When people find out about my interest in perfume, sometimes they lean in and say knowingly, “Perfume smells different on different people.” It seems to be the one fact about fragrance that they know.
Last night I went to a coffee “cupping.” A cupping is where you experience the full profile of a coffee bean by pouring hot water over the grounds, breaking its “crust,” smelling it, and eventually doing a lot of embarrassing slurping to mix air with the coffee and spread it over the tongue. When the host asked us what we tasted, answers came from all over the board: cherries, pecan pie filling, tobacco. All for the same coffee.
What’s going on? Why does a spritz of the same perfume smell different on my friend, Meredith, than it does on me or her husband? For that matter, why does the perfume smell different on me on different days?
I’m not a scientist, so I can’t give any hard answers. But over the years, I’ve done some speculating, and here’s what I’ve come up with…
