When smelling a fragrance one should try to see the image, the story, the vision first. Where does the fragrance take you, how does it make you feel, what emotions does it evoke. This should be your initial response to the fragrance. Not dissecting it or doing a mental GC on the fragrance. The ingredients are not important to you as it is to the perfumer or fragrance developer from the customer. Marketing and evaluators should reside in the vision, the dream, the story. Does one appreciate the story in relation to the smell. Kandinsky said “What is right artistically can only be attained through feeling. The true spirit of a creation can never be created through theory, but only inspired by feeling.” Appreciating a fragrance by smelling the ingredients only loses the message, the vision of the fragrance. Cezanne always used blue in his paintings, in peoples faces, the rocks, the trees, the leaves, the earth. He felt the color blue was a representation of life. When you look at a painting of Cezanne’s do you say “look he has blue in that beautiful tree, or look at the blue in the rock.” No, you appreciate the vision, the image, the story. So, when appreciating a fragrance close your eyes and walk into the dream and talk about the story that comes into your emotional understanding. ONE MUST APPRECIATE.

Categories: Philosophical Perspective

ron winnegrad

Ron Winnegrad has been a Perfumer and teacher for 46 years. As a perfumer, Ron has been able to express the world he sees through a rainbow of olfactive and emotive visions. As a teacher, Ron has helped others to see fragrance through his own multi sensorial lens.