SCENT GETS SOCIAL
#Smellfie Day 2021 For perfume-lovers, International Fragrance Day is the best day of the year. End. Of. And this year, for our annual #Smellfie extravaganza, our fans, followers and fragrance community got more creative than ever
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YOU MADE US LAUGH. You made us go ‘aaaah’. And you wowed us with the effort that you went to, to mark this landmark in the scent calendar. In this, our sixth year of celebrating this landmark in the scent calendar, more of you got involved than ever before. But beyond that, the creativity was just so inspiring. Our #Smellfie community built sets, assembled props – and in the case of the winning entry – from Tiffany Crawford (@tiffanycrawfo10 on Twitter) – even reenacted a scene in From Here to Eternity on a beach, with a selfie stick and two bottles of Calvin Klein. Now THAT – in every way – is love. Tiffany and her partner will be receiving this year’s star prize of £300 worth of fragrance – something for him and something for her.
Look for the stars indicating our four other winners. But because of all that’s happened in the last year, we did want to award an extra prize – or rather, three of them. Among the entries was a short film from @rookperfumes, featuring doctor/perfumer Nadeem Crowe, who enlisted his medic colleagues to make a short video, which you can find on Rook’s Instagram. It’s our way of saying ‘thank you’ to the NHS, if you like. This year’s #Smellfie Day perfectly crystallised what fragrance has meant to us over the past year. The way it has buoyed and uplifted us, kept us connected with our senses and been a hugely positive force in our lives, generally. Enjoy sharing in the scented celebration, on these pages...
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#SMELLFIES: OUR WINNERS
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#SMELLFIES: PERFUME SOCIETY TEAM
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#SMELLFIES: THANKYOU TO OUR NHS!
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#SMELLFIES: PETS’ CORNER
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WISH UPON A SCENTED STAR
Celestial
SCENTS Mankind has long looked to the night sky for inspiration: lovers wishing on shooting stars, comets regarded by kings as celestial omens, meteor showers likened to saints’ tears. Perfumers turn their gaze to the galaxies too, composing fragrances that sparkle, charm and dazzle with otherworldly wonderment. SUZY NIGHTINGALE gets out her telescope to explore these heavenly scents…
SINCE THE BEGINNING OF TIME, humanity has gazed heavenwards, ascribing personality traits to the star we were born under, compiling almanacs to advise farmers which lunar phases are the most prosperous times to plant their crops, with religions around the world noting the movement of the stars and placing their gods in heavenly palaces. This stellar infatuation is hardly surprising given that 97% of the human body is composed of stardust. It’s one of those ‘did you know?’ facts found in the more cerebral Christmas crackers, which planetary scientist and stardust expert Dr. Ashley King maintains is ‘totally 100% true: nearly all the elements in the human body were made in a star and many have come through several supernovas.’ In the 1980s, astronomer Carl Sagan hosted the hit TV series ‘Cosmos’, documenting our celestial fascination. He said: ‘We are a way for the universe to know itself. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We’re made of star stuff.’
