On any given evening, a quick scroll through social media is enough to show how elastic the term perfume expert has become. Type it into the search bar and the platform answers with a chorus of very confident voices, each offering guidance on a subject such as perfumery that is far from easy to describe—let alone understand.

Somewhere between glass-skin beauty routines and the latest Labubu dangling from a designer bag, someone will confidently declare Montale Intense Café the fragrance that “brought coffee into perfumery”, as though perfume history were a map drawn only as far as their puberty times. And while the scent undeniably popularized the coffee note, those who have wandered the field a bit longer know that the roasted breath of coffee—unsweetened and drifting over sandalwood—first wafted through Jean Laporte’s Santal Noble, a revolutionary creation of the 1980s, long before hashtags could catch its trail.

A swipe later, another hotshot appears: a popular influencer explaining that vintage perfumes “performed better” thanks to their abundance of dark-colored naturals, while modern fragrances—pale and full of synthetics—cannot possibly hold to skin for ages according to “beastmode” standards. The claim is delivered in foul-mouthed TikTokese, unaware of how Guy Robert once explained the subtlety of fragrance architecture: a backbone of solid, long-performing synthetics beneath a flesh of beautiful naturals. Nor is there awareness that many naturals today come in decolorized extractions. The issue is not the error itself; anyone who has written or spoken about perfume has stumbled at least once. The issue is how smoothly certainty travels now, even when it limps.

Cool attitude, a rehearsed cadence, and a bio reading “Perfume Expert”: the performance assembles itself. The audience, navigating the invisible art of perfumery, looks for direction—and easily mistakes confidence for knowledge. What, then, does perfume expert really mean in an age when the title is widely used, often self-assigned, and where no universally accepted standard stands behind it?

To circle that question, I turned to a constellation of people whose work and contributions to the perfume world have been widely recognized—voices spanning cultures, experiences, and professional backgrounds: an award-winning perfumer; a young Chinese perfumer; a Fragrances evaluator and award-winning storyteller; an Italian scent designer; a perfume historian and creative director; a British critic; an American pioneering editor; and a Nigerian retailer attuned to the public pulse of scent.

I asked each of them two simple questions: What knowledge, skills, or experience are essential to be considered a true Perfume Expert? And: Is this a title worth defining or certifying—and if so, how?

The answers do not converge into a single definition. Instead, they cast a series of reflections, each one catching a different angle of the subject, illuminating its many facets—like the shifting contours of a precious concept that resists settling, something richer, harder, and more human than a label in a social-media bio.

Christophe Laudamiel — The Elasticity of Expertise

Speaking with an award-winning perfumer, lecturer and osmothécaire such as Christophe Laudamiel is like watching someone gently dismantle a machine to reveal the dozens of tiny, unseen screws holding it together. For him, expertise begins with having spent time absorbing, digesting, and creating knowledge.

“Smelling a scent, using it on skin or in a shampoo, takes much longer than listening to a song. Furthermore, it can take quite a bit to get used to it, to learn to like it, or on the opposite to look at it in different ways, noticing that it is actually not so great.”

He is under no illusion about what the internet offers instead. “The olfactory information on the internet is very limited, often misleading or wrong, Self teaching in perfumery is unfortunately more tedious than in other arts,” he writes, adding, with the clarity of someone who has watched other arts be taken more seriously: “Theoretically, it should take much longer to become a fragrance expert than to become a music expert or a wine expert.”

Online, that slowness is almost unthinkable. The culture of instant opinion—unbox, spray, proclaim—collides with a craft built on delayed understanding. Mr. Laudamiel refuses, however, to reduce expertise to a single track. The field is too large, too fractured. “One can specialize in certain aspects: smelling, history, perfume theory, ingredients, matching, encyclopedic knowledge… Impossible to be an expert in all. Perfume expert—meaning in what?”

This is the fissure at the heart of the term. We expect a music expert to specify a domain—composition, theory, Baroque performance practice—yet in perfumery, the public seems content with a single superficial umbrella.

Mr. Laudamiel is clear-eyed about the conditions that allow this. There are almost no schools, he notes, certainly none comparable to the great institutions of fashion, engineering, or classical arts. Graduates of the most famous programs in Paris still enter the industry as trainees in perfumery— “like coming out of music school at junior high level. Nothing like Paris Ballet or Julliard,” he remarks. In this landscape, it is easy to stand out. “The public is particularly low educated, the lowest of all arts, so easy to hide shaky knowledge behind smoke screens in a sea of ignorance or even fakeness maintained by many brands.”

