Fragrance Laureates: The Untold Literary History of Perfumer-Writers

As I enter the atelier on my first day, the master perfumer-writer hands me two objects: a leather-bound journal and a small wooden box of glass vials. “Your education begins with understanding that these are not separate tools,” she explains, “but complementary languages for capturing the ephemeral.”

I discover quickly that both arts deal in the ephemeral, attempting to capture fleeting sensations and emotions in forms that others can experience. The perfumer-writers I study have navigated both worlds with remarkable dexterity, their pens as skilled at describing scents as their noses are at composing them.

My mentor introduces me to the scholarly work of Hsuan L. Hsu , who explains: “What makes these perfumer-writers so fascinating is their unique ability to translate between two seemingly incompatible languages—the chemical language of molecules and the symbolic language of words. Their dual expertise creates a distinctive aesthetic that often transcends the limitations of either medium alone.”

My studies begin with Colette, perhaps the most accomplished example of the perfumer-writer. Few readers realize that while crafting her sensuous prose, Colette worked professionally as a fragrance evaluator for the French perfume house Rallet during a revolutionary period in perfumery.

Marlene Goldsmith’s analysis reveals how this professional experience infused Colette’s writing: “Her work at Rallet coincided with a revolutionary period in perfumery, when the house was developing Rallet No. 1, a fragrance that would influence the creation of Chanel No. 5. This professional experience gave her prose its distinctive sensory precision.”

Reading passages from “Chéri,” I’m struck by Colette’s description of a character’s scent: “The perfume she wore was not one of those violent, complex scents that invade a room; it was discreet, elusive, impossible to name, yet unforgettable.” This isn’t merely poetic language but reveals the vocabulary of a trained nose—one accustomed to evaluating fragrances for their sillage, complexity, and memorability.

Christina Krueger, in her scholarly work on perfume in nineteenth-century French literature, notes: “When she describes a scent as ‘green’ or ‘powdery,’ she’s employing technical terminology from perfumery, not merely impressionistic language. This technical foundation gives her sensory descriptions their remarkable accuracy and evocative power.”

I begin to understand why Colette’s Paris streetscapes come alive with olfactory details that other writers might overlook—the interplay of chestnuts roasting, leather bookbindings, and the municipal smell of dampened dust that she describes as “the city catching its breath.” Her evaluations for Rallet display a similarly narrative approach, describing one composition as “entering a room where someone interesting has just departed, leaving questions in the air.”

As my apprenticeship progresses, my mentor expands my reading to Tom Robbins’ “Jitterbug Perfume,” a sprawling narrative weaving together the stories of Alobar, a medieval king fleeing death, and Priscilla, a modern-day perfume magnate, connected through their mutual pursuit of a transcendent fragrance.

Rachel Spencer’s exploration of olfactory narration reveals why this novel is essential to my education: “What makes Robbins’ use of perfume so distinctive is its function as both literal and metaphorical vehicle. The characters pursue a physical perfume, but what they’re really seeking is the essence of life itself—the fragrance becomes a tangible representation of an intangible philosophical quest.”

The novel’s fragrance elements—particularly the combination of jasmine, beet pollen, and civet—become alchemical tools for exploring the human condition. By the novel’s conclusion, the missing perfume bottle represents far more than a narrative driver; it embodies the central philosophical proposition that immortality might be achieved through sensory transcendence.

My education takes a fascinating turn as we explore M.J. Rose’s “The Book of Lost Fragrances,” which centers on ancient Egyptian fragrance recipes with the power to trigger past-life memories.

Rachel Herz, a leading researcher in the psychology of smell, provides insight into why this approach is significant: “Rather than scent involuntarily triggering personal memory, these characters actively seek specific fragrances to unlock memories that transcend individual existence—what we might call ‘transpersonal remembrance’.”

This novel transforms perfume from a luxury product into a technology of consciousness—a key that unlocks doors between lives. My mentor has me create fragrance compositions designed to evoke specific memories, teaching me how the neuroscience of olfaction can be translated into narrative techniques.

I’m introduced to Mandy Aftel, a natural perfumer who embodies the modern fragrance laureate. Her seminal text “Essence and Alchemy: A Natural History of Perfume” blends historical research with practical perfumery knowledge.

Luca Turin, a renowned perfume critic, observes: “Aftel’s writing style mirrors her approach to perfumery—natural, evocative, and deeply researched. In describing the scent of ambergris, she writes: ‘Hovering somewhere between ocean and earth, creature and environment, it is a scent of convergence and transformation.’ This poetic yet precise language demonstrates how her literary skill enhances her ability to communicate about scent.”

My apprenticeship expands to include the work of Tanaïs, another contemporary figure whose dual practices inform each other. Anthropologist David Howes notes: “What distinguishes these contemporary perfumer-writers is their awareness of the political and cultural dimensions of scent. Their dual practice allows them to explore complex questions of identity, memory, and power through complementary means—addressing through scent what cannot be fully captured in words, and through words what cannot be completely expressed through scent.”

