banning allergens which have been in common use long enough to generate a cohort of complaints (and to be out of patent) is rather similar to banning generics in pharma, and it is not hard to see that a subset of the firms involved would be mighty pleased. So yes, very good question.
Mr. Sheldrake retired? He is one of the few perfumers I would fangirl over if I met him, the sheer audacity of Tubereuse Criminelle makes me smile every time I think of it. He's well represented in my collection.
I feel the same. Amazing perfumer, total gentleman, vast culture and a wonderfully wry sense of humor. I once told him about a new synthetic molecule named something like D24X (fresh from the lab) and in his warm Ralph Fiennes voice he said "how evocative, I can smell it already"
Hurray, I always miss this "askmeanything" as I live overseas and it is usually closed when I wake up🙃.
I am rereading your The Secret of Scent right now (I think I got too overwhelmed the first time but now I feel more ready). Do you have a book on perfume you really like? Thank you and hope you feel better soon.
• Thermal: gently warm the neck (not the stopper) with warm water, a hairdryer, or a hand. The outer glass expands faster than the plug. Usually the first thing to try.
• Tap and twist: hold the neck, tap the stopper sideways with a wooden handle (not metal) while applying steady rotational force. Often breaks a crystallized seal.
• Penetrating liquid: a drop of warm water, glycerol, or WD-40 around the joint, left for a few minutes to wick in by capillarity. Works well for salt- or alkali-frozen stoppers (common with NaOH, which fuses glass).
• Leverage: two wooden blocks or the edge of a drawer to grip the stopper flange while twisting the body — gives torque without crushing the glass.
I have tried hot water sometimes, but it's hard to heat the neck of the bottle through without damaging the label, so I mostly use the freezer method.
You might think the cold would shrink the bottle making it harder to open, but this method is quite reliable in practice. I suppose the cold is shrinking the stopper, too, and making the neck thinner. It only has to change the geometry enough to break the seal, after all.
I have to admit I have some bottles with fragile stoppers that I finally decided not to try to open.
Also, it's tempting to put a finger or tool under a Chanel parfum stopper (and some others) and attempt lever it out. The gem-shaped top will snap right off.
Good luck -- I hope you get some marvelous results!
Put the bottle in the freezer for 15 or 20 minutes, then try turning the stopper, gingerly at first, exerting steady pressure. This has worked every time for me, except for a caveat noted below. You can put the bottle back in the freezer for more time if it doesn't work at first. Because of the alcohol, the perfume is not going to freeze, expand, and shatter.
As soon as you take the bottle from the freezer, there will be condensation, and the bottle will become slippery. I recommend using tea towels, cotton gloves, whatever you like that will give you a non slip grip on both the bottle and stopper. This will also help insulate your fingers from the painful and numbing cold.
I had one resistant bottle where perfume had seeped between the stopper and the neck of the bottle, evaporating and acting like glue. I put drops of alcohol around the stopper for a day or two, reapplying occasionally as it evaporated. (Perhaps I covered it with Parafilm to slow the evaporation?) After softening the residue, I was finally able to open the bottle using the freezer technique.
Caveat: Be VERY cautious if the stopper has a very thin neck. The wide upper part will often give you enough leverage to snap the neck.
Then there's no way to get the perfume out without breaking the bottle, which is a lot harder than it looks. It turns out most perfume bottles are engineered to resist breakage. I saw a sales assistant drop a heavy black glass Tom Ford bottle a tile floor -- the bottle was unharmed but the floor was chipped!
Robin on Now Smell This once suggested using one of those kits designed to cut wine bottles and turn them into glasses or vases. I've never tried that, but it but it's an interesting idea.
Linda I once used too much force and broke off the stopper of a big Balenciaga Le Dix. It was a beautiful bottle. The stopper snapped off and left its "shaft" immovable in the neck. I hired a dude to come with a little drill. Very elaborate operation which ultimately resulted in the whole bottle shattering and me straining the juice (to get the glass out) through a coffee filter into a decant bottle from the metal baking pan I had set the bottle into, before the drilling began. I didn't wash the pan for days, and the house was redolent of Le Dix. And the filter gave off fragrance for a week. Yum.
A few years ago, you rated Caldey’s “Island Lavender” one of the best soliflore’s ever, but recently you’ve changed to say that it’s a shadow of its former self. What is so different enough to make you change your mind?