In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed is king.

And yet he resists the idea that expertise can simply be claimed into existence. “‘Working at’ or ‘working with’—drop name here—does not make you an expert, especially when that someone or company has never done anything revolutionary… Two weeks in Paris or in Grasse does not make you an expert. Have you tried two weeks at ballet or piano school? What do you know or are able to do? Would people pay you to give them classes?”

He watches Instagrammers—some with hundreds of thousands of followers—complain they are lost because a brand did not list the notes; he watches them pass judgment after ten seconds of sniffing, their audiences mistaking this for authority.

Most of the time the verdict is simply “I like it,” strategically delivered because “the Instagrammer wants to be invited to the next fragrance launch of the fragrance and wants to receive a free bottle. So, the critique is poor.”

Still, he is not cynical about structure. He longs for an ethics of discourse. “A code of deontology among critique wannabees like in journalism would elevate the level of expertise and create better experts.” Training programs, real tests, juries, accomplishments: he sees room for all of it.

He also acknowledges expertise can come from many paths. There are experts with degrees and experts without them — self-taught savants, such as in cinema, fashion, or computer science. But what unites them is the weight of what they have actually done. As he advises, “Ask what the person has actually done.”

His final stance on the title is both liberating and cautionary. “In movie or fashion or computer science, the public appreciates the level of expertise and usually knows what it takes to get there… I say this honestly: anyone can call oneself an expert, that is also fine. An expert is in the mind of a group of believers or appreciators. An expert needs a client or an audience that knows less but can still appreciate his or her knowledge."

A democratic model—but one that depends entirely on the literacy of the crowd. Which means: the more people learn, the more the word expert will begin to mean something again.

Shijie Ma — The Craft of Knowing What You Smell

If Mr. Laudamiel draws the outer map—the absence of institutions, the poverty of public education, the thinness of internet discourse—Shijie Ma, junior perfumer at MANE in Shanghai, sketches what expertise looks like from the inside. Her view is precise, methodical, rooted in chemistry, training, and thousands of hours of smelling.

For her, expertise begins with the raw materials themselves. “It requires not only building a comprehensive database of fragrance ingredients but also accurately distinguishing the characteristics of commonly used natural ingredients and commonly used synthetic ingredients.” A true expert, she says, must keep pace with “newly developed molecules, technologies, captives and specialties from different fragrance companies. Experts should also skillfully decompose fragrance structures… and detect differences in the formula.”

Then comes language: the ability to translate smell into words without flattening it. “Master perfume vocabulary such as aldehydic, aromatic, and ambery notes, and describe scents accurately in different contexts. To ordinary consumers, instead of simply saying ‘it smells good,’ perfume experts can explain in much detailed ways. When communicating with industry professionals, they can directly discuss ingredient quality, origins.”

Her idea of expertise extends outward, across the whole ecosystem of perfumery. “Historical dimension, familiarize with the development of fragrances… market dimension… trend dimension.” These are not abstractions but coordinates: from Grasse flower fields to extraction factories, from perfumery houses to retail counters, from heritage formulas to the rise of pistachios gourmand notes and gender fluidity.

And then comes intuition—what cannot be taught except by long exposure. “Based on the experience of smelling thousands of fragrances, develop a unique olfactory taste and intuition.” The expert, she suggests, is not only the one who identifies memorable, high-quality fragrances but the one who can imagine what might come next: “Combining knowledge from different fields, from new technologies to different forms of Art, make innovations and creative ideas.”

On certification, she is both firm and cautious. “Formal definition of the title is necessary, but achieving certification is extremely challenging—far more so than certifying roles like professional fragrance evaluators or perfumers.” Yet she believes a clear definition could strengthen the field: experts could educate consumers and brands on basics like the confusion between notes and accords and push back against the commercialization that floods the market with “safe, generic fragrances that lack uniqueness.”

For Ms. Ma, expertise is scaffolding and spark at once: a rigorous accumulation of knowledge animated by creativity, history, vocabulary, intuition, and the stubborn curiosity to keep learning.

