The Fifth Sense in the News Archives

Couple Kissing Onstage, NYC/Valentino Lookalike at an Audition, Diane Arbus, 1963A research published in Psychological Science shows that men are geared towards grading women's natural scents as most attractive when they are ovulating. It is also an olfactory cue that...

An article in Le Monde dated January 12th, 2010 attempts to gauge the French perfumery professional milieu's positions, or more modestly as it turns out, reactions to the International Fragrance Association's (IFRA) work on listing, regulating and banning health-hazardous ingredients...

One perfume site one should reportedly avoid shopping at is 69rocks.com according to a North Jersey news report,......

In another example of how our sense of smell is used for survival purposes, Japanese scientists have been researching the smell of the moon in order to be able to identify the minerals that make up its surface. The project...

Two articles in Le Monde cover the topic of perfume and indirectly reveal some discrepancies between the discourses of the actors, namely the perfumers here, and the more hard-nosed and less poetic reality of the business of perfume-making. As a...

Perfumer François Demachy who is responsible for the Dior portfolio of fragrances but also associated to the development of several other perfume brands owned by the Louis-Vuitton-Moët-Hennessy group (LVMH) like Guerlain, Givenchy or Acqua di Parma is reported to have...

A partnership between PZ Cussons (Imperial Leather, Carex) and the Sea Shell Trust for the blind and deaf lets perfumer Kate Williams reconstruct smells for severely disabled children for whom it is the only means of communication, with touch. "The...

Can't you tell people are enjoying the fashion-forward experiment? In an effort to grab people's attention at a trade show, an IRB 140 robot was used to move gracefully about (so they say) while spraying either visitors or a canvas...

A study in the August 2009  issue of Journal Science of the Total Environment reports that synthetic musks can be found in the blood stream of people using body care and perfume products and that the more people use them,...

Well, it's not because we love perfume that we will stifle the voices of those that cannot stand it. In a new edition of why perfume sucketh in public space, you have two pieces on how perfume mingles badly with...

"DEAR ABBY: Yesterday, my 27-year-old daughter was coming out of a store behind a woman who was reeking of very strong perfume. It triggered an asthma attack and my daughter ended up in the emergency room.Would you please remind your...

Modern perfume molecules can be powerfully diffusive, a trend that probably needs to be contained, or blends can provoke unexpected allergic reactions. In the case of a Texas spritzing incident reported by the BBC, the sprayed fragrance was so obnoxious...

An article in Le Monde summarizes the state of Haute Couture in the aftermath of the Christian Lacroix crisis. The figures are contrasted: haute couture caters to the material needs of a money elite that amounts to about 1000 persons...

Designer Diane von Furstenberg pumps her perfume in the air in the Meatpacking district in NYC, gets irate feedback from passersby and neighbors who are less than enamored with her signature scent D. The epithets soon rain......

The London Daily News reports that a man is using perfume as a pretext to lure in his unassuming victims in central London. We had heard about not infrequent street mugging in London lately, but this is a creative twist...