In Praise of Depth: on fragrance, suffering, instinct, and why we like what we like

There’s a lot happening behind the scenes at Onycha right now.

We’re in the middle of some pretty big changes, and I’ll be able to tell you more about that soon. In the meantime, though, I’ve been thinking about something that keeps appearing in different parts of my life.

Depth.

I find it in fragrance, obviously. But I also find myself thinking about it in coffee, movies, music, art, and the experiences that shape us as people.

Maybe that’s because I’ve always had particular tastes. I like anime and sci-fi space opera. I like dark 80s things with witchcraft and vampires. The Craft. The Lost Boys. My tastes are all over the place.

And I feel disconnected with most modern stuff.

Older films and older art speak to me. I think part of that has to do with the fact that they came from people who had lived through different things, and that lived experience eventually finds its way into what people create.

I have a theory about that.

We’re all zoo animals.

I think modern culture has become a kind of trap that shields us from regular experience. We’re all zoo animals, especially the young ones. I don’t mean that as an insult. It’s more an observation about the strange environment we’ve built for ourselves.

I think we need a certain amount of pain during our formative years. Not because suffering is inherently good, it certainly isn’t… but because hardship changes us, toughens us, tempers us. I think it can sweeten you a little bit, too.

Without some of those experiences, we can grow up shallow and brittle and a little delusional.

That’s just my theory.

But I think a true life lived the right way beats the dumb*ss out of you.

The strange relationship we have with suffering

The human relationship with suffering is fascinating to me. Of course we hate it, I hate it. Nobody wants to suffer.

But sometimes, in quiet moments, when the waters are still, it’s almost as if I understand that accepting the suffering is part of the way out.

We spend so much of our lives trying to avoid difficult experiences, and yet some of those experiences become the things that give everything else meaning.

A life without sadness lacks depth.

I’ve been thinking about this in the laboratory as well.

One of the things I love about fragrance is that, underneath all the technical language, it is still incredibly instinctive. You can talk about materials, structures, families, volatility, diffusion… You can spend months, even years developing a formula.

But ultimately, someone smells something and says:

“I like this.”

And that comes before the explanation.

Oana and I were talking about coffee recently, comparing what we actually like to drink.

It turns out we have quite different preferences.

She really likes fruit-forward coffees, particularly anaerobic coffees with that expressive, fermented character.

I’m more of a darker-roast person.

Too many light-roast varieties in a blend can make it taste tart to me, which isn’t my favorite.

There’s nothing wrong with her preference, and there’s nothing objectively correct about mine. That’s the point, preference is personal.

You can analyze something endlessly, but eventually you have to experience it.

Smell it, taste it… and something in you responds. Sometimes you know before you know why.

I had a wonderful reminder of that recently.

I was wearing the new Burgund when a sixteen-year-old kid working at one of the food stands at a nearby market complimented me on how I smelled.

We started talking, and it turned out he was very into fragrance.

That interaction really gave me hope…

You never quite know who is going to notice something.

You can spend months working on a formula, worrying over tiny adjustments that nobody else will ever see on paper.

Then someone encounters it completely by chance.

A teenager smells it in passing and says:

“I love how you smell.”

That’s a beautiful thing and it reminds me that fragrance doesn’t have to be explained to be meaningful. It just has to reach someone.

And seeing that kind of enthusiasm from the next generation gives me a lot of hope.

I had another reminder of the power of instinct recently.

A father and his seven-year-old daughter came to see me because she was interested in creating a fragrance.

Originally, they were interested in having a custom fragrance made just for her. I explained to her father that doing something completely custom could be quite expensive.

Instead, I offered to sit down with her and design something that we could eventually put up for sale. I’d give her a 100 ml bottle for her contribution.

So we sat together and went through samples.

I asked her what she wanted. Her answer was wonderfully specific. She wanted a Southern floral fragrance with fruit and cake and powder.

I loved that! She knew what she liked. And she loved PowderBerry.

That’s where fragrance begins, before the formulas, before the materials, before the technical vocabulary. Someone smells something and says: “I like this.”

Often, our job is simply to listen, because that instinct can tell you a lot! You don’t always know why something moves you. You just know that it does. Isn’t that great?

And even in the middle of everything else that’s happening around Onycha, I keep finding new perfume problems to solve.

Recently, I created a new family that I’m calling Filicis, “more fern” or “fern-like.” It’s green, herbal and woody. And peaceful.

One of the scent ideas that came out of that family is “Frozen Fern”, and I’m getting very close to discovering its true character.

There have been disappointments recently, too, and most of them made me much more determined to get some really good products out into the market, so all for the best!

Some of the reformulations using the latest breakthroughs of the OM are truly outstanding. I recently checked the new Ceto Gold, and I think it’s going to be stunning. A few of them flopped, though, like PowderBerry.

I’ve also reformulated Burgund, Lady Ylang, Blue Winter, Qanbalu and GlassBerry… all of these into what I believe are truly stunning new versions, and I really think they’re going to make a giant splash and get people’s attention.

Maybe that’s why I keep coming back to the idea of depth.

Because whether I’m thinking about an old movie, a cup of coffee, a difficult experience, or a perfume formula, I’m interested in the same thing.

What happens underneath? What makes something be what it is? What makes one experience feel different from another?

I don’t think I have the whole answer. But I think part of the answer may be contrast.

Light and darkness, sweetness and bitterness, comfort and suffering, surface and depth.

We definitely need both.

The things we experience aren’t separate from the things we eventually create, they become part of them.

There’s a lot happening at Onycha right now.

Some things are changing behind the scenes. There are new ideas taking shape, new work in the laboratory, and some things that I’m not quite ready to talk about yet.

But I will be soon.

For now, I’m heading back into the lab. There are still formulas to work on, new ideas to follow, and a lot more to come…

In the meantime, if you want to stay close to what we’re doing, follow Onycha on Instagram and TikTok, and keep an eye on our website. We’ll be sharing more as things begin to unfold.

And, as always, keep sending your questions, fragrance ideas, things you’re smelling, coffees you’re drinking, movies you’re watching… all of it.

I always like hearing what you’re thinking.

Joe

Owner & Perfumer, Onycha Fragrance Co.