The Mingling of Scents and Sensibilities
If Chanel No. 5 lover Marilyn Monroe were around today, perhaps she’d coo, “The only thing I wear to bed is Rye Bread.” No, not the stuff you cram hot pastrami into, but one of the 85 down-to-earth scents from Demeter Fragrances, new to L.A. Bloomingdale’s.
At Demeter, named for the Greek goddess of agriculture, down-to-earth is literal. The most popular fragrance of the Shamokin Dam, Pa., company is Dirt, which smells like, well, dirt. But not the mud you scrape off your shoe after stepping in the wrong puddle--rather, the clean smell of loose soil after a summer rain. Try adding bottles of Tomato, Lettuce and Carrot, and you’ll have a sensory garden where all that’s missing is a hoe and a pair of work gloves. Add a spray of Grass into the air, and you can smell the lawn after a fresh mowing.
The goal of co-owners Christopher Brosius and Christopher Gable is not to fill a room with the latest strong-smelling odor magnet but to evoke memories and senses that take the wearer back to a personal, private place.
“A lot of it comes from childhood memories,” says Brosius, 35, who has been designing scents for nearly a decade. “Tomato takes me back to my aunt’s home, where I really liked smelling the leaves of her tomato plants.”
Brosius says the barometer of a scent being dead-on is when it triggers other senses.
“With Ginger Ale, you can feel the bubbles tickling your nose. Peach is fuzzy, and Chocolate Mint smells cool,” he explains. “It’s an effect that even the best, most classical perfumes could never really accomplish.”
Sampling Demeter Fragrances can take up most of a day, because there is a certain scent for everyone. Motorcycle enthusiasts can recall their first wipeout with Rubber or their first jacket with a little Leather. If your tastes run to the morbid, remember grandpa’s passing with a spritz or two of Funeral Home.
But how do these guys create such olfactory products as Vinyl and Lobster without having them reek like a cheap handbag or rotten fish?
The answer is high technology, and a highly trained perfume nose. Using a process called Headspace, an air analyzer captures a rough formula of the molecules that make up a scent, and Demeter then extracts, filters and refines it to make the scent pleasant and specific.
With fragrances that are fun and easy to afford ($12 apiece), Demeter aims to change the way we look at perfume.
“We don’t want our fragrances to be treated like a ball gown or tuxedo that is worn only for special occasions,” Gable adds. “We’d rather see them worn every day, like a comfortable pair of jeans.”
If you’re curious, drop by the Demeter Fragrances counter, and perhaps a helpful salesperson will spray Gasoline all over you.