Exploring Scent and Self

I'd wondered how you pronounce Roja Dove. Turned out he tells us that it rhymes with dodger and love. At the V&A last Saturday afternoon I spent two hours in the company of the man and his fans, and people just who enjoy a lovely afternoon out coming to lectures at the V&A. Women, all of us. Most of us over 40. Quite shocking.

I started to wonder if he was hypnotising us. "When you smell this you will feel this happen..." he would say and describe the sensation we were about to experience. How many of us did as we were told? In future will we find that smelling rose makes us feel cold, and smelling black pepper makes our cheeks glow? He talked about the way that scent is detected by the oldest part of the brain, which is why we can't always give the name of a scent - language came later - but we can say where we were when we last smelled it. As the room was absolutely freezing, I think that every time I smell a chypre in future it will remind me of a time when I was uncomfortably chilly at the edges. Very carefully, Roja Dove led us through the different pure natural ingredients that he used to make his new Diaghilev fragrance, the one that accompanies the current V&A exhibition.
Perhaps he hypnotised us to feel inclined to buy it; I bought it anyway; it seemed churlish not to.

Like most non-scientists he gets all mixed up over what a chemical is, realising that he had tied himself in knots and ending up calling a synthetic a "chemical chemical". We are all made of chemicals. Natural perfumes are chemicals. The man-made ones are chemicals too, but they are synthetic. No wonder that confusion reigns amongst cosmetics buyers and customers demand to be sold scents "with no chemicals in them." There aren't any.

Anyway, I warmed up later at Westfield, where I met my own personal hero for a Snog chocolate frozen yoghurt and several hours in the company of Harry Potter. And now I smell of Diaghilev, Dove's animalic chypre. Talking of animalic scents, jasmine contains some of the same fragrant chemicals as poo. Funny that. Roja didn't mention it.