“It is said that ‘we are what we eat’—but it is also true that we are what we smell like: fragrant or foul, good or bad.” – Antony Synnott
Category Archive: DICTUM
A short statement that expresses a key idea for Scent Culture
“Fragrance is truth, and truth fragrance” – ANTONY SYNNOTT paraphrasing John Keats
“I like to think that every perfumer considers his or her work an art, and that a desire to create constitutes the motives for his work, because the perfumer is the first to appreciate the emotional investment he or she has put into the project. Unless freely chosen, collaborations with other perfumers can only do the utmost harm to a project.” – JEAN-CLAUDE ELLENA
“Seeing advertisements has never meant being able to smell the perfume; at the very best it elicits a desire to smell it.” – JEAN-CLAUDE ELLENA
“Good times equate with good smells: even cow manure smells great because it evokes such wonderful memories; conversely, bad times equate with bad smells.” – ANTONY SYNNOTT
“Odour is a significant component of our moral construction of reality and our construction of moral reality. The fundamental hypothesis is simple: what smells good is good. Conversely, what smells bad is bad. ” – ANTONY SYNNOTT
“Go on, O Lord, and make an end of it, stir us up, and call us back; kindle us and pluck us to thee, be fragrant, and grow sweet unto us.” – AUGUSTINE
“Magic, in order to achieve its greatest potency, must enter through the nose.” – BRONISLAW MALINOWSKI
“Duft (i.S.v. Parfum) ist nichts und kann deshalb alles werden.” – CHRISTIAN JANECKE
“Wherever I create something I like, I can be sure that it is too far out.” – ANDREAS WILHELM
“There are many essences of mint in perfumery – spearmint, peppermint, pennyroyal, field mint, bergamot mint – which are also used for flavouring sweets, toothpaste, chewing gum and sometimes as fragrance in household products; these different applications depreciate the emotional impact of smelling mint. The same is true of the smell of lemons which was first used as a fragrance for washing-up liquid in the United states in 1969 on a product called Joy, and went on to become an olfactory symbol for cleaning products. Since then, lemon has only rarely been used in eaux de toilette.” – JEAN-CLAUDE ELLENA
“B. O.” is the indispensable Other of the perfume and fragrance industry, despised and feared at the same time; to be eradicated, yet its raison d’etre.” – HANS RINDISBACHER
“Perfume plays a social role in that it effects a unique synthesis of individual egoistical and social purposes in the field of the sense of smell.” – GEORG SIMMEL
“In social organizations smell is a rich unconscious background to everything else.” – OLIVER SACKS