AGAINST NATURE, part one: incense

tracing trails of scented smoke from the sacred to the profane

hi everyone! this is the first entry in a more list-oriented style of post i want to upload on current olfactory fascinations of mine centered around a single note. this is by no means meant to be a comprehensive review of every single perfume containing this note, but rather an effort to capture my own research and interests as they develop, collecting a sort of working directory of my own interest in a specific aspect of perfumery. i’d love to hear your thoughts!

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if the role of perfume is to keep house for the sacred – sanctifying the regular from the distinctly irregular, incense was the first perfume. indeed many accounts of the history of personal scenting place the beginning of modern day ‘perfumery’ in two locations: cannes, 1920, when ernest beaux first presented coco chanel with the formula to no 5, and india, second century BCE, when incense designed for personal non-religious use made its way to the west via the silk road. to this day incense lives many lives: from counterculture to staunch tradition, east to west, transcendent to mortal, something about the nature of using perfume to replicate something so visceral and ancient feels like pushing the art form to its most meaningful. if any one of these scents can recall some tender memory, some moment of personal or public devotion, or perhaps create an act of mindfulness to help center yourself during the day, than the perfume-object itself has already been elevated from cosmetics to the divine.