Mr.P
oud<3er
I am astounded with how much my ability to detect the nuances of a scent changes with repetitive experience of that scent. I find this a little bit disturbing actually. Case in point: the sweet Trat oil. What I smell when I apply this oil now is radically different from my reaction the first 10 times I applied or so. Much of the unpleasant edgy and funky notes become less evident to me. They were so strong at first that this is clearly a case of olfactory fatigue or adaptation.
What I wonder is how anybody who sells or produces oud can have *any* perspective on how they smell to people whose noses are not continuously inundated with agarwood smell. (This is not any kind of criticism or anything - by definition this is what anyone selling scent has to grapple with).
My experience is it doesn’t matter if you take a day off or sniff coffee or whatever - your ability to perceive the nuance of an oil is shot after you smelled it about 10 times. You can sniff a kilogram of coffee for the whole day, doesn’t matter. I’m just getting over the flu and so I have not been sniffing anything for the last four days and when I went back to the sweet Trat, I am just as desensitized to its funk as I was before I took several days off. The four days off made zero difference. This oil smells sweet and charming to me now, but I know it’s got a good kick of skank based on my first reaction and my daughter’s first reaction. What if we’re all walking around thinking we smell like Paradise when in reality we smell like old socks and unwashed bottoms? A recent example: I was wearing km super ateeq. To me ZERO barn / animal, all wood, cola, pepper, earth. I’m walking around thinking I smell like royalty but I overhear “what is that animal / barn smell? I don’t like that”. It’s a mind-fuck to be honest.
If I were making perfumes or trying to sell oud and write accurate scent descriptions, this would drive me crazy (Unless I was confident that all of my customers had the same olfactory fatigue that I had)
Vendors how do you deal with this? I think pretty much your only option is just to describe oud based on how your fatigued senses experience it and know that your descriptions will really only be spot on to people who’ve also recently experienced oud and have similar olfactory desensitization. Do you hire people with less jaded noses to give you some kind of perspective on what your stuff smells like?
I think lovers of agarwood are all trained to hold off on their initial reaction, sniff the oil a few times, and wait until the olfactory fatigue sets in to really appreciate what they’ve got and then start comparing points with your scent notes.
What I wonder is how anybody who sells or produces oud can have *any* perspective on how they smell to people whose noses are not continuously inundated with agarwood smell. (This is not any kind of criticism or anything - by definition this is what anyone selling scent has to grapple with).
My experience is it doesn’t matter if you take a day off or sniff coffee or whatever - your ability to perceive the nuance of an oil is shot after you smelled it about 10 times. You can sniff a kilogram of coffee for the whole day, doesn’t matter. I’m just getting over the flu and so I have not been sniffing anything for the last four days and when I went back to the sweet Trat, I am just as desensitized to its funk as I was before I took several days off. The four days off made zero difference. This oil smells sweet and charming to me now, but I know it’s got a good kick of skank based on my first reaction and my daughter’s first reaction. What if we’re all walking around thinking we smell like Paradise when in reality we smell like old socks and unwashed bottoms? A recent example: I was wearing km super ateeq. To me ZERO barn / animal, all wood, cola, pepper, earth. I’m walking around thinking I smell like royalty but I overhear “what is that animal / barn smell? I don’t like that”. It’s a mind-fuck to be honest.
If I were making perfumes or trying to sell oud and write accurate scent descriptions, this would drive me crazy (Unless I was confident that all of my customers had the same olfactory fatigue that I had)
Vendors how do you deal with this? I think pretty much your only option is just to describe oud based on how your fatigued senses experience it and know that your descriptions will really only be spot on to people who’ve also recently experienced oud and have similar olfactory desensitization. Do you hire people with less jaded noses to give you some kind of perspective on what your stuff smells like?
I think lovers of agarwood are all trained to hold off on their initial reaction, sniff the oil a few times, and wait until the olfactory fatigue sets in to really appreciate what they’ve got and then start comparing points with your scent notes.
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