What is the point of using perfume when you are confined?

The Duchess of Cornwall who also wonders if it is useful to use perfume in confinement.

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• Since October 30, the French have again been called to stay at home to re-define themselves.

• A daily gesture, is perfume still useful when you are not leaving your home?

• 20 Minutes

   asked the question of smell experts.

Like every morning, you get up (a priori), you have your breakfast (if possible balanced), you go in the shower (in the best case), you get dressed (it's better), then you you immerse yourself in a misty cloud of perfume before leaving for work.

Until a doubt assails you ... Well yes, you are in November 2020, the re-containment is in full swing, and the only “real” living being that you will meet during the day is your cat (it also works with a dog).

So what's the point of smelling good?

That perfume, which in addition may have cost you an arm and a leg, who will smell it apart from you in the end?

Is it still useful to use perfume when you're confined? 

asked the question of smell experts.

"We also use perfume to exist"

Just as we don't necessarily dress or wear makeup for others, we don't only use perfume for the nostrils of our colleagues or loved ones, and to leave a bewitching trail behind us.

“We also use perfume to exist,” says Brigitte Munier, author

(ed. Du Félin).

When the perfume suits you, because in principle you are looking for a perfume which corresponds to you, you are more yourself, that extends your identity ”.

Of course we do not wake up every morning saying to ourselves "I exist because I am a Chanel n ° 5 woman" or "a Paco Rabanne man".

But unconsciously, this fragrance that we sprinkle on a daily basis, is inscribed as a part of ourselves, an “olfactory aura”, as Brigitte Munier describes it, in which we like to drape ourselves.

Because for the author, the act of perfuming oneself is not futile and results from very old beliefs: "When we look at the texts and images available to us, we realize that the human being has still considered someone who stinks because of his digestive life, and because he is dying.

While the gods perfume because they have no digestive life, they feed on ambrosia, golden apples… ”To perfume oneself would therefore amount to hoisting oneself to their heights, and temporarily transcending one's carnal envelope.

“When we wear perfume we believe in ourselves more because we immortalize ourselves,” she explains.

"Stronger to face the trials of life"

But we see you coming, what about the fervent defenders of the natural?

So those who do not wear perfume are depriving themselves of a part of themselves?

Obviously not.

For Annick Le Guérer, anthropologist and historian of perfume and odor, author of 

at Odile Jacob, “the smell is the identity of the person.

We all have a different smell and to camouflage it with perfume is also to deprive ourselves of our identity.

We deprive ourselves of it to be socially accepted, these are social rituals that allow social acceptance ”.

Confinement can therefore be the ideal opportunity to reconnect with one's smells (as far as is reasonable), a way of finding oneself with oneself.

But beyond this question of identity, the perfume contains a formidable asset: comfort.

“Many put on perfume because it is a protective aura and they feel stronger to face the trials of life, analyzes Annick Le Guérer.

In a confinement ordeal, when you are anxious, the future is a little uncertain, to wear perfume comforts, reassures.

»And in this area, two large families of scents stand out:« gourmet »perfumes and citrus (colognes).

The first ones, with the scent of honey or even red fruit, comfort with their sweetness, reassuring and regressive.

“Typical of perfume that is not intended for others,” says the historian, they are generally all the rage during periods of crisis.

The second are reassuring for another reason: the smell of clean.

“Scents that are associated with hygiene are thriving today.

It is a need for cleanliness in a polluted world.

People need to have fresh smells, also for the unconscious purpose of protection.

It dates from the Middle Ages, until the 19th and 20th centuries, when we used to perfume ourselves to protect ourselves from bad smells which, we thought, brought illnesses ”, explains Annick Le Guérer.

"A need to escape, to change air ..."

The perfume also has another power, that of the getaway.

Certain smells can even make us travel to the world before, where everything was still possible.

“The sense of smell is the sense that allows us to return to the oldest memories, to happy moments that we have lived, analyzes Maïa Lernout, perfumer at Takasago and creator of the

perfume

at Lolita Lempicka.

A smell will resurface full of emotions, full of moments.

For me it is lavender, it evokes a sweet and comforting moment of summer vacation.

A power all the stronger as certain molecules act as real stimuli on the brain and cause feelings of immediate well-being, like vanilla, or energizing, like mint.

What if perfume could make us travel on command?

For aromachologist Patty Canac, author of the

(Ambre Eds), “when we know how to choose it with intention, we will take it as a crutch to accompany us during the day. and help us alleviate stress, a need for escape, a change of scenery… ”According to her, the whole thing is to make this choice“ in conscience ”.

“The idea is to tell ourselves that we are going to sit down and imagine an olfactory library that would come to our aid to bring us emotional balance,” she explains.

We could thus escape to the end of the world thanks to fragrances of mango or coconut, or go to air in the forest thanks to notes of pine.

While respecting the "one kilometer max around your home" ...

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• Cosmetic

• Perfume

• Coronavirus

• Confinement

• Culture