Smelling all those damaged Guerlains really got me down. I can think of no art other than perfumery that has suffered such grievous damage and neglect. We play music from scores written a thousand years ago. We have sound recordings going back to Brahms. We read books written in the Middle Ages. Paintings going back hundreds of years, frescoes going back thousands of years are lovingly preserved and restored. And yet the pleasure of smelling a 1969 Guerlain as it was meant to be is denied us. 20th Century perfumery, i.e. its entire Golden Age, has been wiped out and will never come back.

Why? Because the industry never believed in its own product. Because we let a handful of enterprising dermatologists and analytical chemists dictate our lives. Because when something like perfume is perceived to have no measurable benefit, yet has some costs (a few allergies) the cost-benefit ratio is always wrong. Because the people running the industry are shallow, misogynist, and greedy. “Mais non Madame, the perfume has not changed, maybe it is you”. Because nobody had the courage to put a label on their fragrance that says “do not spray on skin.” Because the fragheads came too few and too late to save perfumery.

(Luca Turin)