Synethesia: Color and Fragrance

And the winner is:  Lucy! Send postal details to me at olfactarama at att dot net and I’ll send you the samples posthaste!

Back in June, artisanal perfumer Dawn Spencer Hurwitz graciously sent me a set of nine fragrances she calls the CHROMA Collection. She explores fragrance as a synesthete -- someone who is able to cross sensory fields such as color and scent. I’ve been interested in synesthesia for some time and have finally had the time to evaluate these properly.

The term “Synesthesia,” if you look it up, describes an involuntary brain condition. Sometimes it results from brain injury, while some are born with it. The form I’ve seen mentioned most is “seeing” letters or numbers in color, as in 1234567. There are other forms, too: visual/auditory for example, like “seeing” musical notes.

Studies on olfactory synesthesia are sparse. The sense of smell is still taking the back seat to vision and hearing, pretty much everywhere, but there have been some efforts. One, from What the Nose Knows author Avery Gilbert and partners, identified a link between superior odor perception and the ability to conjure imagery when presented with an odor. In other words, those of us who are constantly evaluating and identifying “notes” in perfumes should be able to visualize them as colors more easily than those who don't.  I can, fairly easily. (This does not make me as a synesthete, though. The condition “Synesthesia” is involuntary, whereas I have to think about what color a scent might be.) But do we visualize the same colors as others? Would I “see” the same colors the perfumer saw?

So, in a spectacularly unscientific experiment, I covered the labels on the nine bottles so I could not see the name nor the color of the juice, then mixed them up. I numbered nine scent strips and got to it, applying fragrance to the strips, smelling them twice over a 5 minute period, and writing down my guesses (and the “right” answer, afterward) in real time. Here’s what happened.

# 1.  I’ve smelled this before. It smells like cherries, fruit. Red. Cherry Red. (Answer:  “Quinacrodone Violet,” based on the very bright and very synthetic artists’  pigment of that name, which is a sort of fuschia.) I would have guessed  “Quinacrodone Red,” a cherry red.

#2.  Peppery and green, not like leaves, but a warmish blue-green. (Answer: “Celadon.”  Close.)

#3.  Foresty. (Answer: "Blue-Green.") Pretty good.

#4.  Fresh. Freshness. I can’t see this as a particular color, but I know it’s from the cool end of the spectrum. (Answer: “Viridian.”)  In pigment, an intense blue-green that isn’t very strong in mixes.

#5. A yellow? No: "Cyan," which is the green-blue used in printing and also the blue tone in light, like the screen you're probably staring at right now.

#6. Ginger? No, licorice. But something about this reminds me of a natural yellow ochre, a warm earthy yellow. (Answer: it’s “Prince,” which Hurwtiz says in her notes was a textile color from the 17^th century, an indigo-blue-black shot through with crimson red.”) I would never have guessed black. Never.

#7. I see purple. A cool, blue-purple. (Answer: Wrong again! It’s “Sienna,” which is a warm, coppery brown.)

#8.  Okay, this is a citrus. Um, orange. (Answer: Yes! It's "The Color Orange.")  

# 9. This is a spice, woody kind of scent. A brown. We’ve already done Sienna. Is it an  umber? (Answer: Yes! It is, in fact, “Umber.”)

I got approximately 4 out of 9, but there is a problem here (or perhaps this is just a very badly designed experiment.) I know Hurwitz wouldn’t use the same color twice in a 9-bottle collection. So, since I eliminated the used colors as I went down the list, my chance of success became greater.  

 If I did this over again, I’d wait and smell the strips before unveiling the bottles. And I would ask someone else to do the test  -- somebody who doesn’t know and/or doesn’t care about perfume.

As perfumes, my decidedly non-objective preferences are # 2 -- “Celedon” -- and # 7 -- “Sienna,”  but all are interesting and unique. 

Do you “see” perfumes as colors? Do you have to think about it first?

Click here for more information on Parfums des Beaux Arts.

The Avery Gilbert reference is from “What The Nose Knows -- The Science of Scent In Everyday Life” by Avery Gilbert, Crown, 2008 (ISBN 978-1-4000-8234-6) p. 132.  The original paper appeared in the American Journal of Psychology, 1996 Fall; 109(3):335-51.

Photo by author.

Winner chosen using random.org.