It's a Proustian madeleine for any Canadian, especially in the middle of summer. Standing in the boutique of New York alternative perfumer Christopher Brosius, I huff from a tiny bottle: a slightly metallic smell, excitingly familiar. "Smell this," I say, passing the bottle to a friend.
He smells, looks at me questioningly.
"Wet mitten!" I say. And there it is, written on the label.
Wet mitten, roast beef, California roll, ink - these are a few of the 300 or so "accords" - blends of scent notes that are perceived as a single note - you can sample at the CB I Hate Perfume boutique in Brooklyn. The room is chockablock with compelling, off-beat or memory-jarring odours, bottled and shelved by category, forming Brosius's "gallery."
"It's an art," he says. "When it's done in a certain way it becomes a bit more than simply a fashion accessory."
Of all the senses, smell is something of a final frontier. Just as faddish chefs are shocking our taste buds with molecular gastronomy (squid-ink foam, anyone?), perfumers are rocking our perceptions with scents inspired by urban life.
Comme des Garçons has a line that includes Tar, Garage and Dry Clean. Laurice Rahmé, the nose behind Manhattan perfume boutique Bond No. 9, has developed a line of 34 scents purporting to capture the essence of New York neighbourhoods.
Gramercy Park is a clean green fragrance; New Harlem is a warm smell with coffee notes; Wall Street somehow has a whiff of money.
"A perfume does not have to be what people generally imagine it to be," says Brosius, who retails his own line of scents as well as creating custom mixes through a consultation process that costs anywhere from $900 to $7,500 U.S. "There are a lot of really terrific smells out there that could be perfumes that had never even been considered before."
L.A. company Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab takes a narrative approach, with perfumes that are olfactory interpretations of characters from books, such as Agnes Nutter (gunpowder, charred wood, smoke and rusty nails) or Shadwell (hand-rolled cigarettes, mildewed raincoat, sweet tea and condensed milk), alongside more standard floral blends.
Paris-based Etat Libre d'Orange recently launched a fragrant tribute to Tom of Finland, the iconic gay artist. The perfumer responsible, Antoine Lie, was asked to create the smell of a freshly-showered man. One online reviewer raves about the way the scent exudes sex, thrilling all the way to the "drydown," which he describes as a combination of sweaty pits and motorcycle exhaust.
Ironically, while perfume was almost certainly originally worn to mask the body's natural odour, we seem to have come full circle. In the Age of Purell, the most revolutionary thing may be to smell like our own bodies.
And here's where perfumers take a leap right out of the bottle: For her installation The Fear of Smell - The Smell of Fear, Norwegian-born "smell artist" Sissel Tolaas captured the body odour of nine phobic men and synthesized it, then mixed the result with a kind of touch-and-sniff paint. Gallery-goers who touched the walls would find the odour of sweat mingling with the smell of their own hands. Tolaas herself is a fan of self-generated stinks and once wore her personally created Eau de B.O. to a society event, revelling in the chaos it caused.
British artist James Auger has taken the thrill of interpersonal smelling one step further, with his piece Smell +, which showed at New York's MOMA earlier this year. This "olfactory blind-dating service" comprises a multi-hose contraption that looks like an old-fashioned gas mask, except it's hooked up to armpits and genitals.
The idea is that a couple can sniff out each other's most intimate - and stinky - places before actually meeting face to face. (His work can be found at http://www.interaction.rca.ac.uk.)
"Traditionally trained perfumers, their instinct is always to go with something that smells pretty," says Brosius. "I'm not interested in pretty. It's reality that I find beautiful."
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What's that smell?
Among Brosius's many signature scents are the following blends:
At the Beach 1966
The prime note in this scent is Coppertone 1967 blended with a new accord he created especially for this perfume - North Atlantic. The base of the scent contains a bit of Wet Sand, Seashell, Driftwood and just a hint of Boardwalk. The effect is as if you've been swimming in the ocean all day. $13 - $65
Memory of Kindness
The shining green scent of tomato vines growing in the fresh earth of a country garden.
$13 - $65
I Am a Dandelion
Exactly what it says: a dandelion picked from the lawn. Fresh, delicate, bitter, green. $13 - $65
Mr. Hulot's Holiday
The salty breath of the breeze off the Mediterranean, driftwood, rocks covered with seaweed and the smell of old leather suitcases. $12 - $60
In the Library
Russian and Moroccan leather bindings, worn cloth and a hint of wood polish. $12 - $60
Sizes range from 2 millilitres of perfume absolute to 15 ml of perfume absolute or 100 ml of water perfume.
