Scent for Coders: ’Cause there’s more to life than LYNX.
Preamble: these are the accompanying notes to a talk given at tech camps such as camp.js + rails camp — which has a mostly male audience whom aren’t typically aware of the craft of scent in the way that they are the craft of code. This talk is about the similarities between the two.
I really wanted to share scent with you, because as coders, we have a joy and responsibility to provide a custom solution for our own personal projects, and for those of clients. There’s amazing people in the scent industry who provide the same service, who work hard to provide an experience which is not going to be purchased in a supermarket.
I had grand plans of providing a bottle of Cannabis Santal from Fresh, but it took a while for the stupidity of what I was trying to do to sink in. I, Kylie Gusset am trying to import a dangerous good called Fresh Cannabis from the USA as quickly as possible. Instead, enjoy the article from Bustle: “Does Weed Perfume Actually Smell Like Weed? I Wore Fresh’s “Cannabis Santal” To Find Out to get an idea of what the scent is like.
I’d found out about Cannabis from a scent critic — these are the 2 scent critics worth knowing: Chandler Burr (ted talk), and Luca Turin (ted talk). Both have authored books (Chandler’s first perfume tome was “The Emperor Of Scent” about Luca, whom he had met thanks to a trip being delayed — story on basenotes.net)
Chandler has mentioned that when it comes to scent, feel free to throw the concepts of gendered scent for men and women out. There’s a very ingrained line of thinking that men should smell like animals and women flowers, and I’d like to encourage you to cross those boundaries and smell like you want your skin to smell. An important thing to remember — it’s not what the scent smells like in the bottle that matters — it’s what it smells like on your skin.
When department stores like David Jones separate scents by gender to the point of needing to swap buildings to compare scent it can make things difficult. While it can be very useful to go in and try scent — and I highly encourage you to do so — there is another way.
Luckyscent is one of the largest and most successful ecommerce sites for niche scent. I found them whilst trying to track down something that Chandler Burr had recommended, and have been in love ever since. They have a great online consultation “fragrance fitting” form on their website with specific questions to help weed out exactly what you’re after. Love the smell of tomato leaves? A hot greasy metal piston? Coffee? Looking for something to remind you of your holiday in <insert amazing place here>?
Luckyscent are not only happy to help you find the scent of your dreams, but are also able to send out samples for a fee. Should you be visiting LA, you can also pay them a visit, and clue them in on what in particular you might be keen on checking out whilst you’re there.
It’s by pure stroke of luck that Luckyscent is where I stumbled upon Maai from Bogue Profumo (french for programming bug )— the perfume house of Antonio Gardoni — read the basenotes.com interview. I bought a bottle to try to show what a complex scent is like, and to see if the hype matches up with the reality.
Luckyscent are hip with the program that if you’re buying one scent, chances are, you’re keen on further, so there’s free samples with notable purchases. I let them know that I was exposing a bunch of programmers with mainstream scent knowledge to the good stuff, and it would be great if they could send unusual things which could act as talking points. Which had me a wreck the Friday night before camp, staring at these samples and their online descriptions wondering what the hell I’d gotten myself into. Murder? Dark holes of the body? Secretions?
Setting up a separate area which would belong at MONA made sense. Here’s the samples that fit there:
Orto Parisi — Viride
Orto Parisi — Boccanera (aka “dark holes of the body”)
Cadavre Exquis — Cadavre Exquis (photoshop layer tennis of scent between 2 master perfumiers Bruno Fazzolari + Antonio Gardoni)
Etat Libre d’Orange — Secretions Magnifiques (accords (which are sort of like alchemy, except you’re after a certain scent instead of gold) of adrenalin, milk, blood, amongst other things…)
Bruno Fazzolari — Room 237 “It’s not everyday that we get a fragrance based on one of the most terrifying films ever made, but that’s precisely what Room 237 is.”
Along with the unusual above, Luckyscent also offer trial packs of their most popular niche scents which could be tricky to track down otherwise:
Below is the Essential 13 Sample Pack — Unisex
1.10 Corso Como — Eau de Parfum sandalwood + frankinscense
2. Atelier Cologne — Orange Sanguine super citrusy orange
3. Bruno Acampora — Musc EDP
4. By Kilian — Straight to Heaven “Rum soaked and boozy fabulous”
5. Byredo — Gypsy Water camping in a bottle
6. Comme des Garcons — Kyoto japan in a bottle
7. Escentric Molecules — Molecule 01 “Unlike anything you’ll ever wear”
8. Heeley — Sel Marin coastal
9. Helmut Lang — Cuiron
10. Lubin — Idole
11. Montale — Intense Cafe
12. Profumum — Acqua di Sale
13. Tauer Perfumes — L’air du desert marocain
How Scent is made.
Sometimes things need to be wrong in order to have right. Remember that video for Prince’s Raspberry Beret, where at the beginning, the notes are wrong, Prince is coughing, then there’s a turnaround, and everything suddenly seems bright and rosy?
Complex scents are made to do that too. There’s a scent famous for smelling wrong — go into any decent mainstream perfume place aimed at men, ask for what smells like urinal cake, and you should get Kouros — which definitely does have that toilet inspired topnote, which to my nose was freaking hideous, but it was a great icebreaker with the scent sales guy at Sephora. It’s possible to get a scent which will suit pretty much anyone, and be great for anywhere — Chandler Burr’s recommendation is Armani Code (How could I not do a talk for coders without mentioning this stuff?). It’s a stereotypical fresh smelling scent, where nothing is wrong, and it caters well to an american market which primarily is after something that smells “clean”.
Here’s the thing — scents are usually built to work in 3 stages — the topnote, the first thing that you smell, then the middle note, and finally the base note. The scent that we’re trying out — Bogue Profumo’s “Maai” has that, and possibly more — due to the way that it’s been crafted. Scents have a tough sell — there’s thousands entering the market each year, so they need to hook you in with something.
It’s a little like when I was working for community radio stations like 4ZZZ in Brisbane and FBI in Sydney — we’d have a stack of music that needed to be listened to, limited time, and a large audience. I learnt to be brutal, and give albums 30 seconds maximum listening time. Unless there’s something interesting going on in those first impressions, it can be hard to keep that creation on your radar.
One of the creations that has stuck on my radar over the years has been vanilla, thanks to the book “Orchid Fever” which has a whole chapter dedicated to the scent of orchids. There’s one thing that I’d love to make clear. Vanilla has a bad rap. There’s a vanilla framework in Javascript, and I’m willing to bet that it’s an overlooked, unused, unloved, untalked about insipid thing. Boring, staid, plain things get called vanilla.
“Shalimar” from Guerlain was first created in 1925, and is still very much available and loved today. The basenote of vanilla here is what makes skin smell amazingly warm and inviting, and anything but insipid.
I’d like to encourage you to go and try out things that are out of your comfort zone, and find something that you really love. It can be great to have scent as part of your arsenal of getting through tough times, and celebrating the good (yep, there’s even wedding scents). I hope you have some fun trying out different things, whether they’re inspired by Buffy, your morning coffee/mint wake up call, or a visit to Ireland.
If you’ve attended a talk, I’d love feedback. How were the scents that you tried? How did the Bogue Profumo work out for you on your skin? How can I do better next time? Let me know.
