A Natural History of the Senses (9 page)

“When did you first know that you had a special nose?”

“When I was a child in Russia, there were gigantic fields of flowers all around the little town where I lived.” She smiles as she says it, and her eyes drift for a moment; the memory obviously carries her back forty years. “And there was an enormous amount of odor everywhere. The sky was thick with smells. I was always picking flowers …”

An abrupt knock at the door. A young woman walks in briskly, her long thin bare arms extended. “If you could smell me?” she says to Sophia. Sophia gets up and takes the woman’s left arm first—the warmer arm, because it’s nearer the heart—and presses her nose close and sniffs at the wrist and then again at the elbow. Then she sniffs twice at the other arm.

“What do you think?” Sophia asks me.

I sniff the arms. “Lovely.”

“But in which order?”

The scents are so light, so quiet against my nose that it’s hard to think of them as four distinct smells with individual personalities to be ranked. In one scene in
Bus Stop
, Marilyn Monroe sits in a diner, playing with two peas on her plate, choosing a favorite. There is always something about one that’s better than another, she tells her companion; you can always choose. For me, life offers so many complexly appealing moments that two beautiful objects may be equally beautiful for different reasons and at different times. How can one choose? Still, here, on the extended arms, there is no doubt about number one—a slightly musky, basically floral scent at the woman’s left wrist. Second? A lighter version of it at her left elbow. The smell on the right arm seems a shade fruitier, though somewhat attractive. I tell Sophia, who nods her head knowingly.

“Those are the two versions we need to work on,” she says. A lab technician appears at a sliding glass window between her and the shelves upon shelves of bottles holding natural and synthetic essences, a real magician’s larder. “I need the H formula,” Sophia says to the technician, who returns to her cupboards. Sophia leans back in her chair and makes a gesture with her hands as if throwing confetti into the air. “This is a total madhouse today. We’ve had an emergency that I’m trying to attend to.”

A scent emergency? What on earth could that be? When I ask, Sophia remains sphinxlike. In this corporate world, formulae and everything related to them are guarded and double-guarded. The people who blend the final fragrances don’t know what they’re blending; the ingredients and the batches carry only code numbers.

“We lived right at the end of the little town,” Sophia says, returning to her memories, “and there were lilac bushes and whole fields of narcissus and violets. A world of natural smells was all around, a part of Russia that wasn’t badly destroyed. As a child, I would wander off into the fields; I was desperately curious, snooping into everything. This was postwar time, and there weren’t many children. I was surrounded by grown-ups and I would wander off by myself and pick up and smell the moss, the twigs, the leaves.”

“When you’re creating a scent, what is the process?” I ask, remembering that one of the great perfumers said he got his ideas from
dreams, another that he kept a diary of everything he smelled when he traveled.

“You always have an image in your head. You can actually smell the accords, which are like musical chords. Perfumery is closely related to music. You will have simple fragrances, simple accords made from two or three items, and it will be like a two- or three-piece band. And then you have a multiple accord put together, and it becomes a big modern orchestra. In a strange way, creating a fragrance is similar to composing music, because there is also a similarity in finding the ‘proper’ accords. You don’t want anything being overpowering. You want it to be harmonious. One of the most important parts of putting a creation together is harmony. You could have layers of notes coming through the fragrance, but yet you still feel it’s pleasing. If the fragrance is not layered properly, you’ll have parts and pieces sticking out, it will make you uncomfortable, something will disturb you about it. A fragrance that’s not well balanced is not well accepted.”

“Do you have the smells grouped in your mind and memory, the way woodwinds occupy one element of an orchestra and strings another?”

“Yes, but most of what I’ve created has come from totally abstract floral accords that just came along—once I’d got them, I looked for other parts and pieces to go along with them. First there is the inspiration, then ways to revise it until I’ve finally got what I’m after. I prefer very flowery, very feminine accords. I’m better at female fragrances than male fragrances, although I’ve done both. I’ve also made functional products—”

“Like the scents for soaps, cleaners, polishes, paper products, and so on?”

“Exactly. But those things are easy and quick to do. If I’m trying to create the next best perfume in the world, well … it takes longer.”