The original perfumer died. His estate wanted too much money to hand the formula to Caldey, they had it reformulated by a different perfumer who completely screwed it up. Last time I smelled it, there seemed to be very little lavender in it.
Wow, interesting, I never knew about the money they wanted for the formula! I have to say, to my nose, it’s not that there isn’t any lavender, I think there’s plenty of it; it’s more the fact that there’s too much of ‘everything else’ (some cheap musk) in, what appears to me, to be some attempt to extend the longevity rather than be a true soliflore. Thanks for your answer!
What are your thoughts on the significant changes at Amouage since Renaud Salmon took the helm? Do you like any of the new attars, extraits, or essences? Do you think the prolific output is mainly a cash grab? What are your thoughts on Quentin Bisch’s influence? There is so much debate in the fragrance community about whether or not Amouage has improved or declined since Christopher Chong’s departure, but I have not read anything about it from you. Please offer us some contribution :)
Chypre-Siam by Rogue Perfumery sent me down an expensive floral/oakmoss rabbit hole, but I find very few chypres as beautiful and well-blended as this one. (Mitsouko and Maksim Chypre de Grand come to mind). Any recommendations for smooth, seamless chypres in this vein? Thanks!
Peccato !! I remember Jonny Gathorne-Hardy rambling around in his 2CV as late as 2010 or so but then he inherited some money and bought an ordinary car. I remember admiring what I called his indescribably old chimney. He replied, 'When you say indescribably old . . . do you mean Elizabethan?' It was the most gentle cutting remark I have ever heard.
Hope you’re better soon, Luca. I’m thinking about making a lemon peel liqueur. Last year I made an orange peel version, as Cointreau is so expensive now, and it was OK but none too complex. As I love white pepper, I think I’m going to add that, but I need another element, maybe floral or green, so the finished product doesn’t remind me of fish pie. Thoughts?
Cointreau is evidently complex, and barrel-aged Cointreau even more so, if you are so fortunate to have ever encountered it. I tried adding Seville orange zest to vodka and it is interesting per se but certainly not Cointreau. Given the price of everything else, is Cointreau really that unreasonable? Alma Mahler was famous for saying that it was one of the two greatest tastes.
Agreed about not trying to economise on Cointreau. But in two weeks I’m holding an Aviation-athon, and a friend has Meyer lemons, and I can’t pass up the medicated plasters goodness in those peels. So into the Smirnoff they will go!
I’ve got some violet options to try out. Giffard liqueur, flavour drops from Javier de las Muelas which are quite nice neat if you want to feel like Elizabeth I and, hear me out, crushed Parma Violet infused vodka. We shall drink them standing up. Then, we shall fight with growing confidence and strength, to drink them sitting down.
I love their amber, I think it's Ambra Nobile, or something like that. (The only drawback is the silver and white packaging clashes with the idea of amber so I tend not to reach for it as often as I might.)
Hi Luca, I’ve been missing the stories you used to share here; they were always such a delight to read. Do you think you’ll treat us to more in the future, or are you saving them for something special? :)
Now something else. Have you smelled Guidance, the perfume that Quentin Bisch created for Amouage? It's an overpowering scent, projects like a beast, and is ubiquitous in some areas in Paris. Any thoughts on this? I'm sorry, it's turned out I had 2 questions.
1- I hope you have the time and energy for a memoir, but in the meantime, I'm happy to hear that more stories are coming.
2- I had a feeling it wasn’t your style. I honestly wonder how such strong perfumes are even allowed. There should be some kind of limit on how intense a fragrance can be, or at least a “No Giorgio” rule for that kind of scent :)
Not a question, a great big thank you. Your work on the mechanics of smelling, and your kind encouragement made my life worth living after a car smash left me totally anosmic. The coloury candour and clarity of your writing and the world-class excellence of your research inspired me to relearn how to smell. Yes folks, it can be done! Back to total aromatic sensitivity and the world is a beautiful place. Thank you Luca and thank you Tania.
And that’s amazing! So glad you got your sense of smell back. How long did it take and how did you do it?
18 months of a daily exercise which involved reading about a frag in your A-Z that I had some memory of, then re-imaging its aromas, the place/person/event I remembered it from.
Wow.
What's your favorite rose?
Pressing question at the moment, because my daughter wants a rose. My favorite is Prosody’s Rose Rondeaux.
Ormonde Jayne Ta'if is so good with the dates. Has a sweetness to it. Maybe your daughter would like it? Also Regimes des Fleurs Little Flower is a great fresh rose fragrance. Not inexpensive, though. Fragrance prices these days... 😮
Hi Luca, did you ever tried anything from Profumum Roma brand? If so do you have favorites?
