not an allergy, eh?

I got a copy of the book Luca Turin authored with Tania Sanchez, Perfumes: The Guide, and I was reading it on the train last week and happened upon a passage about sensitivities and allergies versus just disliking something.

Apparently a headache does not an allergy or sensitivity make.  I am not sure I can believe that, given what happens if I work with oakmoss for long periods of time.

Oakmoss is this mainstay of base accords in perfumery, mind you, but if I’m around it too long I start to feel like there’s a little cranial construction guy in a fluorescent orange safety vest wielding a large hammer in my frontal lobe.  Knocking me between the eyes from the inside of my skull.

And I actually like how it smells, thankyouverymuch.

File under, ‘ya can’t believe everything you read’

(The sensitivity to oakmoss is nothing new, and it didn’t come out of working with the stuff directly.  It’s always been there.  And for the record, massoia does the same thing to me, but I don’t like its odor profile at all.)