Clayton Ilolahia — The Nuance of Expertise

If expertise as an architecture of knowledge according to Ms. Ma, Clayton Ilolahia—Evaluation & Communications Manager for Michael Edwards’s Fragrances of the World —approaches it as something more nuanced. His day job bridges smelling and speaking, across classification and storytelling, and it’s no wonder his perspective begins with a simple truth: in perfumery, titles are porous.

“Many of the titles used in perfumery are not clearly defined. When does a perfumer become a master perfumer? Is the title of perfumer reserved only for those who have completed formal training at a school like ISPICA? How does one become a perfume expert?” These are not rhetorical questions; they are symptoms of a field without fixed borders, one where paths overlap, and reinvent themselves.

That does not mean expertise is pure invention, only that it is not a monolith. “Expertise can be nuanced. I’ve met experts who specialize in vintage perfumes and perfume history. Others’ experience lies in their vast knowledge of contemporary perfumes and an ability to help the less experienced find perfumes that they will love. Whatever the expertise, I think experience is key, and the ability to translate that experience into tangible knowledge that can be passed on to others.”

There is, in that final clause, a quiet shift from knowledge as possession to knowledge as gift. The expert, in his eyes, is not the one who simply knows, but the one who can share knowledge with others.

On the matter of definition and certification, he sees both danger and opportunity. “Certifications work well to standardize a skill or product so that there is a universal benchmark. The value perfume experts bring to industry is their ability to provide skills and knowledge on a wide range of topics that perfume schools and universities may not teach. There is a risk of so-called experts who do not have the skills or experience to back their claims, but there is value in a fluid definition that allows a diverse range of experiences and perspectives to enrich our industry.”

This is a reminder that expertise is not only a matter of mastery but of stewardship—the ability to guide, contextualize, and communicate. If Mr. Laudamiel names the screws in the machine and Ms. Ma maps its internal circuitry, Clayton exposes its connectivity, how experts might engage even with people encountering perfume for the first time.

Cristian Cavagna — The Weight of Knowledge

If the first three voices outline expertise through practice, Cristian Cavagna, Italian evaluator, scent designer and founder of various perfume brands among which his eponymous one, approaches it from a sharper edge —through the discomfort of how lightly the word expert is worn sometimes. For him, the problem is not that expertise is rare, but that its meaning is often diluted by those who brandish it without substance. “What does being an expert really mean? It’s a matter of substance; it bothers me when the label is brandished by supposed professionals who define themselves as such in their bios.”

His idea of expertise is rooted in depth, not display. “Being a true perfume expert means possessing deep and cross-disciplinary knowledge of the subject, embracing the technical, cultural, and sensorial dimensions of perfume. It’s not enough to own many perfumes: you need to know them, decode them, understand their construction and language. It means mastering raw materials, knowing how they interact, recognizing—in harmony or dissonance—the hand of the creator.”

But then he moves beyond the checklist into something deeper. “Expertise is not measured only in study or practice: it is a mindset. It requires constant curiosity, critical thinking, the ability to observe the sector in depth and without simplifications. Perfume expert is not a title to flaunt, but a condition that arises from knowing and from wanting to keep on knowing.”

Mr. Cavagna notes how communication today tends toward oversimplification, toward the soundbite. But the true expert, he argues, ought to move in the opposite direction resisting the temptation to flatten the field to fit a caption. “Today communication tends to reduce complexity to reach an increasingly broad audience, but a true expert should do the exact opposite: guard and enhance that complexity, making it accessible without emptying it of meaning. Competence, after all, is not a synonym for exclusion, but for respect—for the subject, for the listener, and for the intelligence of those who want to understand.”

When it comes to certifying the title Perfume Expert, Mr. Cavagna is interestingly open to the idea, provided it is done with rigor. “Technically yes, a formalization of the title of Perfume Expert would make sense—indeed, it would be desirable—provided it doesn’t turn into the usual self-referential, intensive course that produces ‘experts’ on an assembly line.”

In a more serious perspective, he can imagine “a structured training path could give dignity to a figure often abused today. One could imagine, for example, a multi-level program combining modules on sensory analysis, knowledge of natural and synthetic raw materials, perfume history, olfactory culture, marketing and regulation. Something recalling the solidity of a sommelier’s AIS path, or that of a certified cosmetologist, and not the superficiality of a certificate printed at home.”

Such training, he suggests, could shape a new professional figure: “a qualified olfactory consultant, able to move between sensory evaluation and perfume communication, acting as a bridge between market and culture.”