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WISH UPON A SCENTED STAR
Heavenly advertising, left and below, with L.T. Piver’s Astris fragrance
It is small wonder, then, that perfumers are influenced by ‘star stuff’ and other mysteries of the heavens. But this has definitely been amplified lately, reflected in a veritable meteor shower of creations that in some way reference the stars and the planets. Perfume marketing for Christmas 2021 echoes this obsession with all things celestial, with comets and stars shooting across boxes and advertisements, inspiring the very theme and look of this edition of our magazine. Few perfumers, perhaps, go quite as far as perfumer Aliénor Massenet, who recently told us: ‘I only work on creative projects when the moon is rising. I never start a new fragrance when the moon is going down. I guess you can say that’s my superstition, but it’s also what they say about cutting roses – never cut a stem when the moon is waning.’ But 30 THE scented LETTER
“ I only work on creative projects when the moon is rising. I never start a new fragrance when the moon is going down” ALIÉNOR MASSENET when did this link between perfume and planetary bodies begin, and why are celestial scents shining, now? We can look to the ancient Egyptians – whose priests are regarded as the first perfumers – as forging the first fragrant link between the heavens and our earthly need
to be suffused by sweet smells, with their aromatic offerings of burning incense sent skyward to please the gods. In Christianity, resinous smoke rising from a swinging thurible also symbolises the prayers of the faithful rising to heaven. And since the earliest days of modern perfumery, the heavens have also inspired perfumers’ creations. In 1904, French perfume house L.T. Piver created Astris, one of the earliest scents to harness the airy, ethereal qualities of aldehydes; in a Baccarat bottle emblazoned with a star motif, Astris remained popular for decades before its star eventually fizzled out. But the scented space-race had truly begun. Jacques Guerlain then looked to the constellation of Lyra, naming his heavenly scent of 1936 after its brightest star, Vega. Town & Country magazine’s
review of Vega described it as ‘a star fallen from heaven and dropped in a bottle.’ In 1949, Vincent Roubert composed Meteor for Coty, advertised as having the ‘flashing beauty of a shooting star’, twinkling from its dose of aldehydes. Aldehydes could be regarded as the most ‘celestial’ ingredients in perfumery, offering an airy ‘whoosh’ as they rocket other ingredients from the bottle. These synthetic molecules feature most famously in Chanel No5, which celebrates its centenary this year with an advertising campaign that captures the stellar mood of the moment, giving us Marion Cotillard dancing on the moon. In his book Nose Dive: A Field Guide to the World’s Smells, author Harold McGee painstakingly picks apart the ‘invisible nimbus of flying molecules’ that swirl around us. The first chapter deals with the smell of space itself, and McGee reminds us, ‘The sensory spread that’s laid on for us every day of our lives went onto the fire around fourteen billion years ago and has been simmering around the stars ever since.’ Scientific advances now allow us to know what space actually smells like – although, alas, the reality doesn’t quite chime with the creative imaginings of perfumers. Meteorites, says McGee, contain molecules such as propionic, butyric and hexanoic acids, which smell ‘sour, cheesy, vomit-like’. They also feature phenol – ‘adhesive bandage, antiseptic’, along with dimethylamine and pyridine – ‘ammonia, fishy.’ Harrison ‘Jack’ Schmitt, an
Chanel No.5’s recent ad campaign flies us to the moon with Marion Cotillard
Nicole Darieux, educating children in Grasse about all things olfactory
Tomorrow’ s perfumery ‘ stars’
In 2008, Nicole Derieux (originally from Scotland) and her French husband, Vincent Derieux, started a non-profit organisation, Parfums de Vie, dedicated to helping children overcome poverty and exclusion. With investors’ help, the couple purchased an historic but neglected house in Grasse that formerly belonged to a perfumer, gradually restoring the building and his overgrown garden of fragrant flowers. Living in the perfume capital of the world, Nicole had found herself seduced by the idea of creating scents. But rather than simply making people smell good, Nicole wanted to do good, so she launched an educational project to introduce them to the fragrant world. Using the power of smell to unlock a way of communicating with the children, together they explore the raw ingredients Grasse has made so famous: rose, orris, aromatic herbs and jasmine, learning everything from their planting, picking, and processing to the creation of the perfume (with the help of heritage Grasse fragrance house, Molinard), how the bottles are made, and ultimately how scents are marketed. ‘The kids and families we work with are from very disadvantaged backgrounds, most of them refugees, so we opened an education centre, a homework club… When you meet these families and listen their stories, hear what many of the women we speak to have gone through to protect their children… it’s incredibly humbling.’ As a mother herself, Nicole says: ‘I so admire these women’s strength. So one of the reasons we called the latest fragrance “Étoile Celeste” was to celebrate these women, but also to reflect the way stars symbolise hope.’ Its central ingredient is the appropriately star-shaped jasmine flower, around which Grasse’s perfumery industry is based. Perfumer Christophe Laudamiel was so impressed with Nicole and Vincent’s efforts, he donated two huge boxes of fine fragrances from his personal collection for the kids to smell, and is helping compose their next perfume, to be launched next year. Meanwhile, visitors to Grasse can actually stay in the Villa des Parfums, with profits from the operation going to support Parfums de Vie’s ongoing work. And closer to home, you may also smell good while doing good yourself, by buying their beautiful, star-filled fragrance. Parfums de Vie Étoile Celeste €135 for 50ml eau de parfum villadesparfums.com
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THE SMELL OF PLANET EARTH Tanya Harrison, director of research at Arizona State University’s Space Technology and Science (NewSpace) Initiative, has been distilling the smells of Earth for future space explorers. Originally, ASU’s ‘smell lab’ was created within the university’s School of Life Sciences to help understand things like how odours affect memory, and how our sense of smell changes due to age or disease, in particular with Alzheimer’s. But Harrison explains that they have now realised that bottling the smells of home might be crucial to the mental wellbeing of those on the Mars mission. ‘NASA is already working with Microsoft on its HoloLens platform to create augmented reality experiences for astronauts,’ the report states. ‘An astronaut longing for a hot summer day might crack open up a vial and remember the smell of fresh-cut grass.’
