While a good sense of smell might seem to be a gift exclusively for professional perfumers, it can be cultivated just like any other artistic ability. With diligent practice, anyone can train their nose to better perceive and appreciate the nuances of scent.
You don’t need to spend money on hundreds of perfumes to begin. Instead, start by paying attention to the scents around you and finding words to describe them.
Begin With Known Scents
To start honing your olfactory abilities, use materials and ingredients that you already know.
Smell lemon, coffee, herbs, spices, flowers, wood, or vanilla. Don’t look at what you are smelling until you’ve identified the scent.
Utilize What’s In Your Kitchen
Use what you already have available. Ingredients like cinnamon, black pepper, citrus peel, tea, fresh herbs, and dried spices can all be smelled and described.
Smell each ingredient individually, and attempt to describe it.
Move On To Comparison
Smelling each ingredient individually is helpful, but comparing them can further your abilities.
Take two ingredients of a similar type, and put them next to each other to note the differences between them.
For instance, a lemon peel and an orange peel can both be smelled and compared. While both are citrusy, one may be more acidic and bright, while the other appears to be sweeter and mellower.
Note The Subtle Differences
When attempting to describe a scent, don’t just think “this smells like X”. Think more along the lines of:
- Is this scent fresh, or is it warm?
- Does it smell sweet, or dry?
- Is this scent light or heavy?
- Does it smell smooth or pungent?
- Is it clean or dirty?
These types of questions will help you to delve deeper into your observations.
Develop Your Scent Vocabulary
Many newcomers to perfume struggle to find the right words to describe a scent.
They might be instantly aware of what the perfume smells like, but can’t come up with the appropriate words to express it.
Keep A Scent Journal
After smelling a variety of ingredients, write down your thoughts.
Don’t worry about using the correct technical terms, as the point is to keep a record of your experiences that you can add to and refine over time. You might say, for example, that a certain ingredient smells “green, slightly bitter, fresh, and dry”. It might be that this particular description is given a technical name in perfumery, but until you learn that word, it doesn’t matter.
Vary The Times You Smell
Your olfactory sensitivity can change based on where you are, and what you’ve been exposed to.
If you’re surrounded by strong scents, you might have trouble distinguishing individual notes.
Take A Rest
Smelling too many perfumes in quick succession can be overwhelming.
It’s usually better to practice for a few minutes, than to try to evaluate dozens of perfumes at the same time.
Use Blotters And Your Skin
When investigating a new perfume, blotters can be helpful for comparing multiple perfumes without having them all mix on your skin.
On the other hand, skin can provide a different perspective, as your body temperature and skin chemistry can alter how a fragrance develops.
Investigate How A Perfume Evolves
Try smelling a perfume immediately, and then after a certain amount of time has passed.
Note down the differences between how you experienced the fragrance at those two times. This is an excellent way to learn how a perfume’s composition evolves from beginning to end.
Learn About Fragrance Families
There are a number of common fragrance families, such as floral, woody, citrus, aromatic, oriental, gourmand, green, and aquatic.
Understanding the characteristics of each group can aid your scent training.
Compare Similar Fragrances
Try smelling a few perfumes from the same family, and identifying the similarities between them. Then, compare them with perfumes from a different family.
With enough practice, you’ll be able to distinguish between the differences in these groups.
Avoid Attempting To Identify All The Ingredients
If you’re wearing a perfume made up of dozens of ingredients, you might feel like you should be able to name every component. But there’s no need.
Concentrate On The Overall Effect
A trained nose doesn’t just guess what perfume it’s smelling.
You should focus on identifying the fragrance’s general profile, texture, intensity, and evolution. Knowing how to talk about your experiences can be far more helpful than knowing the exact name of every ingredient.
Create A Routine
Training your nose is best done with regular practice.
Dedicate a few minutes, several times a week, to smelling and describing various ingredients.
As you get more comfortable using descriptive language, go back to ingredients you’ve previously investigated. You might discover a new note you’d previously missed.
Wrapping Up
In order to train your nose, you must be willing to smell consciously.
Start with known ingredients, learn to differentiate similar scents, develop a vocabulary, take rest breaks, and learn how a perfume’s profile changes over time.
You don’t need a “perfect” nose to study perfume. Just approach your scent training with curiosity, patience, and practice, and you’ll soon start to notice things you didn’t before.