But even as he outlines this framework, he remains alert to the danger of inflation. “That said, with a touch of cynicism, the problem is not the lack of courses, but the inflation of titles. Today it’s enough to smell two blotters and open an Instagram account to proclaim oneself a perfume expert. A serious certification would be useful, yes—but only if it truly selects, trains, and assesses skills, instead of legitimizing improvisation.”

In other words: without selection and evaluation, certification is just another filter on the same shallow image.

Barbara Herman — History as The Ground of Expertise

Before answering anything about perfume experts, historian, author and ERIS Parfums founder Barbara Herman reaches for a book about something larger: Tom Nichols’s The Death of Expertise. She is less interested, at first, in defining an expert than in naming the climate in which expertise now lives.

“I think a lot of people mistakenly believe that if you have an opinion and a platform, that makes you an expert in something, because it used to be that we’d only hear people opine on subjects because their expertise gave them a platform. But as we know, if you’re online, you can be a self-proclaimed expert, and many will fall in line.”

In this landscape, the word expert floats evanescently, so Ms. Herman tries to give it a more solid contour. She sorts expertise into strata. At the top are the perfumers trained traditionally at perfumery schools, those who understand ingredients with a precision the public does not even imagine.

“They know not only the history of perfumery but also the actual individual ingredients, both natural and synthetic, and they have an understanding of how those ingredients will work with each other on an olfactory level. Even they, as experts, are not entirely sure how certain things will smell exactly as they’re mixed, but they have, in my opinion, the most informed understanding of perfumery.”

But expertise is not reserved for the formally trained. She acknowledges that self-taught or artisanal perfumers can also be experts, as long as they have immersed themselves in materials, history, and the perfumes of the past. Then come the historians, a category she knows well, those who “know both the ancient history of perfume and its various modern phases, including iconic perfumes, ingredients, noses, styles and an informed opinion on how those perfumes and eras inform and influence perfumes going forward.” Without that understanding, she warns, “new fragrance releases might seem novel to the non-expert, when in fact the scent profiles debuted, for example, 20 years ago. And then they pass that on to their audience as if what came before never happened. Experts have that historical context to share. Should we care about that historical context? Yes!”

And then she offers one of the clearest criteria to identify expertise: “I think anyone claiming to be a perfume expert also needs to have smelled at least 10 iconic vintage fragrances.” Shalimar with civet, Emeraude, Vent Vert, My Sin, Tabac Blond—without this reference, she suggests, one may be more accurately a critic, a fan, or an expert in the perfume business, but not a perfume expert. The past is not optional; it is the ground.

Perhaps most revealing is the modest way she speaks about herself. “Even though I wrote a blog and a book about 20th century perfume and did as much historical research as I could, including smelling as many vintage perfumes as I could, there are gaps in my knowledge, and I sometimes balk at being described as an expert. I’m an expert of a kind, but I defer to actual perfume historians and perfumers. These days, I say Scent and Subversion was a love letter to perfumery, charting my specific journey to understanding it as best I could. I qualify my expertise!”

Dariush Alavi — Context as The Heart of Expertise

UK based critically acclaimed perfume author and long-form reviewer Dariush Alavi—known to many as Persolaise—comes at the same knot from a different angle, approaching the term perfume expert the way a seasoned critic approaches a new release: with curiosity, precision, and a refusal to accept easy definitions. As he points out, unlike other professions, perfumery offers no standardized ladder to climb, no exam to pass, no universally recognized threshold that separates the informed from the merely loud.

To make sense of that void, he turns to analogy with film or music criticism: “Some of the best, most astute film/music/art critics don’t have any formal ‘qualifications’ in the areas that they write about — I’m sure very few film critics could actually make a film themselves, and probably many music critics can’t play a single instrument.” Expertise, to him, is proven by something else entirely.

First, he says, an expert knows more than the average person—and knows the limits of their own knowledge. “They have studied the past. They have made conscious attempts to compare it to the future. And, crucially, they know what they don’t know — and they know how to go about filling those gaps.”

Modesty, for Mr. Alavi, is not an optional virtue. It is foundational.

Then comes what he considers one of the core skills: “They have the ability to contextualize. I actually believe this is one of the most important skills of a true expert: the ability to say, ‘You are smelling perfume X and you think it has come out of nowhere, but in fact, it can be traced back to a long line that starts with perfume A etc etc.’ This is something that is EXTREMELY difficult to do in a field where there are 2000+ releases per year, but at least we know that a good critic will smell something in the region of 400+ perfumes per year, which is much, much more than an average person.”

