Why Perfumes Smell Different on Everyone, for Everyone

"Perfume is a soul that shapes our shadow"

We all know that perfume smells change between each of us because of the chemicals in our bodies that affect how we perceive scents. 

There's no such thing as "one size fits all." Perfumes are made up of hundreds of different chemical compounds, so there isn't one scent that works for everyone. In fact, the same fragrance might smell completely different on two people who wear it at the same time. This is because the chemicals in our body interact with the chemicals in the perfume, creating unique combinations of scent.

Then consider a different weather moisture readings across the globe and what you spray on your skin in Abu Dhabi may not necessarily smell the same as what you spritz in tropical North Queensland.

But our perception of perfume is not all a simple case of Shazam!-like chemical reactions. Our subconscious plays an important role in determining whether we will love a scent, like it, tolerate it, or detest it!

Scent has the power to teleport you  to another time and another geographical location altogether.


La Mére Nature (Mother Nature) has the ability to influence our psyche from a very young age, long before as little pre-schoolers, we even become aware of memory.

Clinical psychologist and Dean of Connecticut College in the U.S., Jefferson Singer, believes that we do actually retain the power to access the more unfiltered sensory memories from childhood.  Singer introduces me to the psychoanalyst, Hans Loewald, who wrote about the value of the unfiltered sensory memory. These unfiltered memories, Loewald suggests, have the ability to bring emotional urgency to what would otherwise be a distant and detached experience.

Artists, filmmakers and poets, such as William Wordsworth, have found their way to these recollections and have drawn on them for inspiration. Singer quotes from the poet’s work “Ode: Imitations of Immortality” about a child’s capacity to experience the world with this level of immediacy and wonder and reminds us that, despite Wordsworth’s longing for “things which I have seen (but) I now can see no more”, he nevertheless manages to draw us back to those earlier times of “splendour in the grass”.

A Trip to Italy

When I was a solo traveller in my twenties, I visited my relatives in the mountaintop town of Oliveto Citra, in the province of Salerno, Italy. It was only my second visit and a whole nineteen years after my family’s pilgrimage which was, itself, twenty years after my parents’ migration to Australia in the late 1950s. One afternoon, I managed to sneak out of my aunt’s kitchen for an unchaperoned passeggiata (stroll). 

I wandered through narrow laneways and under solid stone arches. Memories from nineteen years prior suddenly struck me then flashed across my mind like a 360-degree zeotrope.  The trigger was not the sight of the stone but, in fact, the smell.  The very particular odour of the stonework, archways and walls, trampled or brushed against and smoothed over by millions of hands and feet over hundreds of years while soaking up the smell of the corn on the cob cooking over open fires across the village.

Recently, I ordered Meo Fusciuni's amazing fragrances for the growing Fora Studios niche fragrance lovers fold because I could totally resonate with the olfactory mission.

A trained herbalist, Giuseppe Imprezzabile had his olfactory calling in Istanbul. Such was the intensity of the experience that he decided to change career and utilise his skills to bring his memories and perceptions of travel, memories and time to the most amazing group of fragrances I've ever experienced. Like the tunes on The Beatles White Album, they are all so different yet make sense as they take you on a journey.

With their carefully selected ingredients, Meo Fusciuni perfumes combine to allow you to travel through space or memory.

While the ingredients are procured from the best sources in the world, the perfumes are made entirely in Italy.

Be sure to sign up to the Fora Files e-newsletter to be updated on the launch of our Perfume Discovery Experiences. Our first, A trip to Italy, will entail art, food, wine, culture and fragrances from the country we can feel so close to in memories, movies and images, but so far away from in reality. 

We will be honoured to officially launch two Meo Fusciuni perfumes at Fora Studios at the events:

The third perfume of the “Trilogy of the journey” is Italian in its inspiration, and dedicated to Sicily

Meo Fusciuni #3 Nota di Viaggio (Ciavuru D’amuri): the fragrance of love

The intensity of Sicily’s fragrances and of its spring contained in a bottle: here’s the spirit of Meo Fusciuni’s third travel note.. The essences are those of the gardens its creator met in his childhood: fig and jasmine, with the final touch of incense, a reminder of the religious parades he took part in.
A balanced and intriguing perfume, delicate at first, but then revealing all the wonder of warm afternoons in the sun and of pure love.  Giuseppe Imprezzabile’s love for his land, Sicily, and for his family is evident in this bottle.

Meo Fusciuni Odor 93: the magical perfume of flowers

Odor 93, on the other hand, is a journey into poetry, through an enchanted wood: it’s a flowery fragrance, but with earthy notes which recall quiet walks in a forest. Its core is made up of narcissus and tuberose, light essences, beguiling and sensual.

Odor 93 thus has the extraordinary ability to let you immerse yourself in a fairy tale and in a unique essence, perfect for those who like to wrap themselves in a veil of flowers.

Ideal for men and women who love light but irresistible fragrances that, with their ability to embrace their wearers, can lead them into a dream journey.