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Scent of Museums
The scent of a museum is generally considered quiet, idealized and hermetic. Institutions try hard to create sterile moments for the visual and non-touchable to speak aesthetically without the intrusion of other senses (no touching! no smells! no voices please!). Regardless of old or new art, museums often smell like their audiences (often stale le…
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On the Nose: What to Learn from Funk and Fragheads
Happy grad season!! This Odorbet word selection is by Alexandra Segal*, Wesleyan University class of 25, who recently wrote her undergraduate anthropology thesis on perfume and queerness. It received both High Honors and the 2025 Gay, Lesbian, and Sexuality Studies (GLASS) Prize for best research and writing in the field. Alexandra grew up in Los…
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Scent as Red Flag
A red flag symbolizes a warning, danger, caution, potential problem and further investigation is warranted. Scent naturally serves as a warning signal to our nervous systems (“food is not safe!”, “fire!”, “not healthy!”, etc). Using scent in environments whether we are aware or not, lures you to buy, to eat, to linger or to move…
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Luca Turin: 40 Years of Perfume Obsession
There is something both inclusive and exclusive about scent reviewing. In full disclosure, while I have amassed an impressive collection of scents that could fill a kiddy pool, I never read or listen to reviews. That said I realize the importance reviewers might be to the landscape of perfume and consumers. I like that, unlike…
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Leonardo & Perfume Rennaissance Recipes
(Image 16th-century censers, Blois Cathedral © Léonard de Serres) In a museum which was once the living and dying chambers of Leonardo De Vinci, Château du Clos Lucé in central France, there is an exhibition exploring scent during the time of this Rennaissance man and parenthetically his mother “Catarina’s” life. The exhibition press materials share that his…
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The Smell of Work
No longer a smell of success but a quiet, revolt to the culture of work is emerging amongst Chinese youth. The ban wei, the smell of work is a new term invented by the youth to amplify the notion of being over saturated with and in someways infected with work. The smell of work is…
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Smell Squiggles Breathe Life to Images
Universal visual squiggles can communicate direct, heretic qualities of smell – stink, stunk, smell and fragrance can be communicated with the deft wiggle or stroke of a pen. The wafteron (also spelled waftarom) is a simple technique used by comics illustrators to express the smell of something. Cartoonists that use wavy lines in this fashion make…
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The Nose and Our Evolutionary Impulse: Sex, part two
As a clinical mental health therapist I spend a lot of time trying deeply not to pathologize normal behavior in one breath, and trying to research biological and science-based clues to our social and emotional functioning to make a case, make sense of or dissolve a diagnosis. I work with adolescents often, and this is…
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AdoleScents: Smells Like Teen Spirit
(image: penguin puberty is not unlike human puberty in some ways) Originally posted on March 21, 2024) On this international fragrance day a post to celebrate the scent of adoleScents. Smelling like teen spirit is a right of passage and has never been more curious and intense than it is today. A short study published…
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Excess Leads to the Power of Wisdom
During this season of excess, a few words to round out – in excess – the sense of scent. As with gift giving, these are some treasures I thought should be illuminated for use in scent dialogue. Some to be challenged, some to be embraced. Wishing you a balanced, brilliant, inspired new year. Please be…
Odorbet 