astronaut who strode the moon’s surface as part of Apollo 17’s 1972 mission, collecting moon dust and rock, is one of the rare individuals to have smelled the moon itself, recalling that ‘…everyone’s instant impression of the smell was that of spent gunpowder.’ That’s due to the oxidation of moondust; dying stars give off gusts of compounds known as Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) – molecules which are also present in barbeques and petrol. Planetary scientist, astrobiologist and award-winning perfumer Marina Barcenilla found a way to combine her own deep love of space and scent by founding niche British house AromAtom. The collection was originally conceived as an interactive teaching tool for children. Barcenilla explains: ‘The smell of Mars would be acrid and suffocating, a combination of dusty smells, rust, acid, sulphurous and chlorine notes.’ Doesn’t sound like something we’d want to dab behind our ears, does it? So Marina left the science-based smells in the classroom, instead creating a very wearable, spaceinspired fragrance collection. We can walk among the stars with every sprtiz of Moon Walk, a mineralinfused amber accord dusted with comfortingly soft orris, while Out of This World propels us to the heart of the Milky Way with elements of orange blossom, raspberry and rum, swathed in smoke and grounded in creamy sandalwood. Elsewhere, other fragrance houses, too, are looking upward once again for inspiration. Louis Vuitton’s Cosmic Cloud is described as ‘a monochrome 32 THE scented LETTER
Interstellar Scents FRÉDÉRIC MALLE THE MOON ‘My moon’ is a fond Arabic nickname, while the scent beams becomingly, a hug of oudh rippled with rose, frankincense and berries. 1
MUGLER ANGEL NOVA An explosion of fruitiness tingles to an ‘upcycled rose’ note, velvety damask damp with dewy magnolia, offering whipped cedarwood’s cloud-like caress. 2
EMILIO PUCCI X ACQUA DI PARMA NOTTE DI STELLE Lucent raspberry woodiness gasps at galaxies deep within a mysterious pine forest. 3
AROMATOM OUT OF THIS WORLD The Milky Way evoked via a fusion of orange blossom, raspberry and smoke-swathed rum, with ground control calling via creamy sandalwood. 4
PENHALIGON’S LUNA Sweet orange, pearly jasmine, and a whisper of rose carry you heavenward, gently bathed in milky moonlight with a forest’s canopy far below. 5
One of several star-inspired Vuittons
of musks radiating in interstellar space,’ while Estée Lauder’s Sensuous Stars ‘takes you to enchanted, undiscovered places no fragrance has ever taken you before.’ Montblanc Starwalker, meanwhile, celebrated the 50th anniversary of landing on the moon with a scent evoking ‘walking amidst the stars’. This profusion of celestial perfumes might perhaps be inspired by our search for hope and guidance from the stars, given the pandemic, climate change and various political crises playing out on our own planet. Or could Carl Sagan be right – is it simply that something in our souls ‘longs to return’ to the stars? As many of us discovered through lockdown, and cancelled holiday plans, fragrance has the power to help us travel via our nose to treasured memories of happy holidays and loved ones. This season, however, we invite you to consider broadening your horizons, seeking out a stellar scents that take you on a journey ‘to infinity, and beyond!’
