the fragrantica fiends

by alyssa chang

photographed by emilie dumas

I have a Pavlovian reaction to L’Eau D’Issey. It was my ex’s favorite (and only) fragrance, and it’s like I’m transported back into his white-curtained bedroom whenever I get a whiff of it on the street.

Smell is actually directly connected to the amygdala and hippocampus, the parts of the brain that control your emotions and memories. The smell of fertilizer in the Boston Public Garden reminds me of the exhausted happiness that came with sunny days on my grandparents’ cattle farm. Salt is my only way back to a laughter-breathless day at the beach with friends I fell out with years ago. 

I’ve given perfumes away because I associate them with people I don’t want to be reminded of anymore. I’ve kept an empty bottle because I want to remember the person who gifted it to me forever.

Like literature, scent is interpreted differently for everyone, crystallizing into a bottled memory that you can return to time and time again. To me, talking about perfumes is the olfactory version of analyzing a text. It’s my deeply-held belief that perfume is both personal and powerful. But I wouldn’t have thought so many people agreed—until recently.

The isolating effects of 2020 led to a boom in online perfume discussions. Soon enough, those conversations formed communities. Without the in-store experience available, users flocked to niche messaging boards, like Fragrantica and Basenotes, alongside more mainstream groups like Twitter, TikTok, and Reddit. 

Users banded together to make scent translatable to online spaces, and, to an extent, they’ve succeeded. There’s a new semiotics of perfume that has made identifying your preferences much easier. Moodboards and easily understandable infographics allow you to identify what vibe you want to give off. Sampling and decant websites save your wallet the pain of a failed blind buy. Most notably, reviews put into perspective a slice of what your life might look like with this perfume.

Much like the art of writing a witty yet insightful Letterboxd review, the consumption and description of perfumes has become a blend of performative taste-curation, literary analysis, and the sensuous experience of scent. Some of my favorite scent descriptions feel more like baffling literary excerpts than perfume reviews. Rook by Rook 2020 was described as being suited for “goat-footed librarians.” User @crushedmarigolds described Walk the Sea by Kerosene as a “kitten that’s been thoroughly cuddled by a slightly sweaty man with cologne caked into his skin.” A review of Amber Kiso by DS&Durga opens with “lots of bandages and funerary incense… I can see a mummy wearing this” and ends with “I don’t dislike the scent.”

None of these reviews really tell you exactly how the perfume smells, or even if it smells good. There’s no photorealistic description of the notes, no details on compliments from passersby. It’s not about smelling good or being accurate, it’s about smelling like the type of person you want to be.

What these perfume communities are really offering is the alluring idea of being whoever you want. In some ways, it’s a false promise. Buying Lune Feline by Atelier des Ors won’t make me a winter siren in deep-toned lingerie, and my Sol de Janeiro 71 body spray won’t turn me into a sunkissed beach-dweller fit for an Abercrombie billboard.

But I don’t think that the promise of a transformed identity is what people want from perfume. When I spray perfume on a pulse point, I’m not trying to be someone else. I’m combining scent, skin, and memory to create something that’s uniquely mine.

On a literal level, perfume settles differently on everyone’s skin. It’s something to do with the chemical reaction that I don’t quite understand. In a similar vein, I think scent blends differently with each person’s life. Thousands, maybe millions of people own Baccarat Rouge 540 after it went viral, but that red bottle probably means something different to everyone. For one person, it might be the fragrance they pull out for every first date. For another, it may bring back memories of an end-of-year hug from a favorite teacher.

People wear perfume for so many different reasons: to comfort, to impress, to seduce. I wear perfume because it’s magic; I’m changing the molecules in the air around me. Smell is chemistry, sure, but more than that—it’s alchemy.