I can truly identify with smells transporting us elsewhere. AND I'm
also suffering from Anosmia. š© I've also lost sense of smell
gradually over a period of 1 year Since 2022. Have run from pillar to
post but to no avail. ENT specialists are absolutely clueless and
somehow medical science hasn't progressed much in this regard. No one
knows why exactly it happened.. It could be due to covid (jan 2022) or
due to a booster dose of vaccine (July 2022).
Any pointers (which work) are welcome!
On Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 9:42 PM Hari Shenoy via Silklist
<[email protected]> wrote:
Reading this note made me feel so grateful. Also, the replies from
the rest of you will give me inspiration. Here's why:
For all of 2024 I lost my sense of smell due to a chronic sinus
issue. That also led to difficulties breathing, speaking, singing
and rapping.
I had surgery in December to get my sinuses operated on, after
months of strong medication thatĀ didn't help with anything.
Following recovery from theĀ surgery, I have worked to regain my
sense of smell gradually.
Ergo, I paid good money to experience every possible scent.
The other day, I was at a pub in Dublin and the gents loo was
stinking.
My first thought was - "Jeez that stinks so bad!" My second was -
"Yay, wow that stinks so bad!"
Hari
On Fri, Apr 18, 2025 at 3:03āÆPM Thaths via Silklist
<[email protected]> wrote:
Smells, more than taste (well, what is taste, but just a
weaker way of smelling?), play the role of bringingĀ memories
of madelines past for me.
What are some scents from the past that you would pay good
money to experience again?
https://www.ft.com/content/53a3a13b-fe98-4670-9163-be659ccbf4f2
Inside the hot market for discontinued perfume
Very few things can be as personal, emotional and sensory
triggering as perfume, which is why some people spend hundreds
of pounds to get their hands on a favourite fragrance that has
been discontinued.
Since 2007 it has been the job of Mathieu Iannarilli, a
Paris-based vintage perfume dealer, to track down rare scents
for clients who spend from ā¬150 to more than ā¬3,000 per
bottle. āSome buyers only wear one perfume. When that is
discontinued by a brand, from one day to the next, they find
themselves orphaned of their olfactory identity. These people
then turn to all possible ways to find their perfume again,ā
he says.
There is no estimate for the market of vintage and
discontinued fragrances, but demand is high. A simple search
for ādiscontinued fragrancesā on eBay brings up more than
50,000 results. Among the most expensive listings are Tom Ford
Amber Absolute ($4,300, shipped from the US), Vivienne
Westwood Boudoir ($2,784, from Japan) and Giorgio Armani Prive
Myrrhe ImpƩriale ($1,500, from Sweden). The market is partly
fuelled by the craze for āflankersā ā short-term spin-offs of
brandsā core fragrances, which are catnip for collectors.
EstƩe Lauder Sensuous Noir, a 2008 flanker for EstƩe Lauder
Sensuous, goes for Ā£265 on eBay, for example, while Thierry
Mugler A*Men Pure Malt, a version of Thierry Mugler A*Men from
2009, goes up to more than Ā£600.
There are a few reasons why a fragrance might be discontinued:
it might not be commercially successful; a long-used
ingredient in its composition might later be banned and prove
too difficult to substitute; or the brand itself might end its
license or go into bankruptcy. āThe prices of some fragrances
from iconic British brands such as Vivienne Westwood and
Stella McCartney have tripled since these brands ceased their
perfumery business,ā explains Iannarilli. Other vintage
perfumes from heritage brands such as Guerlain often reach
high prices because they are both sought after by customers
who want to wear them and by collectors who would preserve
them. ā[Guerlain] Djedi can exceed ā¬3,000,ā says Iannarilli.
Itās not just high-end fragrances that stoke demand. Since
2019, Alexander Fury, fashion features editor at Another
magazine and the FTās menās fashion critic, has been buying
Ultima II Sheer Scent for his mother as a Christmas gift. The
Revlon fragrance from 1990 was and still is her favourite, but
was discontinued at the turn of the millennium.
āIām not hunting for it every day, but it is something I look
for every week or so. It has become progressively more
difficult and progressively more expensive,ā he says over the
phone. When Fury bought it the first time six years ago, the
perfume was already selling on second-hand platforms for about
Ā£500. Today it can be purchased on Etsy for more than Ā£700.
In some cases, people are hunting for the original formulation
of perfumes that are still on shop floors today. Starting from
the early 2000s, regulations on cosmetics ingredients have
become stricter, particularly in the EU, forcing many brands
to recreate best-selling scents using alternative ingredients.
In some cases the results have been less than satisfactory ā
at least according to some noses ā prompting the hoarding of
older bottles.