LOUIS VUITTON ÉTOILE FILANTE Osmanthus exudes liquid, apricot-tinged luminescence, jasmine and magnolia celebrating a ‘universal message of hope.’ 6
FRAGONARD ÉTOILE Inspired by Provençal ladies who wore lucky charm ‘stars of Digne’ brooches. Bergamot, apple, and ginger gleam atop delicate floral woodiness. 7
PARFUMS DE VIE ÉTOILE CELESTE Jasmine’s star flowers sparkle to a soft rose embrace, violet’s shiver warmed by orange blossom’s hopeful, honeyed smile. 8
GOUTAL ÉTOILE D’UNE NUIT The sense of silken negligées, a starlet’s powder compact nestled in a supple leather bag, raspberry lipstick kisses on love letters. 9
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HOPE For the women of Jordan’s Zaatari refugee camp, a Givaudan initiative is helping to change women’s lives – one bar of soap at a time, reports JO FAIRLEY
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Life, as we all know, is sometimes a game of tennis-elbowfoot. You start by doing one thing, and it leads to another. And so it was that a garment designed by renowned British fashion name Helen Storey MBE – with the idea of engaging delegates on the way to the Paris Climate Summit in 2015 – ended up leading her to a refugee camp in Jordan, where she has for five years delivered many co-created projects, including being part of an initiative to professionalise soap-making and fragrance creation for displaced Syrian women. ‘In 2014, in the UK, I’d gathered together climate scientists, businesses, universities and researchers to look at how we, as a species, are (or are not) responding to climate change,’ explains the designer and activist, who also holds a professorship at London College of Fashion. ‘I had realised that as a species, we had to move faster than we knew to tackle the climate crisis, which meant engaging with industries that had existing, huge fan bases, so music and fashion were ideal.’ It was the climate scientists at the UK MET Office who suggested Helen create a provocative one-off fashion piece, ‘Dress For Our Time’, to be positioned outside the Eurostar terminal at St. Pancras International, around which every delegate and decisionmaker departing for Paris and the UN COP21 Conference would have to navigate – a reminder of a difficult truth and the need to make the right decisions for our planet. ‘Like everyone, around that time, I had seen TV footage of refugees walking from Syria to Jordan and was deeply moved. It struck me I didn’t need a new kind of cloth, but one with humanity already in its threads, so, I had the idea to write to the UN. They warmly responded and sent me a de-commissioned UNHCR refugee tent that had once housed a Syrian family, to recycle into the garment.’ Perhaps unsurprisingly, from the moment the dress was unveiled, people began asking Helen
Helen Storey’s ‘Dress For Our Time’
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© Image by David Betteridge
questions about the camp it came from. ‘I realised that there was only one thing to do: to go and meet with the people who lived there.’ Arriving in Jordan at the UNHCR [UN Refugee Agency] Zaatari Camp, Helen found a sprawling community of 85,000 men, women and children. ‘For a long time, I’d been finding it difficult to find meaning in fashion,’ Helen says. ‘I saw the visit as a way to open myself up to this world and see if I had something new to offer.’ The camp itself, established in 2012 as a temporary sanctuary, has now become a semi-permanent settlement. ‘Refugees are far less transitory than they were,’ Helen says. Almost all of us have thought more about freedom in the past 18 months than at any time in our lives – but for Zaatari’s refugees, the liberty we are revelling in as our own world opens up again is unimaginable; returning to their homeland remains very complicated. ‘In many ways they’re in a sort of limbo,’ says Helen. ‘They face legal restrictions for creating self-sustaining livelihoods. And although the official organisations supporting those communities were initially put in place to manage the original extreme danger of war and emergency, they are less able to help with the development and creation of enterprise opportunities and livelihoods that protracted displacement requires.’ It became obvious to Helen that one possible way to boost the women’s income and confidence was to build on their traditional soap-making skills and talents, helping them to create small businesses. Beyond that, soap was a vital commodity in the refugee community for hygiene – even pre-Covid. This idea really crystallised when Helen met one of the community leaders, Ahlam. ‘I was invited to visit a community centre, where Ahlam was teaching women to make soap over one central, primitive stove with a basin and a bucket. My eyes locked with this