If quantity itself doesn’t confer expertise, variety is what allows comparison, and comparison is what allows meaning.

A third pillar, he insists, is communication. “A true expert knows who they are trying to communicate to and knows how to convey their ideas in a way that is best suited to that particular audience.” Here Mr. Alavi resists the idea that expertise must sound scholarly or heavy. There is room, he argues, for diverse registers, even playful ones—as long as the underlying thinking is sound. “It’s possible to be an expert while having different audiences and different communication styles.” Style can vary provided it is supported by substance.

And then there is the matter of credibility. An expert is not self-proclaimed; they are recognized by their peers. To clarify this, he returns to the film world: “Actors, directors, producers etc. rate Mark Kermode (who is one of the UK’s most respected critics) very highly, because they know that he understands their craft and that he is trying to evaluate and appraise their work on its own terms. They may not always agree with what he says, but they know that his words come from a position of authenticity, open-mindedness and honesty.” The same holds true in perfumery. Respect from perfumers and industry professionals is not about agreement; it is about trust that the reviewer is evaluating on fair terms.

On the question of formal certification, Mr. Alavi is blunt: “Honestly, no. Film critics, music critics, art experts etc don’t have such certification, so I don’t see why perfume experts should. It would take so much time and effort to devise a set of agreed standards, and I’m not sure what the benefits would be”.

Expertise, in this telling, is something you demonstrate until others acknowledge that you have it, not something conferred by exam.

Michelyn Camen — 'Expert' vs Expertise

If Mr. Alavi frames expertise through context, Michelyn Camen brings yet another factor— sensitivity. As Editor-in-Chief of CaFleureBon, she has shaped one of the top global fragrance sites, but she greets the very question of perfume expert with caution. “This is a problematic question,” she begins, immediately drawing a line between expert and expertise. “There is a difference between ‘expert’ and expertise, without a clear definition accepted worldwide. Moreover, can any one individual keep up with a multibillion-dollar industry that includes, perfumers, evaluators, chemists, flavorists, suppliers, raw material producers, retailers, and the list goes on. The art, technology, culture, and demographics are constantly evolving.”

And in a time when online influence often substitutes for scholarship, she notes that perception is shaped by platform more than by proficiency. “Daisy Bow, PhD, and Professor who teaches perfume history at the New School in New York City has observed that her Gen Z students get their information online and through social media, so their perception of an expert reflects their source.”

When she thinks of perfume expert, the first name that comes to her mind and fits the term, is Michael Edwards of Fragrances of the World. “For over 30 years, Edwards has meticulously chronicled every facet of modern perfume—from the creative brief and the perfumer to the flacon design and launch dates—creating a comprehensive archive and database that has become indispensable to the industry and is constantly updated by his team. One of his greatest contributions is the ‘Fragrance Wheel.’ In 2021, Edwards made a landmark change by replacing the term ‘Oriental’ with ‘Amber,’ a much better descriptor and a move toward greater cultural sensitivity and inclusivity.”

She also mentions perfumers “who are experts in their domains such as Rodrigo Flores-Roux, Senior Perfumer at Givaudan with his vast knowledge of vintage, designer, mainstream and artistic perfumery, Patricia de Nicolaï, who grew up in the Guerlain family, was a chemist and is the perfumer and founder of her own brand Nicolaï Parfumeur Créateur as well as a former Osmothèque President. I would include Master Perfumer Christophe Laudamiel, who is an interdisciplinary artist, scent sculptor, and activist as well as natural perfumer, historian, author Mandy Aftel, of Aftelier Perfumes whose book Essence and Alchemy has been translated into 16 languages.” She also includes the historian and academic Elisabeth de Feydeau.

For Ms. Camen, there’s something else beyond knowledge that ties them together. “Edwards, Aftel, de Nicolaï, Laudamiel, Flores-Roux and de Feydeau are known for their abilities to forge personal connections. They remind us that behind every ‘expert’ is a human being—curious, and deeply passionate.” This is a rare lens.

On the question of formal definition or certification, she notes “This would be problematic requiring global knowledge across multiple fields, no bias and subject to interpretation.”

