tldr:
- The sense of smell serves as a subtle marker for identity, which is used to market scents with fantasies of social capital and power, be it beauty, youth, femininity/masculinity or uniqueness.
- Meanwhile, aging is is considered socially undesirable, especially for women and yet inevitable. Research found that a positive perspective on aging can have a positive influence on individual development over time.
- During this seminar, a pro-aging perfume was mixed, combining a warm, nostalgic feel with a clean and calm design approach. The 3D renderings were done in Blender
Concept
The sense of smell is often overlooked in its influence on how we perceive ourselves and our surroundings. Memory and Identity is closely connected to the smells we experienced and for this project, we focused on using smell as a means of building a positive connection to aging.
Aging presents one of the inevitabilities of life, and yet being old (or worse, looking old) is socially undesirable, especially for women. The pressure to look young is visible in how much we spend in the chase for it: In 2023, the global market for anti-aging products was estimated to be worth about 47 billion U.S. dollars, with a growth projection of almost 80 billion US dollar by 2032.*
HIn reality, societal perceptions of illness and decay are only half of the story: Older adults are often socially well involved and report great satisfaction with their social relationships, and are generally no less happy than younger adults, as found by Susan Charles, Director of the Emotions Research Lab at UC Irvine.*
Additionally, on an individual level, there is continuous room for physical and mental improvement in later life. Dr. Becca R. Levy, the author of a Yale study, hypothesises that people with more positive age beliefs often show individual cognitive or physical improvement over time.*
The key inspiration came from a more personal experience. During the weekends, I worked as a server at a local café and I was lucky to meet many small groups of women in their golden years on busy saturday mornings. They were radiant, clinking glasses of secco and aperol at 10 am, laughing and chatting as friends that had sometimes shared decades. It was always a pleasure to work their tables and ultimately the perfume presents this fantasy of the lighthearteness, warmth and self-knowledge that can comes with age.
Branding
For the perfume brand, inspiration was drawn from the middle to later part of the 20th century: Combining plastic scoubidou bands with warm, muted colours bleached out by long term light exposure. The name ultramature, a euphemism for aging, is set in a modified version of Mac Schütz’s Neue Kabel (Monotype) - the combined letters serve as reference to neat, cursive writing and to the wickerwork used in the bottle design.
The images are clean and quiet to oppose the intricacy of the bottle design with the vast emptiness of time that still needs to be filled.
Mixing the Perfume
After getting a short introduction to the art of perfumery and access to a limited set of base scents, we were asked to create early scent sketches - early concepts including notes of yasmine and orange (because Aperol) were forsaken, favouring more woody and warm notes for the final concept.
2-Nonenal a compound that is responsible for the distinct change of scent in older people, which can best be described as greasy, grassy or waxy with a stale quality. While it was available to test, it felt a bit too on the nose and yet could not be totally neglected. Instead, a different scent with a similar greasy, waxy quality was used to mirror the general concept.
The final version of Ultramature captures age in warm notes of honey, oud and sandalwood with the nostalgic artificiality of hairspray. Despite being inspired by older women, the scent works for people of all genders: The woody notes balance well with the warm gourmand of vanilla and honey and hints of florality from lilly of the valley.