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Zaatari landscape
director, perfumer Dalia Izem and a technical expert were extraordinary woman’s. Although there was nothing in life soon on the ground to help develop the women’s skills and that could suggest we had previously met, we both felt a fragrance knowledge. ‘The idea was to help the women to strange sense of recognition. I asked her what her wishes create a product which went beyond functionality and could were, and, over time, Givaudan are helping to fulfil them.’ be of a high enough quality for someone outside the camp As luck would have it – and don’t the planets so often to buy it.’ They gathered small teams of women who wanted align, when you’re doing the right thing? – Helen had an to learn the soap-making skills. ‘Some of the women in the ongoing relationship with a multi-national personal care camp are highly educated, while others have little formal company, Unilever, with whom she regularly exchanged education and aren’t alphabetised,’ she explains. ‘Those ideas. Back in the UK, downloading her experiences to a women were sometimes a little nervous, but they were contact there, she was put in touch with Givaudan (suppliers reassured when they were asked: “How many of you cook for of many ingredients and fragrances to Unilever). your families? Making soap is no more complicated than Givaudan is also a company which strongly believes that making a soup, so you can all manage that.”’ business can be a force for good. In 2013 The Givaudan The soaps themselves follow a far simpler formula than Foundation was created, to manage social and community the famous Aleppo olive oil soaps for projects, in partnership with local which Syria is globally renowned. ‘For experts and NGOs, in the a start, olive oil is an expensive communities in which Givaudan ingredient. Secondly, you need a sources its raw materials and the pristine, dust-free environment to communities in which it operates. make it in – which a desert-based Anne Louvet, Givaudan’s Global camp can’t offer. That type of soap Business Development Director, also has to be aged for several takes up the Zaatari story. ‘We very months, to harden it,’ explains Anne. quickly got the Givaudan ‘And last of all, it requires the use of management aligned to the idea that lye, a caustic ingredient which just even though this project was isn’t safe for families to have around different to our work on the ground Helen Storey MBE small children,’ she explains. with communities producing With Givaudan supplying the fragrances and other fragrance ingredients for the company – patchouli, vanilla, materials/ingredients for the soap which the Zaatari women vetiver – it was worth getting involved with.’ make – it is based around natural glycerine – Anne scurried Maurizio Volpi, Global Head of Givaudan Fragrance and around trying to source as much of the equipment locally as Beauty Division confirms, ‘What is being done at Zaatari she could, including soap-moulds, saucepans and utensils resonates with all of us at Givaudan. It is really bringing our from a local IKEA in Amman. At an art supply shop in purpose to life. It is perhaps the strongest example we have Amman, Anne also found papers and materials that could be of a project which leverages the expertise of our creative used for branding and design. team to “do good” for humanity and also to liberate the Beyond the acquisition of technical skills and branding creativity and entrepreneurship of the people at Zaatari: it advice, however, the soap-making project touches the shows us that with our expertise in fragrance and product women who come to the workshops on a deep emotional design we can do something concrete to enhance livelihoods. level. Famously, fragrance has been inextricably woven into This really makes our employees proud of what they do and Middle Eastern culture for millennia. We all know the power who they are.’ of scent to transport us elsewhere, and for many of the A team including Givaudan’s Dubai-based marketing
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There is a magic that happens when we come together to make things, whether it’s sculpture, jewellery, pottery, soap
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Images clockwise from above left: © David Betteridge; UNHCR; Helen Storey; Blumont.
