“The idea of perfume as a way of attracting a mate – that’s not the fragrance, that’s just the marketing,” says [Guerlain perfumer Thierry] Wasser. He has another theory – and it is one that is currently emerging across the industry – that one of the things perfume does best is to ignite a sense of personal creativity, of reinvention and reimagining in the wearer. The idea, he says, was entrenched in his mind aged 13, when, lagging behind his puberty-reaching friends, he wore Guerlain’s Abbé Rouge [sic] as a way to create a “character” for himself. “It was my superhero cape and costume,” he says – and to this day he keeps a lab sample in his pocket that he “continually resprays like an addict”.

— Read more in These perfumes will make you more creative... at Financial Times.