Smell is the powerhouse of the senses. It affects us on physical, psychological and social levels. Mostly, we breathe in scents without being consciously aware of them or their importance. Yet we can sniff decay before it is visible (in food, for example) and scents evoke strong emotional responses – like joy, happiness, nostalgia, sadness, and disgust. Through smell, we are reminded of other people (especially lovers, relatives and friends), as well as of things we have done and places we have been in the past. Smell locates us in our individual, as well as in our social, lives.

Smell is a key factor in the emergence and definition of culture. Some of the earliest artefacts known (like sacrificial incense holders, or balsam for the dead) are related to man’s biological sense of smell. Many social animals and insects have a distinct scent that defines them as a group. The same can be found in contemporary human society. Both host and guest in Bedouin society wash their hands in rose water to share the same scent, just as a foreign ant is sprayed with the body liquid of host ants in an anthill community. Likewise, ‘outsiders’ are often categorised according to their smell (Blacks in the U.S.A., Westerners in Japan). Smell threatens the social and cultural order.

Odorants are used by different groups to assert their social difference. In royal courts, for example, men and women used to apply scent to their clothes as a mark of their cultural and aesthetic distinction. Scents are still means of, and models for, defining social relations. They are also individual. A perfume, for example, is used because it seems to fit and become part of an individual’s personality. At the same time, scents have a semiotic stamp of approval that is culturally determined. An inquiry into the discourses of scent, therefore, is an inquiry into the ‘essence’ of society and culture.

Smell is undervalued. Scents are highly elusive and cannot be recorded or contained. They often cannot be directly named and many languages have virtually no vocabulary to describe them, except in terms of other senses of sight, sound, touch and taste. Scents are communicated in language primarily through metaphors. But what kind of metaphors? And what do they tell us?

How do we know what scents ‘mean’? How can we find out what people think about smell in different parts of the world? Is it a universal form of semiotic communication, or does it vary in different cultural contexts? If the latter, how does it vary and why? How are odorants used to appeal to men or women, old or young, singles or families? Are there specific ‘scent cultures’?

We divide products into three groups:

These are some of the issues that interest us in the imagine.. Scent Lab.