“One of the company’s officials told me that you’ve ‘made some of the most famous perfumes in the world known to man or beast,’ but that you’re not going to tell me which they are.”

“We can’t tell.” She pulls a long brown cigarette from a pack that says MORE and lights it.

“Does smoking affect your nose?”

“I’m sure it does something, but this is my environment, so I’m used to it. It’s just one of the usual smells in my world.”

“Do you protect your nose; are you hyper-concerned about it?”

“Not at all. I’m really very casual. Naturally, I don’t want to get sick: It’s frustrating to have a blocked-up nose, very hard for a perfumer to work in that condition.”

“When you walk around the city, are you more acutely aware of smells than other people?”

“You know, it’s a funny thing—an incredible phenomenon—but, because I work a lot, sometimes long hours, when I walk out of the building a little switch in my brain turns me off and I don’t smell anything at all. In fact, there could be something burning on the stove at home and I wouldn’t smell it! My husband says: ‘You’re a perfumer and you can’t smell the burning!’ My brain turns off totally.

“But I find myself tuning in to people at odd moments. Sometimes someone kisses you and you recognize their individual smell. There’s a certain smell to a baby’s skin, to the top of a baby’s head. Men do this less than women. Some people naturally smell ‘sexy.’ If I had to describe it,” she says, wafting the cigarette like a censer, as she searches for the precise description, “I’d call it a very delicate, ambery-musky accord. I use a lot of it in my fragrances.

“There are certain accords that every perfumer uses. But you can recognize someone’s handwriting, so to speak, by smelling a fragrance. Other perfumers can recognize my work, as I can theirs. They smell a new perfume and they say: Ah, this is Sophia’s, that’s Jenny’s, and so on. They know the signatures.”

“I was in Saks last week,” I explain, “on a smell safari, and I noticed that the trend seems to be for perfumes with names that suggest danger, prohibited substances, neuroses, and so on.…” I said that merchandisers seem to prefer smells that conjure up comfort and security, love and romance, but name them Decadence, Poison, My Sin, Opium, Indiscretion, Obsession, Tabu. In addition to the popular designer names and the bottled mystique of the superstars, they offer illegal substances and warnings. A woman may
dress demurely, but in her mind and on her pulse-points she is as addictive as Opium, as dangerous as Poison, the cause for Obsession, expert in the ways of love so enthralling they’re Tabu, ready for hedonistic Decadence, worth any Indiscretion, even transgressing the laws of God, as in Sin.

“Yes, but if you look at them closely, you discover that they’re all based on certain classic scents, they’re simply new interpretations of those classics. There are many instant successes, but true classics last over a decade. Chanel No. 5 was created in the early 1920s and still sells very well. Opium is nothing new. The mother of Opium is Youth Dew, which is about thirty years old. It’s a variation on it, that’s all, and it’s also related to Cinnabar. If you smell the three together, you’ll see.”

“So, using your metaphor of music, a new fragrance is often a variation on an established theme?” She nods.

“Do
you
wear perfumes?”

“Not when I come to work. I do wear a lot of experiments. As I work with it, I wear it. I like to get the reaction of people to what I’m wearing. They’re good judges. I was working on one fragrance, and when I walked out onto Fifty-seventh Street, I was followed by a drunk and I got scared. I started to run away from him, and he said: ‘Lady, don’t run. The perfume is so beautiful, I was following the perfume.’ It turned out to be a winner.”

“Since the beginning of time, people have perfumed themselves. Doesn’t that seem an odd thing to do? To put flowers, fruits, and animal secretions on your body? Why do we do it?”

“Ah,” she says, tossing her fingers as if setting free a handful of butterflies, “when I first saw Picasso’s
Guernica
, it was disturbing. I was horrified and fascinated at the same time. It was disturbing, but also deeply moving. Perfumes do that, too—shock and fascinate us. They disturb us. Our lives are quiet. We like to be disturbed by delight.

