scent and culture: 3 posts

We rarely think of scent as part of archives and historical records. The past is treated as visual, textual, factual — something we read or look at. But our lives are full of smells: the minty tang of toothpaste, burnt toast, the brine of sweat on public transportation, the coolness of a florist shop we pass on the way to work. These are not incidental. They are the scaffolding of memory. What we forget with our minds, the nose remembers.

I think often about this partial amnesia. What has been lost because it couldn’t be catalogued? How many women’s lives, marked by the scent of boiled milk, starch, soap, lily of the valley, have slipped away without trace? How many communities vanished, taking with them their voices, customs, foods — and scents. In Ukraine, I witnessed towns being flattened, homes scorched, and with them the quiet archives of everyday life. And elsewhere too, in places like Gaza, Sudan, Yemen, Syria, wars and displacements continue to erase not only histories but atmospheres, the very breath of places.

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Can scent be tied to national identity? I received this question during a recent interview and the question stayed with me long after the conversation ended. It made me think about how we define ourselves, not only through language or landscape, but through something as invisible and visceral as smell.

My own story is layered. I was born into a family marked by complexity: Ukrainian, yes, but woven with many diasporic threads, braided through decades of dislocation, migration, and return. I didn’t fully grasp just how intricate this tapestry was until I began researching my family history for The Rooster House. Even after the book was already on shelves, I uncovered new archives and met relatives I hadn’t known existed. That’s how I learned that my mother’s side of the family had Roma and Jewish roots, and that my father’s lineage traced back to Tatarstan.

Since moving from Ukraine to the United States at the age of fifteen, I’ve lived in many places. Brussels has been my home for more than a decade. And yet, the place I return to is always Ukraine. That’s where the smells of my childhood reside. And that’s where scent has always felt like a language I understood instinctively.

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What happens when a group of people from different disciplines, such as chemistry, political science, philosophy, sociology, art, sculpture, film, literature and perfumery, come together to discuss scent?  This month I attended The Perfumative conference organized by the Zürich University of the Arts, and it was exactly such an event. It was open to the public and the combination of talks, freestyle discussions and art installations based around scent made The Perfumative a vibrant and inspired gathering.

My contribution to the conference centered around scent, culture and the way perfume writing has evolved over the past years, becoming a legitimate subject comparable to similar discussions in the related fields of fashion, wine and food. You can see the range of topics covered in the program, and since the talks were recorded, I’ll share the link here once they go online. Edit: the video recording of my talk is now available at the conference website, https://perfumative.zhdk.ch/vortraege/ and scroll down.

For now, however, I wanted to share with you some of the observations inspired by the talks and discussions. Please feel free to contribute your own thoughts.

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