From left: Anne Louvet (Global Business Director, Givaudan), Ahlam, Helen Storey, Deepa Patel
Perfume workshop, Zaatari Refugee Camp, Jordan - 2018
camp and back (nobody from outside is normally permitted refugees, the experience of smelling and learning about to stay within its perimeter). ‘On 13th March 2020, I had the fragrance ingredients from Givaudan’s technical team was a choice of getting the last plane out of Jordan to the UK, or Proustian reminder of the beloved homeland they’d been staying in Amman for the foreseeable future.’ She took the forced to flee. ‘I honestly worried that might prove a flight, and safely back home, became part of a successfully traumatic experience for them,’ says Helen. ‘But in fact, the funded project by UKRI, as part of the UK’s agile response to absolute opposite was true.’ Smelling ingredients like COVID-19. Led by the science team at Sheffield University, jasmine and orange blossom proved both cathartic and they designed and provided patterns for much needed utterly joyous, Helen says. emergency PPE, which some of the soap-making community She adds that there is also a sense, sometimes, of time switched to making, producing 75,000 reusable masks for standing still – in the very best way – in the groups. In a distribution across Zaatari. refugee camp life is hard, the focus on successfully getting By all accounts, the Givaudan initiative has given the through the day with a family that is fed, sheltered and (in women who take part a huge boost. Those who acquire winter), protected from the intense cold. ‘But there is a magic added skills often go on to train others, and the UNHCR that happens when we come together to make things, whether estimate that over 600 people have benefited by the project, it’s sculpture, jewellery, pottery, soap,’ observes Helen. ‘You in some way. Ahlam alone, has gone on to train over 400 cease to be connected with your past, or think about the more women under her own steam. ‘What we’ve also found,’ future. The brain “lies down” down for a moment, it seems; says Anne, ‘is that some women continue to make soap and it fires different neurons during the creative process – it is run a home-based business, but for others the workshops perhaps the only time there is any real equality between us.’ massively improve their self-confidence. What’s been really The project received a great boost when the Made in important, we’ve found, is to provide a certificate, either in Zaatari Centre was created within the camp, to house the basic soap-making, or for the masterclass. It shows the soap-making activity, as well as a beauty salon, child-care women have become qualified in something tangible, and to facilities, a professional kitchen and a showroom where crafts a level of excellence, and that recognition can help them to could be shown and sold to visiting delegations. Built and get work in other sectors, within the camp.’ funded by UNHCR and Blumont, the centre opened on ‘Some may consider fragrance to be a luxury, but this International Women’s Day, 8th March 2019. project really illustrates its ability to elevate products beyond On a practical level, the women have their eye on three functionality and to create moments of well-being, even in markets for the soap: to refugees within the camp, at bazaars the harshest circumstances,’ concludes Anne. ‘And as Ahlam across Jordan (on hold now, because of COVID), and in the said to me, having the biggest fragrance area just outside the camp. ‘The retail company in the world come to teach space at the Made in Zaatari centre also them about fragrance and soap-making made it possible for visitors to the camp has helped the women to believe they to buy a version of the soap, perhaps could have a future, and help them with the inclusion of natural oils, herbs achieve their full potential.’ Not to and more complex fragrances,’ explains mention the very real comfort of Anne. When COVID arrived, however, knowing that while they and their physical visits were halted. By that time, families may be refugees, the world has Helen had been living in Jordan for a not washed their hands of them. year in her new role as the first-ever And it all began – in the most UNHCR ‘Designer in Residence’, Heart-shaped soap made by Zaatari serendipitous way – with a dress… commuting four hours each day to the refugee women, packaged in cloth
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In
2014 I LOST MY SENSE OF SMELL, and my life hasn’t been the same since. No bite of food, no sip of drink, not even a single shower has gone by untouched by anosmia and parosmia since I caught the cold that killed my olfactory nerve. I’m not even sure I truly knew what anosmia was at the time, and there was little information around to help me out. Since then, I’ve done my best to raise awareness of how debilitating smell loss and dysfunction can be. I’ve written countless articles about my experience in order to help out other people who have suffered similarly. I’ve worked with Fifth Sense and AbScent, lectured at the Royal School of Medicine and at international conferences; I’ve even made a couple of documentaries for the BBC! But nothing, literally nothing has done more to raise awareness of the effects of smell loss than the current pandemic of COVID-19. 