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A whiff of tomorrow

«Exactly 10 years ago, a magazine of a new kind was published, and honestly, if someone had shown me the cover of this 21st issue in a crystal ball, I don’t know if I would have believed it.
Just as I probably wouldn’t have believed the staggering figure of 11,500 visitors who climbed the steps of the Palais Brongniart a few weeks ago to attend the largest olfactory culture event ever organized in Paris an event born from this very magazine. I would have suspected such a frenzy even less when I was scribbling my first perfume reviews in a notebook 20 years ago.
In short, while scents are known for their ability to transport us into the past, taking an interest in them does not grant us the power to see into the future. But, without knowing why  or how, our nose – provided it’s keen – sometimes allows us to anticipate, or even shape,  our tomorrows.  A conversation, an idea, a conviction, an obsession, accidents, failures, a thousand trials and errors, and even more doubts and suddenly the future is completely upended. When we smell, we’re never wrong, and I like to think it’s the same when we set out on things without knowing where they’ll lead us. Because even making a mistake is building the future. That’s surely the essence of having what the French call flair meaning both intuition and a fine-tuned sense of smell. If we are to believe the unexpected proportion of (very) young visitors who, with wet noses, wide-eyed wonder and smartphones in hand, roamed the aisles of the latest Paris Perfume Week in search of discoveries and knowledge, curious about a world too often dismissed as marginal, we might conclude that olfactory culture may, fortunately, still have a bright future ahead of it.

Editor’s note by Jeanne Doré (Editor in Chief of Nez)