Sometimes it takes a touch of darkness to create something alluring.
Few people today in the Western World can comprehend how things once were in our towns and cities. Raw sewage running in the streets. People not taking baths and wearing the same clothing day after day. It is said that one could smell the reek from a great distance when approaching a gathering of humans.
Being accustomed to it, most people paid no heed to it.
But there were those above it all. The rich and privileged.
Smell is the most underrated and mysterious sense. In her 1908 autobiography, The World I Live In, Helen Keller called scent the “fallen angel.” “For some inexplicable reason, smell does not hold the high position it deserves amongst its sisters,” she wrote. Keller mapped her world by smell — she could smell a coming storm hours before it arrived and knew when lumber had been harvested from her favorite copse of trees by the sharp scent of pine. In contrast to touch, which she called “permanent and definite,” Keller experienced odors as “fugitive” sensations. Touch guided her; scent fed her. Without smell, Keller imagined her world would be lacking “light, color, and the Protean spark. The sensuous reality which interthreads and supports all the gropings of my imagination would be shattered.”
Perfumers go back to 1200 BCE in Babylon Little is know about Tapputi and perfume factories have been unearthed in Cyprus.
I clearly remember the importance of perfume and eau de cologne during my tour of duty in France from 1958 to early 1961. Unshaved female bodies and infrequent baths covered by heavy applications of perfume. And I wonder if it’s only relatively recently that men have followed the trend with deodorants and afer shave lotions.
More of this interesting story @ The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Perfume
