Using smell to tell stories about who we are
I’ve found my signature smell and I can't stop thinking about it
I have always had a very strong and visceral relationship with colour. I am a visual thinker, I appreciate art and design; I’ve been on a one person investigation to work out the relationship between environment and mood, style and energy, landscape and feelings.
How do the colours, textures and environments affect how we feel and behave? And how much of this can we adjust ourselves through the choices we make to impact our energy and intentions?
This curiosity about colour eventually led me to take a colour psychology course, just for fun, to see if there were any learnings I could align with my own observations and experiences. This was not a course about what colours ‘look best on your skin tones’ which most people assume when I mention it, but about how we relate emotionally to colours. It detailed the different ways we process colour through a mix of memories, personal experiences and cultural inputs and norms. A description which we could also call…imagination. Could it be true that the way we interpret colours and connect to them is the same process in the mind that occurs when we are engaged in using our imagination? I have no evidence of this but there does seem to be a lot of crossover; imagination is like using a mixing pot of our own knowledge, ideas and experiences which is often activated by a spark like a challenge, problem or moment of inspiration. It seems colours are a spark too that trigger a reaction that probably happens quickly and deep in the subconscious, we’re not always aware of it.
Until we are.
I started to name certain colours as my ‘power colours’ some time ago, to call out the colours that give me joyful empowerment; these are the colours I feel capture my essence. The combination of yellow and purple are my go to power colour combo, they never fail to make me feel feels when I see them together. For some time now, I’ve also been having a love affair with a specific shade of grassy green. I noticed I was craving this colour when I started to slow down, calm my energy and remove myself from the cycles of burn out I was in.
I just love this stuff, do you?
Colour is of course a sensory experience, falling into the visual sense, but after falling in love with a smell recently I am wondering if I’ve been pouring all my focus into observing and tweaking what stimulates me visually and paid less attention to the other senses? I was working on a project about teen skin care recently that led me explore the beauty category in much greater than perhaps I have ever done. Although I’m fascinated about the evolution of beauty brands and believe it’s one of the most innovative categories right now, I’m not hugely motivated to shop it. I feel quite uninformed , overwhelmed and have always been quite ‘basic bitch’ when it comes to what I put on my face. That was actually kind of perfect for me to explore the market with a naive curiosity and I was working my way through all the brands trending with teens on TikTok, one brand kept coming up, Sol De Janeiro,Brazilian Bum Bum Cream. The name alone was enough to peak my interest and then I saw the round bulbous tub and found myself stepping out of neutral researcher mode and very much into consumer enquiry mode. I learned that what had captured teens' attention about this brand was that the body moisturizer was paired with a body mist; the idea being to layer up for increased scent intensity. This all sounded a bit headache inducing but when I interviewed a teen who talked to me about it and the role of scent in identity curation I found that super fascinating and started reflecting on my own experiences with scent. I have power colours but can’t really think of a scent I put around me that really lights me up in the way colours and shapes do.
Fast forward a bit and I found myself child-free with some time to kill in duty free at the ariport (oh the freedom) and there in front of me was an entire display of all the Bum Bum creams! It was vast and I got to trying out the scents. One puff in and pow, there it was.
My smell.
I had a strong reaction, there were butterflies in my tummy as I realised - I can smell like this everyday! The scent, Pistachio and Salted Caramel, gave me feelings of travelling, of freedom and of fun. It felt joyful, fun and friendly. If my play personality was a scent, that was it. Reading about smell has also been fascinating:
Our sense of smell is directly linked to the limbic system, the brain's emotional center, which plays a significant role in mood regulation.
I was also quite interested to read what the brand had to say:
We think beauty isn't a universal standard, but an attitude - a confidence that comes when you feel good in your skin. We're here to celebrate your Body Joy. We've captured the spirit and beauty secrets of Brazil with richly sensorial products that transport you to the warm, sun-filled place of your dreams.
I love the idea of body joy, this feels so much more than size and shape but more how our body is a vehicle for stimulating all our senses to bring us joy. I loaded up on body butter, body mist and lip balm and went off to my sun-filled place of my dreams and never looked back (honestly, just call me a marketer's dream).
This was 2 weeks ago and dear reader, let me tell you…half the bottle has gone already! I’m addicted! Everytime I put it on I grin! How can a scent be having this much effect on me?!
I have always worn perfume but am wondering if I’ve been wearing it for other people? Or wearing it because I think it’s nice, but that’s as far as it goes. No story about me. My relationship with this scent is so different to any perfume wearing I’ve done before. Probably the only other thing I’ve put on my body I’ve had anything similar to, would be Palmer's Coco Butter, which also smells like sweet food and reminds me of travelling, which as it would appear, is my jam, haha. I think a lot of perfumes try and bottle sexy. They talk about musk and tones and florals, not pistachio nuts. I appreciate not everyone would want to walk around smelling like a popcorn counter or consider that as ‘sexy’ but I have to say the sensorial power-up I’ve got from discovering this scent has made me feel sexy, because what is sexier than feeling yourself, than lining up your outside and your inside?
Now that’s some body joy.
I find this so relatable. I find scent so incredibly important - for mood, for relaxation and especially for creativity. I find citrus scents give me that amazing butterfly feeling!