Femi Olusola — Experience as The First Teacher

In Lagos, Nigeria, high above the city’s restless traffic, Femi Olusola presides over Seinde Signatures— a fragrance experience studio where shopping becomes immersive. It is no wonder his perspective is grounded in the living pulse of a retail floor where clients are invited to explore, sample, and discover perfumes as unique self-expressions. For him, the starting point is disarmingly simple: “I think any person getting into perfumes starts from their own tastes, from what moves them, for perfume experience is first and foremost emotional.”

In his world, the first steps toward knowledge are taken with the nose. Customers often arrive clutching recommendations discovered online, “testing what they discovered on the web and social media, yet in the end what they buy is what they enjoy most.”

The shift toward expertise, in his eyes, comes when that circle begins to widen. “Definitely what turns experience into expertise is when people broaden their olfactory boundaries and start appreciating perfumes that maybe are not their cup of tea, but just because they are beautiful fragrances. This is a turning point, definitely.”

For Mr. Olusola, an expert is someone who can step beyond personal preference into appreciation — recognizing beauty even outside the comfort zone of their own tastes. In its simplicity, it is a demanding definition: expertise as openness, as the ability to listen to what a scent narrates.

When asked whether the title Perfume Expert should be formally defined or certified, Mr. Olusola approaches the question with both realism and gentleness. “Identifying a formal course of study for perfume experts is certainly not so easy, again because the path from experience to expertise is very personal and not the same for anyone” shaped by resources, time, exposure, and emotion. The emotional dimension, he insists, cannot be standardized. It remains at the core of how people understand and love perfume. The road to expertise, he suggests, is diverse, irregular, and deeply human.

Giving To “Perfume Expert” A Higher Meaning

After listening to all these highly regarded professionals, one thing becomes clear: the title Perfume Expert is still a blurred concept taking shape. Today it is stretched thin —easily flaunted as quickly emptied, and often confused with confidence, visibility, or simply good lighting at least on social media. Left unattended, the term risks becoming even more hollow in the years ahead. And yet, paradoxically, I see great potential in such a figure.

The leading voices who responded to these questions point toward this possibility—one that feels brighter, and frankly, hopeful. Beneath their differences, a larger picture emerges: the expert not as a gatekeeper, nor merely a social-media persona, but as a kind of star whose rays extend in many directions at once. One shines toward raw materials and chemistry; one toward history and culture; one toward communication and criticism; one toward creativity; one toward the public approaching perfume with curiosity and wonder.

Through rigor, humility, context, knowledge, and a commitment to continual learning, the Perfume Expert can become a meaningful figure capable of bridging industry, artistry, and audience. Perhaps that is the optimism at the heart of this entire inquiry: that the future of perfume expertise does not depend on policing the term, but on filling it with substance.

Comments from our Publisher, Silvio Levi

I find this overview of opinions on what a 'perfume expert' might be very interesting, and of all the statements, the one I found most apt is Clayton's:

'The expert... is not simply someone who knows, but someone who is able to share their knowledge with others.'

I believe that, as many of the interviewees comment, a perfume expert cannot be certified. They should be someone who has learned, studied, experimented and is able to connect different aspects that may involve the world of perfume, such as history, psychology, composition, technology, ethnology, literature, communication and neurology.

For example, figures such as Luca Turin, Susanne Fisher-Rizzi, Daniel Barros, Roja Dove, Steve Van Toller and George H. Dodd, Elisabeth Barille, Catherine Laroze, Jean Claude Ellena and Annick le Guérer all have different knowledge and experience, but each can certainly be considered a perfume expert and communicator.

People capable of connecting the world of perfume to different expressions of human evolution.

Perhaps they are better defined as perfume scholars than perfume promoters.

A critic, as correctly stated by several voices in this article, may not be able to compose a perfume or market it, but should be able to help us appreciate its added value, creativity, consistency with a briefing, communicative potential and aesthetic beauty, thanks to a varied knowledge of different aspects formed through experience in various sectors.

It is not certifiable, but some schools and university courses that have appeared in recent years can provide training on formulation, regulatory, historical and communication aspects to people who have previous experience in other sectors, leading them to gain knowledge of the sector on which to build their critical and communication skills.

For example, an oenologist, archaeologist, chemist, art historian, herbalist or psychologist with the necessary training in perfumery could truly succeed in communicating the potential of this art and commenting on its creations in a truly engaging way.

Anyone who is willing to humbly pursue this additional training can make a wonderful contribution to the understanding of olfactory creativity.