Quantum weirdness, maceration and memory

I’ve been seeing a few social media posts debunking the idea that maceration is a real thing with fine fragrance and also many promoting the idea that fragrances improve after some air is introduced into the bottle and it’s allowed to sit for a week or so (which is being referred to as maceration). There’s an essential grain in truth in both perspectives but neither is really true. FWIW here’s my perspective as a self-taught perfumer with some background in chemistry and physics.

From a consumer’s perspective, fragrances often change significantly over a fairly short period of time (a week or so) after they’re first sprayed, which means getting some air into the bottle/sample. One popular theory is that this air can help improve the fragrance significantly. This makes perfect sense but I can tell you from direct experience, that’s not what’s happening.

I would submit that this particular maturation process, which is real, happens in the brain. It’s the initial experience that is maturing and gaining coherence and nuance as it becomes familiar and understood, not the fragrance. Many people have reported this with my fragrances in particular: they can seem weird or incoherent at first, but on subsequent wearings or sniffings they seem completely different and better, even addictive. I’m not claiming some perfumery superpower here, more saying that because I’m basically an outsider artist, my approach to creating smells is possibly more alien to the brain vs typical commercial fragrances. My samples are filled from 500ml bottles that have been only partly full for months, yet people still report this effect.

Here’s my take. Most of us have had the experience of seeing one our favorite bands or musicians live and not really connecting with a new song we’re hearing for the first time but absolutely loving it later. Same thing.

OTOH, there is a very real phenomenon that happens at the chemical-physical level as fragrances mature, especially once they’ve been diluted in alcohol. I know this from years of direct experience and it’s an established fact in perfumery; companies wouldn’t waste their time and money macerating their fragrances if it weren’t. Yet it’s still not well-understood or explained, far less than in winemaking but probably fairly similar.

Stay tuned for my next hot take on why some fragrances smell great on your friends but suck on your skin, allegedly.