You smell.
Where you go,
where you’ve been,
what you remember is
what holds you.
You have a scent, whether you’re wearing a perfume or not. And you’ve smelled things, places you’ve been, things you’ve remembered.
What were they? The point might be, in the boost to the you-ness of you, how might you elevate that?
Think of places you’ve been, points of exploration — a deep and dark forest, hiking up a meadow, working in a garden, grinding steel and working on engines, chopping wood, hammering an anvil, starting a fire. You’re thinking — what are these experiences to my life? That’s the point, what powerful notations, moments and memories gravitate to mind, visualization and re-collection?
In these moments, there are scents that recall something for you — they gather moments. And in the spilling of moment to momentum, that pace themselves to a new tiering of wholeness.
Woods suggest a myriad of scents and fragrances to explore, that are designed around that environmental holism — the layering of agar wood, teak, hinoki, sandal and guaiac all speak to the smoke of resins.
Incense — in the density of flame and fume, says something more. It’s not one scent, but many — smokier, denser, resinous.
Citrus tells a different story.
A floral offering [in this link, wildflowers] —
to your memory — could be any alignment of scents, from flowers — and that constellation of notations is mammoth.
Plants, minerals, spices — each, their own.
To any grouping, to anything,
it will be about your memory,
what strikes your journal of fragrance,
in time.
Perfumer and author Roja Dove offers
that, in designing a perfume for a person,
a consultation is more psychiatric,
a journey into the heart and soul of that person,
their lives and their recollections.
As he points out,
“You don’t smell with your nose,
you smell with your brain.”
He notes in the NYTimes —
“Little bombshells go off.
The associations that
an odor can unlock
are astonishing.”
Roja Dove’s organ for perfume design,
photographed by Andrew Testa for the New York Times
The idea of memory and fragrance are familiar lines of exploration for Girvin — in designing brands around fragrance — it, too, is a circumstance of soul and spirit-finding. In GIRVIN’s Seattle design offices, finding any brand’s heart is a quest for soul,
beauty, and truth.
Everyone has their own truth; and the proof of their personal compass to the layering of scent — whether that’s
a perfume of watered frailty,
like Helvetica.
Or bacon.
To each, their own.
To yours, sown.
TIM | GIRVIN QUEEN ANNE STUDIOS
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EXPERIENCE DESIGN
STRATEGIES | BRAND, STORY & SCENT