Similar to a sommelier, a Nose (aka perfumer) studies to distinguish the scents making up a perfume — not an easy feat considering one perfume may be made up of 50 essences. There are 50 top noses in the world and I met with one who’s been in the industry for over 30 years, now working and teaching at Fragonard. Just like a music composer, a perfumer has their own organ, or workspace, with 500 of the most-used essences arranged in tiers, decreasing in size and strength depending on the notes. My Nose for the day, Michèle, explains that when you train to be a perfumer, you leave with the ability to recognize hundreds, even thousands, of the 10,000 essences in existence in the industry. I started small, learning how to recognize nine that I’d blend into my bottle.
Not only resemblances exist in things whoseanalogy is obvious, as when we detect the type of the human hand in theflipper of the fossil saurus, but also in objects wherein there is greatsuperficial unlikeness.
Walking with my father in a department store last Christmas, I paused for a moment at the perfume advertisements. They are messages of models draped in beautiful clothing—alluring creatures proudly bearing the scent of “J. Lo” or “Chanel.” I have learned to believe in the power of perfume, but I am not swayed by these ads. I have my own.
In recent years I have come to better comprehend the intense understanding of each other that has united my parents from their early courtship through these many years. When he helps my mother at the toilet each morning, cleaning and dressing her, my father remembers the perfume. But this fragrance is not intended to hide her odor. It is an acknowledgment of their past and a reminder of their present captured in a scent. By dabbing the perfume on her neck, he tells her that she is more than her body; she is a woman, his wife, stubborn and sexy. It is his statement of love.
My parents cannot embrace each other, nor dance together. My father must go alone to Macy’s to get the perfume my mother loves but does not ask for. He purchases the bottle despite the knowledge that they will not be going out this evening—or any evening. My father is a thoughtful man not given to expressive statements of emotion, regardless of the impossible circumstances that life has presented. One could say that the odds were against them from the start—an unusual pairing of a vivacious Russian Jew and a quiet South Indian—immigrants whose circuitous life paths have led them independently to meet in upstate New York.
A strong original smell of Amber was still evident, and a little bit of searching later found that amber was used by the family in that period. Resolute to create service to this discovery he decided a heart of oud would be a perfect complement to add richness, while roses keep the fragrance fresh and through early 2013 developed the Amber Oud, a limited BY REQUEST fragrance."
Nostradamus, 1503-1566, was a famous doctor and prophet who not only survived the plague but cured many others with what came to be known as the famous "rose petal pills." In fact, we do not know very much about the lozenges. They might have included rose hips, a rich source of natural vitamin C, as well as sawdust from green cypress, iris of Florence, cloves, odorated calamus, and perhaps some lign-aloes. Nostradamus owned a perfume manufacturing enterprise, which in his time meant distillation of plants to make essential oils. People who worked in these facilities did not succumb to the plague . . . and we are just now emerging from our skepticism in such a way as to enable us to understand what is so effective about these highly concentrated aromatic oils.
The atmosphere of a spiritual being pervades the air like the perfume of a rose. The Goddess and the Rose
As well as being a symbol of mystical union, the Rose is particularly associated with the numinous beauty of the goddess and the love her presence evokes within the human heart.
Whattedious training, day after day, year after year, never ending, to formthe common sense; what continual reproduction of annoyances, inconveniences,dilemmas; what rejoicing over us of little men; what disputing of prices,what reckonings of interest, -- and all to form the Hand of the mind; --to instruct us that "good thoughts are no better than good dreams, unlessthey be executed!"The same good office is performed by Propertyand its filial systems of debt and credit.