2020 was an incredibly difficult year for an unimaginable number of people, and while I’ve been lucky enough not to have suffered the virus directly, I can’t say that I’ve been left entirely untouched by the pandemic. I help run a Facebook group dedicated to helping people cope with acquired anosmia, and I see every day the toll this previously little-known condition has taken on people’s lives. I also see how what is known as ‘long COVID’ can also have unexpected effects on people’s sense of smell. To the outside world, smell loss seems so simple. So: you can’t smell. Big deal, how bad can it be? It’s not like being blind or deaf. But truth is that anosmia can be a life-changing condition for many sufferers. And, as more and more scientists are finding out, olfaction itself is far from simple. Experts estimated (pre-COVID) that around 20% of the population would suffer, or have suffered, from some form of smell dysfunction in their lifetime. That’s shot up: according to Scientific American, an estimated 80% of people with COVID-19 experience smell disturbances. Smell dysfunction can have any number of causes and takes a variety of different forms. Common causes include viral infection, not just COVID; as I discovered, even an ordinary head cold can be virulent enough to damage an olfactory nerve in some cases. Then we have brain injuries, polyps, chronic and recurring sinusitis, and chemotherapy is also known to have smell dysfunction as a side effect. Some people are born anosmic and some cases simply have no known cause. In addition, various neurological conditions have anosmia as a symptom, such as Parkinson’s disease. Since the sense of smell naturally degrades as we age, it is estimated that up to 80% of people over the age of 80 suffer some form of anosmia or hyposmia. (Strictly speaking, hyposmia is the term for a decreased sense of smell, but it isn’t as widely known as the term anosmia, so they’re used pretty much interchangeably.) Some sufferers develop phantosmia, where the sufferer experiences scents that don’t have any physical cause – for instance, smelling burning when there’s nothing alight, or
rotting food, or petrol where there is none. And then there’s parosmia, which is where the patient can tell there is a smell, but it is distorted. So coffee, for example, might smell like sewage, and peanuts or roast potatoes might have the flavour of mud and dust. For both parosmia and phantosmia sufferers, even simple everyday tasks can cause stress and distress; many parosmia sufferers report difficulties in eating or just leaving the house, where they’ll have no control over the smells they will encounter. Pre-COVID, most people only realised they were anosmic over time, mostly because they initially noticed that food didn’t taste as good to them as previously. In fact, a lot of people first mistake losing their sense of smell for losing their sense of taste. While most people with anosmia have fully functioning taste buds, these perceive only salt, sweet, sour, bitter and umami. What we generally think of as “taste” is actually flavour, and we experience flavour primarily through our noses – so if your nose isn’t functioning, you probably can’t taste food. According to Chrissi Winkelbauer Kelly, founder of AbScent, and who runs several anosmia Facebook groups, one major difference between pre- and COVID-related anosmia is that the onset of the latter can happen incredibly quickly, and is noticed much sooner than in non-COVID sufferers. Prior to March 2020 people would pitch up in her groups after living with the condition for a while. Now, she says, they are joining the groups within days of realising they have no sense of smell – and with it, they’re bringing a much greater sense of both urgency and anxiety related to their smell loss. Indeed, Chrissi had to begin a specific COVID related smellloss group, which has grown to almost 25,000 members in less than a year. Many of the stories that people tell about their smell loss journeys in the Facebook groups are heartbreakingly similar. People talk of isolation, feelings of detachment, the fear that they were alone in their suffering. Many also speak of the ‘glass box’ feeling of anosmia, where you are present in the events of your life, but also separate, apart, alien. I find myself in each of these stories, and I’m reminded afresh of what were some of the darkest days of my own life. And my heart weeps for all of them, many of them who now face a similar journey to my own. However, the sheer numbers of similar stories from so many patients in one place has highlighted that there may, in fact, be two additional and previously undocumented smell disorders. One is ‘smell perseveration’, where once a smell is encountered, it then becomes ‘locked’ and refuses to dissipate when the smell stimulus is removed (effectively becoming a “phantom” smell). People may alternatively suffer ‘smell fatigue’, where the patient smells things normally, but only for a second or two before the scent disappears completely, despite the stimulus item still being in the vicinity. Papers are being prepared on these conditions, but anosmia sufferers have
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There are things that people can do tO help them along the path to potentially recovering their sense of smell
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I SMELL, THEREFORE I AM
THE YEAR THE WORLD DISCOVERED THE
Sense of Smell
‘You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone,’ goes the song. But with loss of the sense of smell a symptom of COVID-19, never have more people paid attention to the problem of anosmia, reports LOUISE WOOLLAM THE
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I SMELL, THEREFORE I AM