Kathleen Tessaro’s “The Perfume Collector” teaches me how fragrance can be used for character development. Cultural historian Christina Bradstreet explains: “Each custom fragrance in the novel functions as an intimate character study, revealing aspects of its subject that might remain hidden in conventional narrative description.”

The mystery at the novel’s heart—why Eva would leave her fortune to a stranger—gradually unravels through the stories behind each perfume. This narrative technique transforms fragrance from mere luxury commodity to encoded biography, with each note and accord representing a specific moment or relationship in the characters’ lives.

Erica Bauermeister’s “The Scent Keeper” presents perhaps the most revolutionary approach to olfactory writing. Historian Xiaomeng Huang observes: “Bauermeister inverts the traditional sensory hierarchy in Western literature. Rather than privileging the visual, she constructs her narrative architecture around olfaction, challenging readers to reimagine how reality might be perceived and recorded through scent rather than image.”

This novel forces me to reconsider fundamental assumptions about perception and narration. When its protagonist, Emmeline, enters conventional society after being raised on a remote island, her scent-centered perception provides both challenge and advantage, offering insights unavailable to visually-oriented individuals.

My training includes scientific perspectives on how our senses interact. Psychologist Pamela Dalton’s research on sensory integration reveals: “The perfumer-writer functions as a kind of sense-preservationist. Their descriptions capture olfactory environments—the smell of pre-industrial Paris, the changing scent profile of early 20th century America—with a precision that purely literary accounts cannot match, creating invaluable historical documents of ephemeral sensory landscapes.”

Anthropologist Kelvin E.Y. Low adds: “When we encounter Colette’s Paris through her professionally-trained nose, we don’t merely imagine its scents abstractly—we perceive them with unusual precision, guided by her technical vocabulary and structural understanding of how aromas unfold. The result is a kind of ‘virtual synesthesia,’ where words trigger unusually precise olfactory impressions.”

As my apprenticeship nears completion, I begin to see the hidden symmetries between perfumery and writing. Hsu explains: “What these fragrance laureates offer us is nothing less than a sensory expansion of literature’s possibilities. They demonstrate that writing need not be confined to representing primarily visual and auditory experience but can engage with the full spectrum of sensory perception—creating a literature that resonates across all dimensions of human experience.”

I learn that the perfumer’s understanding of how scent unfolds over time—from volatile top notes to persistent base notes—mirrors narrative structure, with its opening hooks, developing complications, and resolving conclusions. The writer’s grasp of how symbols resonate beyond their literal meaning parallels the perfumer’s knowledge of how certain molecules create effects greater than their concentration would suggest.

As I complete my apprenticeship, I understand that the perfumer-writer stands as both historical anomaly and harbinger of future potential—reminding us that the boundaries between artistic disciplines are more permeable than we might have imagined, and that the most profound innovations often emerge from those brave enough to live in the liminal spaces between established arts.

What emerges from this shadowy intersection of page and bottle is not merely a curiosity but a profound reconsideration of how we perceive, create, and transmit human experience. These fragrance laureates reveal to us what others cannot: the invisible architecture of scent made legible through words, and the ephemeral power of language made tangible through aroma.

The next time you open a book or uncap a perfume bottle, consider for a moment the invisible connections between these seemingly separate experiences—and the rare individuals who have mastered the alchemy of transforming molecules into meaning and words into scent.

The chart below summarizes my findings on these remarkable dual practitioners:

1. Hsu, H. L. (2024). “Literature and Olfactory Modernity.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature. Oxford University Press.

2. Goldsmith, M. (2010). “Colette: The Olfactory Novelist and Goddess of the Senses.” CaFleureBon.

3. Krueger, C. (2023). Perfume on the Page in Nineteenth-Century France. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

4. Spencer, R. (2014). “The Art of Literary Olfaction, or Do You Smell That?” Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction.

5. Herz, R. S. (2011). “Perfume.” In J. A. Gottfried (Ed.), Neurobiology of Sensation and Reward (Chapter 17). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press/Taylor & Francis.

6. Turin, L. (2006). The Secret of Scent: Adventures in Perfume and the Science of Smell. New York: HarperCollins.

7. Aftel, M. (2014). Fragrant: The Secret Life of Scent. New York: Riverhead Books.

8. Howes, D. (2024). Sensorium: Contextualizing the Senses and Cognition in History and Across Cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

9. Bradstreet, C. (2023). Scented Visions: Smell in Art, 1850-1914. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

10. Huang, X. (2023). Scents of China: A Modern History of Smell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

11. Dalton, P., Doolittle, N., Nagata, H., & Breslin, P. A. S. (2000). “The merging of the senses: Integration of subthreshold taste and smell.” Nature Neuroscience, 3(5), 431-432.

12. Low, K. E. Y. (2023). Sensory Anthropology: Culture and Experience in Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.