“One of the most gratifying experiences for me,” she says unexpectedly, “was when I made a functional product, the smell for a detergent. I was walking along the street, and there were two old ladies buying a newspaper. I said, ‘Oh, ladies, you washed your
clothes in so-and-so.’ They said, ‘How on earth did you know?’ I said, ‘I can smell it.’ They were so happy and so was I, because these ladies can’t afford a two- or three-hundred-dollar perfume but they can afford a detergent, and they were happy that it smelled good. I was pleased that I touched a portion of humanity that could never be able to afford the perfumes you just smelled here.”

“How lucky you are to be able to spend your life in this way, creating scents that will make women feel good about themselves.”

“Sometimes there are grueling hours of work. A perfumer’s life is not a picnic. It’s not what it used to be. In the great old days, there were perfumers who were free-lancers. A famous perfumer would make one fragrance in three or four years, and they had no restrictions—no price limit, no deadline. They would make two or three experiments a day for perhaps a week, then really
live
with it, wear it for weeks and weeks without any pressure. What’s happening now is that it’s very commercialized. You want to do things that will make a name for you, money for the company, and you must do them fast. A perfume can’t be made overnight. Every perfumer has little accords that, during their ten years of practice, they put away and keep in their memory bank. Oh, I need a floral, they might say, I remember that floral I had years ago. But it must be new. You’d be a fool to sell a copy. You can’t plagiarize. You have to start from scratch. But there are accords you might return to as themes, as a kind of shortcut. I make approximately five hundred to seven hundred formulas a year. Maybe you see two big pieces of business come out of that, but this doesn’t mean all the seven hundred formulas aren’t good.”

“Doesn’t it break your heart if you create a formula that really stirs you, but the customer doesn’t care for it?”

She rolls her eyes and her face keens. “Of course, and it certainly does happen. I always try to make it work somewhere eventually, so that somebody finally gets it. You have to believe in the fragrance, believe that it will prevail, that it will be there sometime, somehow. I’m very persistent. I keep going back to it, rethinking it.

“There’s something that I made recently and I can’t tell you the name of it, but the fragrance is an
experience
. Wearing it is an experience. I happen to love it. The main accord of the fragrance
started a while ago with one accord that I called “cleavage”—“headless,” “bottomless,” I have all these crazy names that I privately call things—and what cleavage smells to me like is a young woman’s skin here”—she lifts her hands to show the area between the chin and the bosom—“There’s something very sensual and sensational about this accord.”

She takes a long paper tester and dips it into an amber bottle full of oil, hands it to me. As I waft the smell under my nose, sherbety flowers drift over my senses. It is a very young smell, girlish and innocent, full of soft ruffles and lightly talced skin.

“This is simple but very complicated-smelling. It says in a strange way ‘Hug me.’ It’s a sexy note that men adore. I knew I had a winner when I made this.” She hands me another dipstick, this one fresher and slightly more alive. “Now this is the perfume it became. The first oil was the skeleton. This is the result. From the first bottle, it went all the way down the line to the finished perfume. It’s basically a floral, but the more you smell it the more delicate it becomes.”

“Which is the most sensual perfume you’ve created?”

“This is an interesting question, because what’s sexy and sensual for one isn’t necessarily for the other. To me, this one is sensuous, not sexy, but sensuous.”

“How about one that’s vampy?”

“Try this one.”

She hands me a new tester; I hold it under my nose and have a powerful response. I can taste something thick and amber, like butterscotch, on the back of my tongue. It has a thin vinyl covering to it and a fizzy muskiness seems to be coming up all around it in a halo. It smells deeply luscious. “What is it?” I ask, scrunching up my face in the automatic contortion of pleasure.

“It’s basically a Shalimar-type formula. It’s not on the market yet.”

“Unlike the other one I sampled—‘cleavage’—when I smell this I have a strong physical response. I can taste it.”

She laughs. “Yes, that’s what people say about my perfumes, that you can taste them. I’m very passionate about everything I do. I want my creations to stir your taste and smell and emotions all at once.”

“Can you picture a perfume that you can’t create? Is there an ideal form that you strive for?”

“Oh, I would like to make a perfume some day so seductive to men that no woman could be resisted. It would be the most incredible thing I could do in my life. This is not a professional feeling. It’s strictly a female feeling.”