2014, Year of the Selfie Stick ~ Happy New Year 2015 {Scented Thoughts} {Paris Photo}

2014, Year of the Selfie Stick © 2014 Chantal-Hélène Wagner

Dear Readers,

Let us present you with our best wishes for a discerning and fragrant year ahead. Fragrance can be a source of great pleasure when added to your life.

I picked a picture which for me symbolizes 2014 particularly well. Sometimes, it's hard to pinpoint what was really new in a new year, but the selfie stick appearing more and more on the street is one of those defining moments of 2014; also the 3-D printer. Technology in everday life changes our habits and notions of the world...

Perfume is in part a technological object with further progresses to be unveiled in the future. This is one of the reasons why it is so interesting to pay attention to new fragrances - they could be really new and frontier-pushing.

While we mourn the beauties of classical, old-time perfumery often, let us not forget that the best may still lie ahead. I am sure that all the creatives and scientists working to create a beautiful new world scented like paradise are motivated by an optimistic outlook on unknown and anticipated discoveries.

Let us not forget that sometimes perfume can elicit the reaction in us of exclaiming suddenly "Divine!" and feel sincerely that we have partaken for a moment of a higher essence - pun intended. Even if fragrance is not created for the gods anymore, it still stays true to its history of idealism and interaction with the religious and the divine.

So, let's just keep smelling up close.

Of course as The Scented Salamander is as ever interested in the linkage between the olfactory and visual cultures, you can all imagine that at the moment you are taking a selfie a cloud of rose perfume starts permeating the air, or orange scent.

Best Wishes for a Happy New Year 2015 full of discoveries.