3.2017 Scentury
“Perfume Blind Tasting with Chiara Scoras”
Citation
http://scentury.com/chiara-schoras-when-in-rome/
A blind perfume interview by scent & culture blog Scentury with actress Chiara Scoras, using Atelier de Geste's Blood Sweat Tears. The text from her blind-test response is below. Click here for the link to the interview.
1. THE BLIND TASTING | Blood Sweat Tears by Atelier de Geste
We confronted Chiara Schoras with a mystery perfume in a neutral, opaque vaporizer. Only afterwards we revealed the name of the scent. Follow Chiara on her journey into scent …
I LIKE IT WHEN MY MAN SMELLS LIKE A MAN.
In my mind’s eye I see a country house by the sea, in which everything is bright and airy: white-painted wood, soft fabrics stirring in the breeze, a beautiful terrace, fine sand beneath one’s feet — a great sense of ease and transparency! And yet not of perfection. It’s an old house and the traces of those who have lived there can still be seen.
I would like to own a house like that one day. I would do without a sea-view even, as long as I could hear the waves and smell the sea.
It’s difficult to say exactly where this house would be. There are so many wonderful places in the world. Perhaps on the Indian Ocean, Hawaii or Sardinia — but best of all on a rocky coast, because it is there that the power of the water and the waves really makes itself felt! One feels closer to the elements there than on a regular sandy beach.
And that is also where my roots lie: in Italy! My mother’s family comes from the Marches and Umbria. I grew up in Hamburg but we always spent our vacations at my uncle’s place on the Adriatic or with my grandmother in Umbria. My uncle still lives in the same apartment in Pesaro today — only five minutes from the beach, the Baia Flaminia.
One can smell the pine trees and the sea there, and hear the waves. So we always used to sleep with the windows open. And one could sense the sea-salt on one’s skin. This perfume does actually remind me a little of the smell of skin in summer: sunscreen mixed with salt and the tang of sea air.
Umbria is a fairly mountainous region and smoke rising from the chimneys often hangs in the air, since people heat there with wood-fires. And now, whenever I smell a wood-fire, anywhere, my thoughts turn instantly to my grandmother’s home.
Shortly before my eighteenth birthday I moved to Rome. I’d been living in Hamburg until then, and my mother in Sicily. I called her and said, “Come on, move to Rome with me. There’s a German school there, so I’ll be able to finish my schooling!” She asked for twenty-four hours to think it over then she said, “Ok, let’s move to Rome!” And only three weeks later, there we were, embracing at the airport.
After school I studied dance, drama, and singing. I can still exactly recall the odors in the dance school and the theater: dusty old buildings, linoleum floors, the smell from the canteen, and the sweat of my dance partners and the stagehands.
I recall that also when I smell this perfume. Something about it, an undertone, reminds me of sweat. I like that! Just as I like it when my man smells like a man.
