Givaudan, ‘Project Delight’
In an exciting new initiative, Givaudan have delved into the world of flavour in order to reflect on how we react to the world of scent. By observing our responsive body language to our favourite flavours, they have created a new collection, in collaboration with their flavourists, called ‘Delight’.
Imagine your responses to the taste of – even the thought of – your favourite foods. Smiling at the thought of prosecco, salivating at the idea of pizza, quite literally groaning with pleasure at the taste of chocolate. We all crave and relish flavour in an entirely non-verbal language. Givaudan, in recognising this, have applied body-language research to their creative process to formulate a set of fragrant bases that they found to have elicited non-verbal responses from consumers familiar to what we see when considering flavour.
Of course, we often use the same vocabulary to describe both fragrance and food. Scents and flavours can both be ‘fruity’ or ‘sweet’, and we show our appreciation by describing them as ‘delicious’ or ‘mouth-watering’. Perhaps Givaudan’s project ought not to come as a surprise. However, their unique approach to their research, the study of body language in order to gauge the impact and success of their new fragrances, promises to open up an excitingly fresh perspective on perfume.
The idea is to be able to fuse into a fragrance an experience that combines aroma, taste, and memory: brunch in Brooklyn, croissants in Paris, the glamour of a cocktail party, or the heady sweetness of a funfair. Modern experimental perfumery tries, as one of its targets, to evoke not simply a single identifiable scent, but an all-enveloping experience that transports the consumer to a different place in time and place with all its accompanying aromas, tastes, and emotions. Givaudan’s results are pioneering fragrance bases that are both aromatic and appetising.
What if, in time to come, we will feel the overwhelming desire for scent in the same way we do for flavour? Givaudan’s ‘Project Delight’ marks an intriguing and innovative angle to fragrance creation, promising a tantalisingly multisensory future to perfume.