You walk down a street, catch a scent, and suddenly find yourself years ago, in a kitchen, a garden or beside someone. Images and sounds call up memories too, but scent does it differently: more suddenly, more emotionally, more completely.
Why scent?
Smell is processed in close connection with the parts of the brain linked to emotion and memory. That is why a scent often brings back a feeling rather than a fact. Before you remember a person’s name, you remember how you felt beside them.
Tahir Cengiz Yatağan founded Puzzle on this thought. For him sight, taste, touch and hearing all feed creativity, but of these senses smell is the one that affects memory most.
Scent is a bridge
The meaning of Rayiha expresses this bond most clearly: “the touch of the past on today with a delicate breeze.” The artist describes Rayiha as his belief that scent is an invisible bridge from heart to heart, the revival of a memory hidden in time.
“Some scents are unforgettable, because they are not just fragrances, but wishes.”
Creating memories with scent
Scent does not only recall the past; it creates the memories of the future. The fragrance you wear on an important day, on a journey or at a new beginning becomes the carrier of that moment. Years later the same scent can take you back.
- Choose a new scent for a special period of your life.
- Take only one fragrance on a trip, and let it become that trip’s scent.
- Give someone you love a fragrance that reminds you of them.
Scent that changes how we feel
Fragrance affects our mood as well. A fresh opening can bring energy to the day; a warm, deep scent can calm. That is why Puzzle’s eight fragrances can also be read as eight moods.
Read next: Choosing a fragrance for your mood · The collection
