Perfume Quote of the Day

Perfume Quote of the Day:

"Perfume is the most intense form of memory" - a wonderful quote by the highly regarded nose Jean Paul Guerlain.  Perfume does have the extraordinary ability to trigger those nostalgic memories hidden somewhere in your subconscious.  You may associate a certain perfume with a person or place.  A whiff of coconuty tanning oil can awaken memories of your spontaneous getaway to the Maldives, the heat and tropical humidity bearing down on you as you lay out in front of a never-ending stretch of clear azure waters.  You start mentally adding up your future paychecks, planning on your next escape.  Perhaps it's the smell of french fries that makes you grimace, reminding you of that miserable summer you spent scraping grease off the griddle at your local fast food joint, knowing every hard earned dollar put you one step closer towards your very first car.  Or the scent of fresh pecan pie that conjures fond memories of childhood Thanksgivings, sweet nutty aromas filling the small log cabin you visited every year.  For me, it's the Marc Jacobs perfume - its floral notes instantly remind me of my first date with my husband over 12 years ago.  

This scent phenomenon is not just a figment of your imagination, but the result of the complex relationship between your nose (sense of smell) and brain (emotional memory center).  When you smell a rose, the fragrance first travels through the cranial nerve through the brain's olfactory bulb, which is the area of the brain that processes scent.  The olfactory bulb is located right next to the hippocampus (a section of the brain responsible for short and long-term memory), and connected to the amygdala (an area responsible for processing memory and interpreting emotions).  The olfactory bulb is also part of the limbic system, the emotional center of the brain.   All of these centers work together to translate the scent of your rose to the memory of the rose bush in the backyard of your childhood house.  

The next time you're at your local boutique searching for your signature scent, or when you're out for a walk in the park, or at a coffee shop, close your eyes for a moment, inhale deeply and ask yourself which scents are the most evocative for you and what memories are attached to them?  Write them down and start a scent journal... you will probably be surprised to see how fragrance truly is a key that liberates buried memories.      

- Robyn

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30% off all purchases with promo code "RELIQUARY14" entered at checkout. 

Offer valid until Midnight PST on Sunday, November 30th.

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Turning the key...

I wanted to welcome everyone to the Reliquary Perfumes blog, and if you're reading this, I'm so happy you stopped by!

I suppose my interest in fragrances, especially those from niche perfume houses as well as aromatherapy, was one that has been building gradually over the years.  I watched as my perfume collection grew, bottles of all shapes, sizes, colors, samplers spilling out of boxes, it got a bit ridiculous.  However, my real passion for perfumery started this past year when I noticed that upon wearing perfumes to sleep, I would sometimes have the most vivid dreams.   I realized that the sense of smell above all the other senses, has the ability to transport you other places and stir up distant memories you thought you had forgotten.  How is it possible that the lingering perfume trail (or sillage if you want to sound fancy about it) of a stranger in passing can evoke the face of my 3rd grade teacher?  Or when walking down the street in Santa Monica, my husband says out of nowhere that the he smells the same cleaning solution that was used in his high school boy's locker room?  It almost seems like magic.

Having a background in Visual Arts as well as Art History, I wanted to explore this olfactory phenomenon even further.  I started doing extensive research (who knew there was so much chemistry involved?? I'll save that post for another day), piecing together a perfumer's organ with raw materials sourced from around the world to use in my own elixirs.  Do you remember the scene from Mary Poppins when Mary and Bert jump into the chalk drawings on the sidewalk and all of a sudden are magically inside the drawings themselves?  Have you ever wanted to jump into a painting and experience that other world?  Well, I intended to create fragrances that bottle the experience of visual works of art through the sense of smell.  That goal is the seed that blossomed into Reliquary Perfumes.

As Reliquaries are shrines that house sacred objects, items from another time, place or culture - Reliquary Perfumes is a niche perfume line, home to currently seven very unique bottled fragrance experiences.  When you open one of the bottles, look at the painting upon which the perfume is based, let the fragrance enfold your senses, and plunge into the work of art.  Radiant gemstones lie at the bottom of every bottle, each one a portable relic, a key to another world.

- Robyn