Fragrance could rightfully be called the ‘invisible influencer’. That’s because scent appeal is subconscious…
When you see, hear, touch, or taste something, that sensory information first heads to the thalamus, which acts as your brain’s relay station. The thalamus then sends that information to the relevant brain areas, including the hippocampus, which is responsible for memory, and the amygdala, which does the emotional processing.
But with smell, it’s different. Scents bypass the thalamus and go straight to the brain’s smell centre, which is known as the olfactory bulb. The olfactory bulb is directly connected to the amygdala and hippocampus, which explains why the smell of something can so immediately trigger a detailed memory or even intense emotion.
Human emotional response to smell is very sensitive, strong and subjective. The psychological effect of a remembered smell can have a direct bearing on your behaviour and decision making. This can often happen spontaneously, with a smell acting as a trigger in recalling a long-forgotten event or experience. Have you ever caught a whiff of something and immediately associated it with a memory in your past? It could be a flower that reminded you of a childhood picnic, a food smell that took you back to mum’s home cooking, or a perfume that someone else is wearing that reminds you of a friend or past lover.
Speaking of love… Research highlights a very strong link between our sense of smell and interpersonal ‘chemistry’. We seem to be attracted to people whose smell appeals to our subconscious. Kissing is thought by some scientists to have developed from sniffing; that first kiss being essentially a primal behaviour during which we smell and taste our partner to decide if they are a match. Sounds romantic huh!
For all these reasons and more, fragrance is an undeniable force in our lives. It is mysterious and emotional. It can heal, it can calm, it can uplift, it can restore. Our choice of perfumes, and where and when we wear them, speaks volumes about ourselves and our perception of self. Every woman needs a wardrobe of perfume to cater to different moods and events. From a formal occasion, to a family reunion, from date night to the daily workplace. Wear the right perfume everywhere you go.
But don’t over-do it! The human nose is a very delicate mechanism. When your nose has been exposed to a certain smell for a while, the odour becomes ‘turned off’. This is a protective mechanism against offensive odours and is called olfactory fatigue (nose fatigue). What this means is, not long after you’ve applied perfume on yourself, your nose stops smelling it (or more technically it switches off to that smell). So even if you can’t smell your own perfume, resist the urge to spray more. It’s better to ask someone else to have a little sniff of your scent and tell you if it’s still vibrant, rather than unwittingly drowning yourself in fragrance. If it’s a LeRêve Parfum that you sprayed earlier that day, you can be sure that others around you will still be noticing your subtle, beautiful scent long after your own nose has switched off!
