The Synaesthesia of Scent

In The Diary of a Nose, perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena writes, "Green is the only color that makes sense as a smell," adding that, in his collection of raw materials, he has different kinds of green including gentle, harsh, smooth, sharp, dense, etc. Among these he has greens "that smell of beans, fig leaves, syringa, ivy, seaweed, elder, boxwood, hyacinth, lawns, and peas."

He might be right, in one sense, given that of all the colors green is used maybe most frequently as a descriptive. Green chypre, for instance - or green floral. When I think of any number of fragrances I picture the color green. I can't talk about, or wear, Jean-Louis Scherrer or Givenchy III without seeing the fields of parched summer grass I remember from my childhood vacations in rural Arkansas. Alliage brings to mind bitter snapped stems. Clinique Wrappings is a shock of fir peeking out from under banks of aldehyde snow; Tauer's Cologne du Maghreb, a dish of fresh herbs. Ellena says every perfumer runs the hazard of conjuring mental images of toothpaste when using mint in a composition, but I smell it in many fragrances and think of herb gardens.

It might be more accurate to say that green is the color that gets the most mileage in the scent vocabulary. Red, for instance, is a little trickier, but some rose-centered fragrances do read to me as red. Une Rose has always brought to mind a deep red velvet when I smell it; Agent Provocateur, a drier shade on the spectrum, like something long sitting out in a potpourri dish. Miss Dior Cherie - don't let's get started on exactly which version - reminds me of fresh strawberries; not just their smell but their damp, staining skins. Lipstick Rose evokes the obvious - but even Arden's Red Door recalls the crimson lipstick my grandmother applied with a brush from its tube.

I often think pink, especially with the contemporary spate of fruity florals. Baby Doll is strictly bright fuchsia tutus and tart berry innards. Yellow crops up every so often too - buttery yellow for certain floral compositions, palest yellow for scents whose vibe feels incredibly buttery to me, whether from orris root or otherwise. Daffodils pop up in my head. More often than anything I imagine golden yellow to orange hues, probably because orientals are one of my favorite types of fragrance. Alahine is golden light at dusk, casting everything in a late afternoon glow. Mitsouko is a brassier shade, something like peaches steeped in liquid sun. I even think of white, when I smell White Linen - something scorched of all color, singeing the senses.

Sometimes I wonder if some of us have a rare offshoot of synaesthesia when it comes to scent. The synaesthete cross-pollinates the senses in ways most people don't. She might see a number and hear it as a sound, for instance. She might see a color and experience it as a smell. What about the other way round, I wonder. What about seeing a scent as a color, as a sort of tinted wash that spreads over our senses? Has anyone seen MARNIE, the Hitchcock film, where Tippie Hedren's kleptomaniac goes into fugues, seeing red when an object or a situation triggers certain emotions? During these episodes the whole screen goes blood red. I wonder if scent is like that for some of us.

It's not quite as cinematic with me, but most of the smells I love do filter the images they conjure through some emotionally corresponding colored lens. When I smell Vent Vert, I do see green - my mind goes right to an analogous image - a field, a spring lawn, fresh shoots proliferating on deciduous branches. It's like that in some way with every scent I smell. So I'm not sure I agree with Ellena, whose own Kelly Caleche tints my imagination a specific sort of pale but vibrant metallic pastel.

Balmain Vent Vert: Thoughts and Older Version Bottle Giveaway

Going Green, Part Two: Galbanum

With its penetrating, pine-like top note and slightly bitter, woody base, galbanum makes green pop, as if one of the green chypres had slapped you hard in the face with a chunk of bundled stems. Galbanum is a gum resin derived from certain Persian plant species grown abundantly in Iran. Its large flowering heads resemble those of fennel.

The essential oil has long been well-regarded by occultists. Alistair Crowley associated the aroma's properties with air, though it just as readily evokes earth. Depending on who you consult, galbanum is said to be a respiratory aide and an augment to psychic abilities. Pagan witchcraft regards it as a protectant. Perfumers, themselves alchemists of sorts, use it to add a certain kind of magic to their compositions. Part frankincense, part vetiver, its leafy terpenoid astringency ventilates the pastures of Carven’s Ma Griffe, Cellier’s Vent Vert, Ivoire de Balmain, Pheromone, Devin, Chanel No. 19 and, most spectacularly, Estee Lauder’s Aliage, which is more gale force than languid breeze.

Ivoire would fall on one end of the galbanum spectrum, Aliage on the other, with Pheromone following closely behind. Ivoire uses galbanum subtly, like its aldehydes, as a bolster to its floral accord. The effect is a rose bush surrounded by crisp, dry hay. Where Ivoire is ultimately arid, still, and slightly toasted, Vent Vert glistens, shimmering indefinitely with activity. Think of a lime rind rubbed into geranium leaves and you begin to apprehend Vent Vert’s effervescent character. Considered by some the first green fragrance, Vent Vert has a slightly raw dissonance, in large part due to galbanum. Chanel No. 19 is the adult counterpart to Vent Vert, smooth and transparent, a green floral quietly electrified by the glow of camphor.

Vent Vert and Ivoire arrange themselves parenthetically on either side of Gucci Envy for Women, which is something of a happy compromise between the two. All three share floral notes: hyacinth, rose, lily of the valley. Famously obsessed over by Tom Ford and Maurice Roucel, Envy's tall, slender bottle reflects the fragrance’s intrinsic angularity. Even the silver cap references something icily metallic within the construction. Envy is hard to articulate, and that metal sheen might strike you as a powdery hybrid of synthetic iris and musk, until you recognize the presence of galbanum, which like eucalyptus whiffs of menthol. Envy is a gorgeously understated use of the note, tart and dry simultaneously.

Don't be too quick to dismiss Pheromone. It's something of a galbanum retrospective, with florals and frankincense and pungent, sharp greens. This is chartreuse green, a bright landscape painted on black velvet in bold, broad strokes. The results are just this side of over the top - but hands down, the apogee of galbanum’s use in perfumery, still unmatched and, amazingly, still around, is Aliage. Like Envy its notes include peach, rose and jasmine, but Aliage bursts into coniferous territory Envy cautiously skirts, possessing a sucker punch of pine, thyme, vetiver, and oakmoss. Simulating a virtual reality of flowers shellacked in Vick’s Vapo-Rub, it’s like nothing you’ve ever smelled, and strangely familiar. Aliage is shockingly inexpensive.

Galbanum is mercurial, effecting compositions in subtly different ways. It smells modern, though, along with aldehydes, it was the previous generation’s equivalent to the fruity accords which buoy contemporary florals to varying degrees and towards often vastly different ends. The smell is intensely, viscerally green, smelling of grass and aromatic weeds and herbs. It penetrates your consciousness and roots there, a vivid inhalation of the great Out There.