The Morning Smell Test for Perfumers

The Exercise
Each morning, you select a few random essences—these could be essential oils, aroma compounds, or other fragrance materials commonly used in perfumery. You apply a small amount of each essence onto individual scent strips (typically narrow strips of absorbent paper designed to hold and release fragrance). Then, throughout the day, you periodically smell these strips and observe how the scents evolve over time. This process is known as watching the "dry down," which refers to the stages a fragrance goes through as it evaporates and settles.

The Purpose

1. Training Olfactory Sensitivity: Smelling a variety of essences daily helps maintain and enhance your ability to detect subtle differences in odors. Over time, this sharpens your nose’s precision, much like how a musician tunes an instrument or practices scales to stay in top form.
2. Understanding Scent Evolution: The dry down reveals how a fragrance changes as its volatile components evaporate. Perfumes typically have three phases—top notes (initial impression), heart notes (the core scent), and base notes (the lasting foundation). By observing this progression, you deepen your understanding of how individual essences behave over time and how they might interact in a blend.
3. Building a Mental Library: Regularly exposing yourself to different scents strengthens your olfactory memory. As a perfumer, this helps you recall and identify specific notes when creating or analyzing fragrances, even without a reference in front of you.
4. Staying Calibrated: Your sense of smell can become fatigued or desensitized, especially if you’re exposed to the same scents repeatedly. Introducing random essences keeps your nose adaptable and prevents it from "tuning out" familiar odors.

How It Works in Practice

• Random Selection: Choosing essences at random challenges your nose with unexpected variety, preventing you from relying solely on scents you’re already comfortable with.
• Scent Strips: These isolate the fragrance, allowing you to focus purely on the smell without interference from skin chemistry or other environmental factors.
• Dry Down Observation: Checking the strips over hours mimics how a perfume unfolds on a wearer. You might notice how a citrus essence starts bright and sharp but fades quickly, while a woody note grows richer and lingers.

Why It’s Effective
This exercise is a form of active sensory training. Just as athletes stretch before a workout, a perfumer “stretches” their nose to prepare for the complex task of composing fragrances. It’s both a warm-up and a skill-building ritual, ensuring your olfactory perception remains keen and responsive.