been discussing these anecdotally with each other over a period of year. Without the sheer numbers of people reporting these symptoms, it is unlikely that they would have been recognised at all. Another common topic of discussion in the online groups is: ‘When will I be normal again?’ This is an extremely hard question to answer. As Chrissi Kelly puts it, acquired anosmia is an injury, not an illness, and we don’t ask that question of any other injury. A runner who breaks his ankle may not ever run again, and sadly, the same might be true for someone who has had their olfactory nerve injured through illness or trauma. We simply don’t know, and currently aren’t able to tell, which groups of anosmia sufferers will recover completely spontaneously, will recover partially, or will never recover. And the really hard part for patients is that they won’t find out until they either do recover, or they don’t. While it might not be a big deal for some, for others, particularly in careers that depend on smell to be able to do their jobs – cooking, nursing, even firefighting (never mind perfumery) – it can be a tragedy. But it isn’t all doom and gloom. There are things that people can do to help them along the path to potentially recovering their sense of smell. Smell training, for instance has real evidential proof that it can help some acquired anosmia sufferers improve their chances of recovery. AbScent has a huge library of resources for this on their website, and I highly recommend anyone who is interested take a look at their archives and try smell training out for themselves. Smell training in itself is ostensibly quite simple. People use a small library of scents (usually essential oils, purely for convenience, rather than any aromatherapy effects) and smell them for a few minutes twice a day, while doing specific brain training exercises along with the smelling. Whilst not a cure, it could be considered the olfactory equivalent of physiotherapy for a damaged olfactory nerve.
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I can personally attest to the effectiveness of smell training in my own case, as I used my (still frankly enormous) perfume collection in what I know now was a rudimentary form of training back in 2014-2015 – I was determined not to let my collection go to waste! – and I credit it almost entirely for my recovery. My sense of smell is not the same as it was, my left nostril remains dead, as the olfactory bulb didn’t ever recover, but the right one works well enough for me to function almost as well as before. I still smell train regularly, though, and recommend it to everyone. One thing COVID has done is to have finally shone a spotlight on precisely how neglected our sense of smell has been by the medical establishment at large. Again and again, in anosmia support groups, stories are told about patients’ concerns being dismissed: ‘It’s just smell, you’ll live,’ doctors say. Or when patients admit to struggling with life with no sense of smell, they are disparaged, and told they’ll ‘get over it.’ But in what has to be extremely good news for anyone affected by anosmia, as a direct result of COVID’s effect on the sense of smell, respected medics, scientists, and researchers from around the world have got together to form a new group dedicated to the study of the olfactory, taste, and trigeminal systems which together form our senses of taste and smell. Called the Global Consortium for Chemosensory Research (GCCR), the group now has around 630 members based in 64 countries. Together, they are concentrating research on how olfaction works, and the impact on lives when our olfactive capabilities are destroyed. Already, we are seeing many groups looking into making diagnosis through smell-testing (currently slow, specialised and very expensive) cheaper, faster and accessible to many more anosmics. The very existence of GCCR has to be a good thing, too. But for the many anosmia sufferers who’ve been affected by this for years, the question is: why, oh why, did it take a global pandemic to make this happen…?
COVID has finally shone a spotlight on precisely how neglected our sense of smell has been
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ANOSMIA ACTION PLAN
If you’re worried you have smell-loss, here are some things that might help. 1 Try not to panic. I know this is easier said than done, but there are things that can help, and always remember you are not alone. 2 Get informed. AbScent and Fifth Sense both have a wealth of resources to help get you up to speed on what is happening. 3 Find support. There are many groups dedicated to smell loss on Facebook; both AbScent and Fifth
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Sense have lively communities who swap tips and share stories. Or there’s my Facebook group, Living Well With Anosmia. 4 Practise good self-care. By keeping informed, getting support, and speaking with your medical team to determine the cause of your smell loss, you’ll feel better, I promise you. And finally, and this applies to everyone, not just those worried about smell-loss…
5 Smell train, smell train, smell train. Even a fully functioning olfactory nerve will benefit from being able to discern scents better, and at present, for those worried about smell-loss it’s the best therapy there is. AbScent have videos and information galore to help get you started.
abscent.org fifthsense.org.uk
THE
scented LETTER
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