The Art of Seasonal Memory

Unlike many other senses, smell has unusually direct connections with brain regions involved in emotion and memory. A single familiar aroma can therefore become associated with a person, place, or moment—and encountering it again years later can bring that memory back with remarkable vividness.

A photograph shows us what a moment looked like. A song can remind us how it sounded. But a fragrance can sometimes make us feel as though we have returned to the moment itself.

We don’t remember every ingredient in a fragrance. We remember what happened while we were wearing it.

Nostalgia is not simply remembering the past. It is the feeling attached to it. Phantom creates fragrances with the hope that, years from now, a single breath may bring a moment back.