Nope, but I will.
Thank you for asking ❤️
Excluding Claire’s Cherry Bliss, what’s a more affordable fragrance you’d still consider a favorite?
American classics like Vanderbilt and Liz Taylor frags? Also the “old” Lauders of course.
3 of your favourites parfums for summer. It doesn’t matter if male, female or unisex
The same as for winter :-)
What reference materials do you swear by?
I am not a perfumer…
I meant books.
None. I gave away all my perfumery books to my grad student (now perfumer) years ago.
Good afternoon, bonjour,
A question about a particular smell that I absolutely detest. The smell of weed. Some cities reek of weed and I can’t stand the smell. It’s literally repulsive to me and I would like to understand why ? What’s the molecule that makes me reject it ? Cigarette smoke gives me terrible headaches but nothing like this primal repulsion. Thank you for your enlightenment.
I suspect oxane (oxathiane), a powerful sulfur-containing molecule that smells just like weed and may be a component of the real thing.
Thank you. I also smell something like garlic in weed. And even though I love eating garlic, the smell can be pungent.
another sulfur aromachemical…
On that subject, do you have any scents that you find repulsive ? A particular family of molecules ?
Probably because I love white flowers, I don’t mind indol or skatol.
woody ambers
I saw it coming 😂
I hate that smell too, especially when it lingers on someone. It's legal where I am so it happens a lot.
Just want to thank you for all you do! And thanks especially for introducing me to Tauer perfumes.
Thank you for your kind words Brock!
I love your work, and bless you every day for directing me to D:SOL Ladano.
My questions is: why does my dog's neck smell of flowers (jasmine, maybe) when he wakes up? It is definitely not fabric conditioner (the Devil's Bath Oil). The other dog smells of digestive biscuits, like a healthy cow.
Are you a hound as well?
...although a hound who wore D:SOL's Ladano would be quite a proposition
I am a human.
My beloved black cat smelled wonderfully, a complex smell, really a perfume in itself. His (beloved as well) sister didn’t smell like that. I think it just happens with animals.
I will blame the microbiome, currently a safe option.
My cats (siblings) both smelled of vanilla or chocolate.
First off, thank you so much for being at once so incisive and humorous in your writings on perfume and smell!
Down to business: What's your opinion on Chanel lately, in general? They've made some funky decisions recently, namely the 2016 reformulation of their les exclusifs from edt to edp, and within the last year have outright discontinued all their extraits (except N°5, which is now only available in those monstrous 225 mL bottles). Meanwhile launching a Bleu de Chanel "L'Exclusif" is... a curious choice.
Also, if you'll permit a bit of a tinfoil-hat question: Do you think there's a relationship between the "Big 5" aromachemical firms (E.g., Givaudan, IFF, etc.) and the increasingly unreasonable IFRA bans? It doesn't take too much imagination for me to see a potential market incentive for aromachemcal firms to advocate for restrictions, which would in turn stimulate research into "compliant" (read: not yet banned) alternatives.
Thanks again, Luca! Really grateful for your work; rescuing modern perfumery from the mires of Macy's counters and restoring faith that, despite all, perfumery is not yet dead. Happy sniffin' :)
Thank you so much for your kind words.
Chanel are brilliant at walking the tightrope between high luxury and mass market. Aside from Le Lion, which is good but way too strong, their stuff has been a bit meh of late. Chris Sheldrake has retired, so they’ve lost a genius at the helm…
Re: the big 5 and IFRA. Banning allergens which have been in common use long enough to generate a cohort of complaints (and to be out of patent) is rather similar to banning generics in pharma, and it is not hard to see that a subset of the firms involved would be mighty pleased. So yes, very good question.
Mr. Sheldrake retired? He is one of the few perfumers I would fangirl over if I met him, the sheer audacity of Tubereuse Criminelle makes me smile every time I think of it. He's well represented in my collection.
I feel the same. Amazing perfumer, total gentleman, vast culture and a wonderfully wry sense of humor. I once told him about a new synthetic molecule named something like D24X (fresh from the lab) and in his warm Ralph Fiennes voice he said "how evocative, I can smell it already"
That comeback may be the best I have ever heard! How treasurable!
Hurray, I always miss this "askmeanything" as I live overseas and it is usually closed when I wake up🙃.