āI have a tiny bottle of Guerlainās Mitsouko from the 1970s
that smells completely different and so much better than
Mitsouko does now,ā says Aimee Majoros, a beauty PR and
fragrance collector from upstate New York who has worked for
Guerlain, Givenchy, Acqua di Parma, Tommy Hilfiger and Donna
Karan. Majoros, who learned to love perfumes from her
grandmother, had at some point 300 bottles in her collection.
āThe best thing I have ever smelled in my life was a sample of
LāAir du Temps by Nina Ricci from the 1960s,ā she continues.
āThe current formulation smells awful. I know that in the
fragrance community people are upset when things are
reformulated.ā
Claire Smith, a cell biologist based in the UK who has a
130-rich fragrance collection (around half of them are
discontinued) became passionate about perfume in 2019. After
reading rave reviews online of Thierry Mugler Alien Essence
Absolue, which had been recently discontinued, she decided to
go on a hunt for it. āIt goes for hundreds of pounds, but I
was very, very lucky and found a good deal. For a lot of
people itās about the find as much as the fragrance itself,ā
she says. āWhen I started I would only buy things that I could
afford to lose the money for, until I learned what I was
looking for.ā Her self-training included watching online
videos comparing fake and real fragrances to learn how to spot
them (colour is a good giveaway). Smith now has a YouTube
channel called @dr.claire.perfume where she talks about her
collection, explains relevant terminology and tells the
back-story for some famous fragrances, such as Chanel No 5 or
Robert Piguet Bandit, to her 13,900 subscribers.
But for certain perfume collectors, the draw is not the scent
but the bottle. Some even collect factices, the oversized
display bottles brands used for advertising in pharmacies and
department stores until the early 2000s. Simon Martynoff,
owner of Galerie Martynoff in Paris, both sells and collects
factices. Among his treasures currently on sale he lists a
30cm-tall Nina Ricci Lāair du Temps bottle for ā¬5,200 and an
even taller (39.5cm) decorative bottle by Baccarat of Guerlain
Shalimar for ā¬4,100. āThere are two different consumers: one
is a collector who wants an example of each bottle, and the
other is an [interior] decorator,ā he says. Martynoff sources
them from auctions or shops that still have them, but says
they are becoming increasingly hard to find as the number of
collectors increases. āThe interest has gone up and you can
see it from the prices. In the 1990s you could find some at a
very good price, now some bottles are 30 to 50 per cent more
expensive.ā
Antoine Poujol is the founder of the Perfume Art Museum in
Paris, which houses a collection of almost 8,000 bottles,
factices, press kits and shop catalogues. He says interest in
collecting perfume bottles started in the 1980s, when many of
the bottles designed by artists such as Leonor Fini (Shocking
by Schiaparelli, 1937), Raoul Dufy (Rosine by Paul Poiret,
c1925) and RenƩ Lalique (for Lucien Lelong, 1929) started to
hit the 50-year mark. His goal is to ākeep track of everything
that was and is made by the key brands, because the idea is to
trace their evolution from the start to today,ā he says,
adding that his expertise has been tapped by some of the
largest brands who want to build their own collections and
retrace their histories.
Poujolās collection includes rare examples such as LancĆ“me
RĆ©volte, designed by Georges Delhomme in 1936, which isĀ a
block of raw rock crystal shaped like the Parisian
cobblestones thrown during the French Revolution (currently
valued between ā¬1,000 and ā¬2,000), but also mass-produced
bottles that can be purchased for ā¬50.Ā āWe are in a universe
where you have very expensive bottles, but you also have very
nice stuff from ā¬50 to ā¬200, which can make a nice collection.
You also have collectors of miniatures which go for ā¬5, ā¬10
and ā¬15,ā he says. āThere are bottles for everyone.ā
After speaking to Poujol, I took out my own collection of
perfume minis, which I used to hoard as a kid in the 1990s. I
used to spend an unusual amount of time admiring the small
bottles and smelling them and they are still kept in a wicker
box in a bathroom cabinet in my childhood home. I have at
least 40 of them, an assorted selection that includes Miss
Dior, Gianfranco FerrƩ Gieffeffe, Fiorucci Vanilla Scent, 4711
Cologne and La Perla Body Silk. While Iām quite sure there is
nothing particularly rare in there, even if there were, Iām
not sure I could part with it. Itās hard to put a price on
something with the power to trigger such personal memories.
--
Homer: Hey, what does this job pay?
Carl: Ā Nuthin'.
Homer: D'oh!
Carl: Ā Unless you're crooked.
Homer: Woo-hoo!
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