Why It's Good to Smell the Big Idea the Woman Who Turned Body Odour Into an Artform

Summary

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EVEN before the bottles in the box marked "fear" are opened, it is possible to smell a small heavy cloud percolating the air: musky, sweet and acrid. In a tiny laboratory in Berlin, Sissel Tolaas, smell provocateur and fragrance developer, is sorting through the concentrated containers of sweat scent she has collected from 16 men from all over the world, and all in a state of fear. She wafts the neck of one bottle in front of my nose. The odour catches me at the back of my throat. Tolaas herself coughs and pulls back. "This is a guy who was into S&M. It is quite powerful. And this bottle is not even open. It's really hardcore." She pulls out another bottle and opens it.

The odour is more concentrated but sweeter. "That guy was an alcoholic, " she explains.

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Extract

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Why It's Good to Smell the Big Idea the Woman Who Turned Body Odour Into an Artform

The smell of fear, Tolaas says, is distinct from that of ordinary sporting sweat. She can recognise it both in its bottled form and on human beings. "I can smell people who have fear, " she nods. "Not always, but if I concentrate. I can smell a lot of things. Excitement, for instance. I can smell my daughter when she's happy. It's just about concentration and really focusing." To create her collection of sweat she gave the 16 male donors a device designed to be placed in the armpit whenever fear was felt. These men, who all had "an extreme phobia of other human beings", would then send the sample to Tolaas for analysi...

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