Twin Perceptions: Color and Scent: Part One: The Scarlet Trumpet

I’ve often looked at a bottle of perfume or eau de toilette and found myself fascinated by the color of the liquid inside. Other times, I’ve looked at the color of the glass that holds it, watching light stream through, or wondering about the interior of a mysterious opaque bottle.   Perfumers have always recognized that there is a relationship between the scents they create and the actual color of the liquid. But what do we, as perfume wearers, draw from this relationship of smell and scent? Do we bring cultural associations to it, or do we match ingredients with appearance? Or do perfumers want to give us an experience that goes beyond our expectations of color association? To understand this, we must first look at the very nature of color and how we perceive it.

by: John Biebel

My first course on the first day of art college was Color Theory.  Many of us assumed that this would be an easy affair, juxtaposing different colored paints on paper and making comparisons.  We couldn’t have been more wrong.  It was unquestionably the most difficult course of my freshman year.  I should have seen the first ominous sign.  Our professor asked the class a devilishly straightforward question: 

“Do we all perceive color the same way?” He asked that the ones who believed the answer was “yes” to raise their hands.  A few, tentative hands went up.  Then he asked those who said “no” to raise theirs, and a much greater amount went up.  He smiled smugly, as if we’d not only proved a secret point of his, but also gave him lots of ammunition.

“The correct answer,” he said, “is that we all perceive color in the same way.”

Those of us who’d answered incorrectly looked around ashamed and dismayed.  How is that possible?  How can all people perceive color the same way?  Why, the very idea was ludicrous!  Don’t we have different loved and hated colors, different favorites among colors, and different associations wrapped up in the shades and tones of color across the spectrum?

He proved his point with a test—a test so easy and consistently correct, that we were rapidly convinced. And it’s a test that I still occasionally do, perhaps to remind myself that color is, in fact, universal. Anyone can do it: From where you’re sitting, look around you for something in the room that is bright blue. It can be anything—a lampshade, a corner of a painting, a scrap of paper.
 

Stare at that bright blue object for approximately 20 seconds. Keep your eyes focused there as long as you can, and then when the time is up, quickly shift your eyes to a blank wall (preferably a white wall.) You’ll see the same shape you’ve been looking at, but now it will be bright orange. This works with any color and its opposite on the color wheel: If you stare at red, you’ll see green; if you stare at yellow, you’ll see violet, etc. With the occasional exception of men who suffer from colorblindness, everyone optically perceives color exactly the same—their eyes will make this adjustment from one color to its opposite when you’ve stared at that color long enough.

Knowing that color is perceived the same optically and universally means that we have the basics of a language with which to communicate.  Perfumes and their identities are, too, closely bound with their color, whether naturally derived from its ingredients or colored by the perfumer to complete the perfume.  Some iconic perfumes would, perhaps, not be perceived in the same way if their characteristic color were changed.

 

Would Jean Patou’s Joy be the same were it not that bright, jangly yellow-gold? WouldGuerlain’s Mitsouko capture the senses quite so easily if it were anything other than that fascinating shade of muted, delicate chartreuse?  And in contemporary scents, would Prada’s Amber Pour Homme beguile us quite so alluringly if its powdery crocus and resins were tinted any color other than cool, regal violet?

 

Historical objects reminds us just how powerful color has always been. In the ancient arts of wine making and jewel setting, as examples, objects of desire and ornament are held in special regard for their color. One needs only look at sunlight streaming through the ruby redness of a glass of wine to appreciate the depth of color, or peer into the cold, silent shimmer of an ancient emerald in a Medieval crown to know that we are, all of us, drawn to the language that color speaks.  But how has this specifically related to perfume?

 

We know that essential oils have colors of their own. For many, these oils are often lightly colored, the barest hint of pale yellow or yellow green. Oil of roses, for example, can occasionally take on a bit of color from the blossoms from which it is derived, but it’s generally delicately colored. Some essential oils have very little to no color, such as pine or cedar.  Others are boldly colored, such as the pinkish orange of grapefruit. Still others, such as resins and extracts from woods and roots, have deep, brown color, like vetiver’s dark black-ish brown. Generally speaking, when essential oils are mixed, their natural color can remain very light and clear, or their pale golden quality is magnified, resulting in the various shades of "honey" that draw us in so deeply.

The same is somewhat true of man-made elements in perfumes, although these components are more likely to be colorless. With the rise of man-made scent components, the need to add coloring to perfumes became more important, since the natural colors of essential oils weren’t present, or present in very scarce amounts.  

By and large, many perfumes that contain a mixture of natural and man-made elements will fall into the color realm of pale gold and other organic or “neutral” colors. Yet dyes have been made by humans for millennia, including the deep and beautiful Rose Madder as extracted originally from Rubia tinctorum, or the complex orange gold of the saffron crocus, Crocus sativus. The notion of adding dyes to textiles, cosmetics, hair and perfume has existed as long as perfume has itself, so the impulse to color the smell is a natural extension of human inventive curiosity.

 

 

But what do we feel about these colors? Is color perception something that we’re taught? There has been a surprising amount of study on color and how it works in our lives.  Jose Luis Caivano, in his 1998 paper “Color and Semiotics: A Two Way Street” talks about the importance of color as a sign—a signifier:

“…The associations aroused by colors, such as those of relating green with envy, red with passion, black with death, yellow with cowardice, blue with loyalty, are very well known.  Of course these associations totally depend on the social and cultural context, but this does not invalidate the fact that colors are effectively functioning as signs, that there are processes in which colors signify different things.” (italics mine)
 

So when we reach for that bottle of dark green Polo, or jade green Eden, are we reacting, or projecting?

 

There is another fascinating example of how color evokes other senses.  The philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce told an anecdote about a blind man who was trying to understand color.  He had apparently received a verbal description of the color scarlet, and, trying to understand it in another sense, he said that it would sound like the blare of a trumpet.  

It’s no stretch to then ask ourselves “What does this smell look like?”