How To Judge A Smell
My experience as a judge for Art & Olfaction Awards - the "Oscars of Independent Perfumery"
This month I’ve had the joy to be a judge for this year’s Art & Olfaction Awards, run by the Institute for Art & Olfaction. This is my second time judging - I was previously a judge for the Sadakichi Award in 2019, which is the experimental category. This year, I’m a judge for the Artisan Category, and have been judging the fragrances at the Institute in Chinatown, LA. I’ve been documenting the experience thoroughly in videos, which you can watch here:
This weekend was my final session for judging this year. I’m quite sad about it coming to an end, to be honest! The judging continues beyond me after this; I’m one of the initial reviewers that helps cull down the many hundreds of entries to the finalists stage for the category.
These sessions of smelling have been so centering for me. Doing a good job scoring each fragrance requires full presence in the experience that is being offered: no distractions! Sensorial specificity! Each entry spent so much time, energy, and resources to get a vial of fragrance in front of me, so why insult them with being distracted during their only chance to impress me? It’s a personal challenge to stay focused nowadays when tuning in to the world means tuning into a slow apocalypse of pain - pain I feel mostly helpless in addressing. To commit to staying present for this, to what is immediately in front of me, is a kind of devotion to the idea that beauty is worth paying attention to - that beauty might teach me something surprising. Beauty trends and disposability culture are harmful, but the idea that beauty can transport us somewhere - that it might involve artistry - that is something I believe in strongly. I know it’s worth paying total attention to when the opportunity arises. I feel lucky that the opportunity has come up weekly in January for me.
It’s inspiring to see and smell such an abundance of stories, approaches, memories, dreams. They’re all so different and beautiful in their own ways. I love that it’s blind testing and that the awards are open internationally, and that the category I’m judging centers the work of perfumers who came up with the briefs themselves: this is not an award for a client-centered scent, but an award that centers an artist’s approach to their own craft, their own storytelling.
There are all sorts of awards in the fragrance community, many of them very big, very prestigious, and often very commercial. Success in scent is often hand-in-hand with commercial viability. Not this award, and not this community. Independence is key, and artistic integrity is paramount. It’s a romantic idea in a beauty industry that begs to scale.
It feels full circle to be judging this year in-person at the Institute, and to be deeply documenting the experience. I’ve been in beauty for long enough that people regularly come up to me to tell me they’ve grown up with me - that they pursued beauty inspired by something I’ve written. Some of them are in the room with me when I’m judging, as colleagues and teachers in their own right! That is the coolest thing to see - the exponential reach of earnestly sharing something. It reminds me to keep showing up, because I might be delighted by how it might transform not only me but the world around me.
It also feels full circle because I used to want to be a perfumer.
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