What is the nature of the perfected marvel, in scent? Really — you smell marvelous?
I got a note from Barneys New York. It was really about Byredo — I’d made some notes about them earlier.
Y O U S M E L L M A R V E L ?
Ben Gorham’s drawn up the scent sequencing for Mister Marvelous. That made me think, what’s marvelous, mister?
B e n s a y s :
“With the launch of Mister Marvelous, Byredo’s founder, Ben Gorham, has chosen to highlight a male figure who currently embodies his idea of this fragrance.
The first ever Mister Marvelous features world renowned hair stylist Christiaan Houtenbos.
Marvelous is a grand word, is it not? As it rolls off the tongue, it feels quite like it means. And it has history; France’s post-revolutionary dandies called their equally exquisite ladies Les Marveileuses. Marvelous means wonderful, exquisite, and astonishing. With a bit of strangeness as well – as indicated by the old Latinmirabilis. A marvelous thing must be strange in that it must be like nothing else.
We celebrate all of this. Because when things are just a bit off kilter, a little twisted or turned in shape, they become that much more interesting. Such qualities areprima facie for a thing to be called marvelous. For a man to be called Mr. Marvelous.
Our hats off to the one and only Christiaan.”
Ingredients:
Top: Mandarin Leaves, Neroli Flower
Heart: Green Lavender, Bamboo
Base: Black Amber, White Cedarwood
There are distinctions to the idea of marvelment. Really, to marvel is to *smile. That creasing of facial muscles, this showing of teeth, is the expression of visible happiness. And what makes you happen to happiness, and what makes someone else happy might be separate things. But, there is sharing.
Writing about the idea of scent in experience, the heat|heart|soul of memory and sensation is the intertwining of many different layers of context. The heat — literally, the diffusion of scent, is also the carrier of scent on wind — the fluency flows; and heat, too, is passion.
That might be that double edge of meaning — the heat of the body, and the passion of that commitment:
“I love that scent on me.”
Or,
“I love that scent on you.”
One might consider that the character of “the way it smells on you,” might be “I savor what that fragrance reminds me of” — my past, another experience, another relationship, or perhaps “just you.” The webbing of memory and fragrance is deep enough to bridge a complication of networks of mind, historical sensations and the psychic gathering of notations of pleasantness or unsavory encounters.
The heart is not only about the physical sense of the center-point of the fragrance, the apex or bridgework to its architecture, but the heart of the key recollection. Most people aren’t noses. They’re not trained to sort and define the sentiments of the layering of how things smell any less than the architectural character of how buildings, light, materials and supporting structures are integrated to form the whole of experiencing place. People will say:
“that smells like wood.”
Or,
“that reminds me of my father.”
Or “my mother, my first date, my car, the sea, moss in a forest, rain…
These might be defined as the heart of a scent — and somewhat different than what one might describe as a top, middle or base note in the conventional parlance of fragrance development. What is the heart of the scent? It is the note that is the most evocative — speaking the loudest to the character of memory and recollection in the notation of fragrance.
The soul of scent?
Every recollection has a tier stepping sequence of time, movements and synchrony.
“It happened like this, I first…”
“Then I…”
“Then she…”
“They…“
In branding, the strategy of arraying content wrapped around enterprise, the key links to story. I’m not talking fairy tales. But I might be referencing legend. And I might be considering the idea of how people hold parts of a brand in their sense of personal experiment and experience. In the nature of embracement, people either sync to the connection of stalwart Steve Jobs, charismatic Coco Chanel, the googol-plexing of Google’s Page and Brin, or the Swedish sharpshooters, Zennström and Friius, of Skype — every brand has a story that people either embrace in enchantment or discard as warily distant and likely founded mostly on commodity experience. Like price. “It’s cheep, so I go there.”
Soul — and marveling — lives in that place of magic.
You smell marvelous. It’s the layers of fragrance, the wafted perfume of story, that lead to the impression of something: marvelous.
Tim | Miami, Florida
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BRAND MARVELMENT
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*Etymology for smile: from Middle English smilen (“to smile”), of North Germanic origin, from Danish smile (“to smile”), from Old Norse *smīla (“to smile”), from Proto-Germanic *smīlijanan,*smirōnan (“to smile”), from Proto-Indo-European *smeyə- (“to laugh, be glad, wonder”). Cognate with Swedish smila (“to smile”), Middle High German smielen (“to smile”), Old High German smierōn (“to smile”), Old English smerian (“to laugh at”), Old English smercian, smearcian (“to smile”), Latin miror (“to wonder at”). More at smirk.