Read Online The Diary of a Nose by Jean-Claude Ellena - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jean-Claude Ellena
Ads: Link
breathe out and my body unfurls. I smell it again. I compare the trials, flitting from one blotter to the next. I ‘inter-smell’ the range of possibilities, feel encouraged, then select what I want to keep. Lastly, I write down the formulae and correct them. More work begins. I leave the selected trials on a blotter-holder at least overnight so that I can see how they evolve and can rectify possible flaws in their composition. Sometimes, when I fail to pin down my thoughts, I postpone the work for a few days. Depending on the project the number of trials varies from a handful to hundreds – quantity is not connected to quality or vice versa. We break for an hour for lunch. Then I leave the workshop and go for a long walk; this gives me a chance to air my nose, which is simply a testing tool, and to put my thoughts in order again. The afternoon is similar to the morning. Sometimes, caught up in the round of trials and new finds, I lose track of time and my assistant follows suit. However, more often than not, ideas fail to appear on demand.
Paris, Friday 14 May 2010
Censorship
A real boon, when you have lunch at Ladurée, is to be able to order one of their boxes of macarons without waiting at the register. You simply ask your waitress for a slip to fill out with the flavors you have chosen and how many you would like. Your order will be waiting for you when you leave. We make our choice: a box of twenty-four in various flavors, salted-butter caramel, coffee, praline, chocolate, raspberry, orange blossom, lily of the valley and mimosa. My wife is curious about the lily of the valley and mimosa flavors, and asks whether – given that tastes and smells are so inextricable – it is possible to invent tastes that do not relate to an existing perfume. In reply I tell her that the amber used in perfumery was not originally a reference to a smell with natural origins, despite its name; it was actually produced by combining vanillin and labdanum, and presumably derives its name from the color of this combination.
It is now difficult to open up the way for new tastes and smells, because we live not only in a world where traceability is of key importance, but at a time when everything has to be justified. Inventing a smell as innovative as amber in perfumery, or the taste of Coca-Cola in its day, is now a feat, indeed virtually impossible. In the space of a few years, we have gone from a commendable requirement for explanation to a moralizing requirement for justification.
The percentages of sugar, salt, or fat content listed on many food items just for our information threaten to turn into warnings for our consumption.
A similar thing is happening with perfumes, since most products of animal origin traditionally used in their composition are no longer utilized, in the name of morality rather than industry regulations, thus unwittingly depriving the African tribes who supplied them of revenue, and consequently condemning them to abject poverty.
Even though they have never posed any problem with toxicity, other very longstanding raw materials are no longer used as a precaution, and they are sometimes replaced with new products for which we have no objective track record, but merely tests to prove their innocuousness. More insidiously, market testing is used to justify market censorship, though it cannot hope to explain a person’s choice of perfume.
Is this the great fear of our time? We are all responsible for this excessive censorship that never favors creativity, but merely hinders it.
Between Paris and Gembloux, Monday 17 May 2010
Generosity
Pierre Gagnaire is arranging a private dinner party in Gembloux, near Liège. Delighted and intrigued in equal measure by the promised feast, which will bring together writers, experts in various fields and a university dean, I immediately accept and make my way to the Gare du Nord this Monday afternoon, to head for Liège. On the train I meet another guest. During the journey
Paris, Friday 14 May 2010
Censorship
A real boon, when you have lunch at Ladurée, is to be able to order one of their boxes of macarons without waiting at the register. You simply ask your waitress for a slip to fill out with the flavors you have chosen and how many you would like. Your order will be waiting for you when you leave. We make our choice: a box of twenty-four in various flavors, salted-butter caramel, coffee, praline, chocolate, raspberry, orange blossom, lily of the valley and mimosa. My wife is curious about the lily of the valley and mimosa flavors, and asks whether – given that tastes and smells are so inextricable – it is possible to invent tastes that do not relate to an existing perfume. In reply I tell her that the amber used in perfumery was not originally a reference to a smell with natural origins, despite its name; it was actually produced by combining vanillin and labdanum, and presumably derives its name from the color of this combination.
It is now difficult to open up the way for new tastes and smells, because we live not only in a world where traceability is of key importance, but at a time when everything has to be justified. Inventing a smell as innovative as amber in perfumery, or the taste of Coca-Cola in its day, is now a feat, indeed virtually impossible. In the space of a few years, we have gone from a commendable requirement for explanation to a moralizing requirement for justification.
The percentages of sugar, salt, or fat content listed on many food items just for our information threaten to turn into warnings for our consumption.
A similar thing is happening with perfumes, since most products of animal origin traditionally used in their composition are no longer utilized, in the name of morality rather than industry regulations, thus unwittingly depriving the African tribes who supplied them of revenue, and consequently condemning them to abject poverty.
Even though they have never posed any problem with toxicity, other very longstanding raw materials are no longer used as a precaution, and they are sometimes replaced with new products for which we have no objective track record, but merely tests to prove their innocuousness. More insidiously, market testing is used to justify market censorship, though it cannot hope to explain a person’s choice of perfume.
Is this the great fear of our time? We are all responsible for this excessive censorship that never favors creativity, but merely hinders it.
Between Paris and Gembloux, Monday 17 May 2010
Generosity
Pierre Gagnaire is arranging a private dinner party in Gembloux, near Liège. Delighted and intrigued in equal measure by the promised feast, which will bring together writers, experts in various fields and a university dean, I immediately accept and make my way to the Gare du Nord this Monday afternoon, to head for Liège. On the train I meet another guest. During the journey
Similar Books
