What are your dreams and goals as we embrace a new year, destined like all those that came before it to have a life of its own?
Well, here are mine: to slow down and embrace 2026 with serenity. To remain clear of mind, lucid, able to take time to think, without racing through life at breakneck speed. To slow down, breathe, go at my own pace, and not get distracted by the suffocating number of products on the market, lest we ourselves become products with a short shelf life.
At the end of 2025, I bought myself a record player. Now, as I write and work, I can breathe in the spirit of years gone by, when beauty had a meaning, a melody, a different fragrance. A beauty that was real, now left suspended in its own time. I found a box set of Jazz hits (I should mention I’m no connoisseur, it simply intrigues me, like so many things that we’d love to know but no one taught us about). I began with Ella Fitzgerald, the First Lady of Jazz. A singer who earned her place in the hall of fame of American music, filling music halls around the world for decades and recording mountains of albums from the late 1930s onward. Ella pairs perfectly with my new (albeit second-hand) Thorens turntable, which itself carries the scent of lived experience, of authenticity, of something built to last.
Everything we are influences every action we take, and choosing a fragrance is no exception. Beyond the routine olfactory experience everyone engages in when selecting a perfume to purchase, it’s up to us to give that fragrance the dignity to exist and live on our skin. This reflection stems from Jean-Claude Ellena, who writes in one of his recent books, Atlas of Perfumed Botany, that choosing a personal fragrance should be solely a matter of desire, of the love we’re willing to offer it. Every perfume has its own soul, but if ours is empty, how can it weather the passage of time?
In the modern world, in which everything seems to have a limited lifespan, artisanal niche perfumes are constantly adapting: the audience changes, the market changes and, above all, the method of creation changes. And they change fast. Let’s start with perfume creation and identity. Creators (also known by various brands as artistic directors), under pressure from the speed of new launches, are constantly eager to release something new. But invention takes time; it requires study, research, long stretches of waiting to find that spark that guides the creative process. Every voyage of discovery, physical and mental alike, requires silence. Yet silence no longer exists today, and here’s where my resolution comes in, which I extend as a wish to you: to slow down, to listen, to have a mind as pure and smooth as a sculpture by Canova. In a society that suffers from perpetual noise, saturated with a myriad scents and sounds and all too easily distracted, taking the time to stop and indulge in creativity has become nigh on impossible. This is why Ella helps me. Her notes are slow, and I truly listen to her subtle tones, perhaps for the first time in many years.
Setting aside the various legally required timeframes for perfume production, stability tests, compatibility checks and so on, let’s jump ahead in the story and imagine our perfume is already perfectly positioned on the shelf in all its beauty. Our idea of beauty is undoubtedly influenced by the eye and nose of the period we live in, while preferences are shaped by experience and olfactory culture. Perfumery, like Art, belongs to its time. Society differs in every era, and perfume creators, much like artists, must continually adapt the trajectory of perfumery to the latest trends. Even master perfumers (the Noses, as we call them) as people of their time, must embody, develop and consider the flow of time and change. They must adapt their artistic language of essences to make the contemporary zeitgeist explicit, to reflect their era’s understanding of the world. Today, this is a process that risks confusing our noses, rather than educating them.
Storytelling takes time. The consumer, already disoriented from the moment they timidly choose to enter that enchanting place called a Perfumery, is pulled in a thousand different directions. Selling requires reasoning, words, demonstrations. There’s no time to smell more than a handful of fragrances (or so they tell you), otherwise you will no longer be able to distinguish them on the blotters. It takes a high degree of concentration and dedication both to sell perfumes that tell a story and to choose a perfume that represents you. Choose your fragrance calmly, stay relaxed, so the purchase doesn’t become impulsive. You can always think it over and return later (a wise decision). Whatever the choice, it goes without saying that our surroundings play a primary role in our imagination.
Taking time isn’t about wasting time; rather it’s about finding the time and understanding that slowness is sometimes the best way of enjoying what life has to offer. It’s about gaining the sense of performing our actions with full awareness and caring about what we buy from the moment it enters our desires and then our possession. And what better way to take time to find ourselves than choosing a perfume to wear?
Enjoy your discovery!
With Love, G.
COSÌ POTRAI RESTARE SEMPRE AGGIORNATO SULLE NOVITÀ ED ESSERE TRA I PRIMI A SCOPRIRE VERAMENTE STEP ABOARD
