The connection between scents and love

11.02.2020

With Valentine’s Day coming up, we look at the role of scents and perfumes in love stories and emotions.

If we go back to the source of our olfactory pleasures, we are forced to note that they emanate from flowers. More specifically, the mating of flowers and small insects. Indeed, the nutritional diversity and the balance of the ecosystem is entrusted to insects and pollinating birds. It is the scent of flowers that attracts these little creatures that, in a dance of love while gathering flowers from one flower to another, ensure our life.
These flowers therefore use all their olfactory power to attract small insects, which dance below their corolla. What could be more romantic?

If we look at the rest of animals, we realise that body odours play a fundamental role in reproduction. In fact the smell helps them to differentiate themselves at the genetic level, and therefore makes it possible to ensure the sustainability of their species.

But what about humans?

Life is not assured by smell alone, but scents help convey messages of love. The olfactory message is the only one to have a direct link with the limbic system (seat of emotions and memory in the brain) and it is for this reason that in the hierarchy of the senses, olfaction animates love, passion and emotions much more than other senses.

So what is the role of perfume in seduction?


Unlike animals, in humans there are no studies showing that our vomeronasal organ recognizes pheromones. And since the human race is the only one capable of controlling its impulses, these hypothetical pheromones would not have much room for action.
Yet smell remains essential to love, as wrote Michel Serre “we do not love without the improbable agreement of smells”. We couldn’t love someone whose smell displeases us.

Are there aphrodisiac perfumes?

To date, nothing has been scientifically proven. But at the foundation of all choices is a desire for seduction, which differs according to the temperament of each person.

A more discreet seducer will choose a more intimate, musky or flowery fragrance with a delicate and romantic trail that evokes natural and relaxing smells.
A more assertive seducer will choose a scent with a trail of character, a chypre or a heady floral.
The great seducers, the great charmers, will surely prefer oriental perfumes, with spicy, captivating, enveloping and warm scents. Notes that blend with our own skin, with a very voluminous wake that, in most cases, lasts from morning to evening.
As for those who have less confidence in their seduction, they will surely trust a male or female muse and will choose a trendy fragrance.

Our Valentine’s Day tip?

Let Gabrielle Chanel respond…

Perfume yourself on all the areas where you wish to be kissed

Among the Créassence creations, the most sensual and romantic remains 1969 created for Histoires de Parfums. Its name, a sulfurous number, emblematic years for love, says it all. It is a fragrance where everything is an alchemy of scents and olfactory families (oriental, amber, fruity, spicy) marry with an elegance that would make the most shy men and women blush.

If you want to go further, we recommend a book that answers 120 questions around smell: “Do you have to smell good to seduce?” By Roland Salesse.