I am rereading your The Secret of Scent right now (I think I got too overwhelmed the first time but now I feel more ready). Do you have a book on perfume you really like? Thank you and hope you feel better soon.
I don’t read much about perfume but I remember Diane Ackerman’s chapter on smell in her Natural History of the Senses was superb.
Thank you!
Stuck ground-glass stoppers in glorious vintage never-opened perfume bottles. Luca, do you have some wisdom born of experience you'd care to share?
Claude AI says:
• Thermal: gently warm the neck (not the stopper) with warm water, a hairdryer, or a hand. The outer glass expands faster than the plug. Usually the first thing to try.
• Tap and twist: hold the neck, tap the stopper sideways with a wooden handle (not metal) while applying steady rotational force. Often breaks a crystallized seal.
• Penetrating liquid: a drop of warm water, glycerol, or WD-40 around the joint, left for a few minutes to wick in by capillarity. Works well for salt- or alkali-frozen stoppers (common with NaOH, which fuses glass).
• Leverage: two wooden blocks or the edge of a drawer to grip the stopper flange while twisting the body — gives torque without crushing the glass.
ps. What is Claude's favorite perfume?
Apparently he likes a WD-40 note. ;-)
Unctuous Claude! Slippery slope, avec Monsieur AI.
I have tried hot water sometimes, but it's hard to heat the neck of the bottle through without damaging the label, so I mostly use the freezer method.
You might think the cold would shrink the bottle making it harder to open, but this method is quite reliable in practice. I suppose the cold is shrinking the stopper, too, and making the neck thinner. It only has to change the geometry enough to break the seal, after all.
Thanks so much!!!!
I have to admit I have some bottles with fragile stoppers that I finally decided not to try to open.
Also, it's tempting to put a finger or tool under a Chanel parfum stopper (and some others) and attempt lever it out. The gem-shaped top will snap right off.
Good luck -- I hope you get some marvelous results!
Claude is always trying to please me I suspect it would read this thread and say Bortnikov and Mallo…
Put the bottle in the freezer for 15 or 20 minutes, then try turning the stopper, gingerly at first, exerting steady pressure. This has worked every time for me, except for a caveat noted below. You can put the bottle back in the freezer for more time if it doesn't work at first. Because of the alcohol, the perfume is not going to freeze, expand, and shatter.
As soon as you take the bottle from the freezer, there will be condensation, and the bottle will become slippery. I recommend using tea towels, cotton gloves, whatever you like that will give you a non slip grip on both the bottle and stopper. This will also help insulate your fingers from the painful and numbing cold.
I had one resistant bottle where perfume had seeped between the stopper and the neck of the bottle, evaporating and acting like glue. I put drops of alcohol around the stopper for a day or two, reapplying occasionally as it evaporated. (Perhaps I covered it with Parafilm to slow the evaporation?) After softening the residue, I was finally able to open the bottle using the freezer technique.
Caveat: Be VERY cautious if the stopper has a very thin neck. The wide upper part will often give you enough leverage to snap the neck.
Then there's no way to get the perfume out without breaking the bottle, which is a lot harder than it looks. It turns out most perfume bottles are engineered to resist breakage. I saw a sales assistant drop a heavy black glass Tom Ford bottle a tile floor -- the bottle was unharmed but the floor was chipped!
Robin on Now Smell This once suggested using one of those kits designed to cut wine bottles and turn them into glasses or vases. I've never tried that, but it but it's an interesting idea.
Good luck!
THANKS!!!! You surpass Claude.
I hope you'll report back if that verifies, or not. Enjoy!
Linda I once used too much force and broke off the stopper of a big Balenciaga Le Dix. It was a beautiful bottle. The stopper snapped off and left its "shaft" immovable in the neck. I hired a dude to come with a little drill. Very elaborate operation which ultimately resulted in the whole bottle shattering and me straining the juice (to get the glass out) through a coffee filter into a decant bottle from the metal baking pan I had set the bottle into, before the drilling began. I didn't wash the pan for days, and the house was redolent of Le Dix. And the filter gave off fragrance for a week. Yum.
The gentle way - an ultrasonic eyeglass cleaner. But you will also lose the labels.
What’s your view of Essential Parfums?
A few years ago, you rated Caldey’s “Island Lavender” one of the best soliflore’s ever, but recently you’ve changed to say that it’s a shadow of its former self. What is so different enough to make you change your mind?
The original perfumer died. His estate wanted too much money to hand the formula to Caldey, they had it reformulated by a different perfumer who completely screwed it up. Last time I smelled it, there seemed to be very little lavender in it.
Wow, interesting, I never knew about the money they wanted for the formula! I have to say, to my nose, it’s not that there isn’t any lavender, I think there’s plenty of it; it’s more the fact that there’s too much of ‘everything else’ (some cheap musk) in, what appears to me, to be some attempt to extend the longevity rather than be a true soliflore. Thanks for your answer!
What are your thoughts on the significant changes at Amouage since Renaud Salmon took the helm? Do you like any of the new attars, extraits, or essences? Do you think the prolific output is mainly a cash grab? What are your thoughts on Quentin Bisch’s influence? There is so much debate in the fragrance community about whether or not Amouage has improved or declined since Christopher Chong’s departure, but I have not read anything about it from you. Please offer us some contribution :)
What I have smelled of the recent ones wasn’t my style. I have written abt Bisch in the Barrois post.
Chypre-Siam by Rogue Perfumery sent me down an expensive floral/oakmoss rabbit hole, but I find very few chypres as beautiful and well-blended as this one. (Mitsouko and Maksim Chypre de Grand come to mind). Any recommendations for smooth, seamless chypres in this vein? Thanks!
No, but I read up, and it sounds great! Thank you!
Have you tried Kintsugi by Masque Milano?
I've heard good things about Darren Alan perfumes and he does a chypre. Haven't tried it yet myself.
1. Your dream car
and/or
2. Your favourite piece of classical music
Merci!!
1- Citroën 2CV
2- Barber Adagio
Peccato !! I remember Jonny Gathorne-Hardy rambling around in his 2CV as late as 2010 or so but then he inherited some money and bought an ordinary car. I remember admiring what I called his indescribably old chimney. He replied, 'When you say indescribably old . . . do you mean Elizabethan?' It was the most gentle cutting remark I have ever heard.
Excellent taste!!
Hope you’re better soon, Luca. I’m thinking about making a lemon peel liqueur. Last year I made an orange peel version, as Cointreau is so expensive now, and it was OK but none too complex. As I love white pepper, I think I’m going to add that, but I need another element, maybe floral or green, so the finished product doesn’t remind me of fish pie. Thoughts?
lemon balm?
Cointreau is evidently complex, and barrel-aged Cointreau even more so, if you are so fortunate to have ever encountered it. I tried adding Seville orange zest to vodka and it is interesting per se but certainly not Cointreau. Given the price of everything else, is Cointreau really that unreasonable? Alma Mahler was famous for saying that it was one of the two greatest tastes.
Agreed about not trying to economise on Cointreau. But in two weeks I’m holding an Aviation-athon, and a friend has Meyer lemons, and I can’t pass up the medicated plasters goodness in those peels. So into the Smirnoff they will go!
Do tell about the aviation event….
I’ve got some violet options to try out. Giffard liqueur, flavour drops from Javier de las Muelas which are quite nice neat if you want to feel like Elizabeth I and, hear me out, crushed Parma Violet infused vodka. We shall drink them standing up. Then, we shall fight with growing confidence and strength, to drink them sitting down.
Try limoncello first 😉
Are you familiar with Nobile 1942? I'm starting to think they're the best kept secret in niche perfume.
What's your favorite patchouli fragrance?
Yes good stuff. I don’t much like patchouli by itself and for some reason cannot smell it at all in compositions.
I love their amber, I think it's Ambra Nobile, or something like that. (The only drawback is the silver and white packaging clashes with the idea of amber so I tend not to reach for it as often as I might.)
Hi Luca, I’ve been missing the stories you used to share here; they were always such a delight to read. Do you think you’ll treat us to more in the future, or are you saving them for something special? :)
Now something else. Have you smelled Guidance, the perfume that Quentin Bisch created for Amouage? It's an overpowering scent, projects like a beast, and is ubiquitous in some areas in Paris. Any thoughts on this? I'm sorry, it's turned out I had 2 questions.
1- More stories coming, and maybe one day a memoir if I find the time and energy,
2- Yes, briefly in a duty free. Not my style.
1- I hope you have the time and energy for a memoir, but in the meantime, I'm happy to hear that more stories are coming.
2- I had a feeling it wasn’t your style. I honestly wonder how such strong perfumes are even allowed. There should be some kind of limit on how intense a fragrance can be, or at least a “No Giorgio” rule for that kind of scent :)