Is a Scent Portrait a Picture Into Your Soul?
I visited Element Brooklyn’s Gallery of Scent to find out.
On Wednesday, May 27, I visited the GALLERY OF SCENT opening, a pop-up by the sustainable cosmetic and personal care brand Element Brooklyn. Nestled in a retail space in the cobble-stoned Seaport in downtown Manhattan, I found my way to the pop-up launch party despite the pop-rock band performing in the street and the crowd of tourists enjoying the jams like it was 1995.
Inside, a stark white gallery space contrasted with the chaos going on outside. Fairly isolated from the sound, I felt as if I’d stepped into a different world. A cluster of white columns dotted the space, and a retail area beyond invited visitors to explore. Each column had a scent dispenser for a specific perfumery ingredient, and a small card explaining its history in the world of scents. I grabbed a clipboard, a little scorecard, and a pencil, and made my way through the maze of fragrance.
One thing about the gallery of scents: there’s something for everybody. The variety of the notes made each sniff into a distinct experience. There was an art to the text that accompanied each scent: reviewing the historical and sometimes mythological associations with certain herbs and fragrances, I found myself drawn to notes with the most fascinating descriptions. The text for Frankincense alone had me ranking it highest on my scorecard: “This sacred resin was so valued by ancient Egypt that Queen Hatshepsut sent expeditions to secure it. Central to ritual and perfumery, it offers a striking scent that begins with bright, lemony freshness before deepening into cool, mineral, smoky resin. Both grounding and luminous, it reflects the quiet, reverent atmosphere of ancient temples.” Doesn’t that just magically transform you to an unimaginable time? How could you not love a scent so powerful?
As I wandered through the gallery, I thought a lot about the tie between scent and language. In my own writing practice, I find smell the hardest sense to describe. You can do it through simile or a few select adjectives: sweet, floral, musky, earthy, pungent, rancid. But none of those capture the power of smell—one of humanity’s most powerful senses.
According to Harvard Medicine, “The mechanisms behind odor’s power to spur memory [are] a power with evolutionary origins. Our ancient ancestors relied on smell to build maps of their surroundings and remember where they’d been.” The Harvard Medicine article adds: “Sights, sounds, and other sensory information must first travel through the brain’s thalamus before reaching the amygdala and hippocampus. In contrast, the olfactory system is positioned right next to them, appearing to have ‘essentially evolved to hardwire information to these memory and emotion centers,’ says [professor of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, Sandeep Robert] Datta.”
If the human nose has evolutionarily developed “hundreds of odor receptors, each primed to interact with specific subsets of odor molecules,” then why is scent so elusive to language? No wonder I was strongly drawn to the better descriptions of the perfume notes presented.
Once I finished my scorecard and handed it over to the lovely Element Brooklyn crew, they entered the data into a program developed by the brand’s team that creates a portrait backdrop using colored lights and digital background textures. Think of it as an aura photo, but of your scent personality. Mine came out as a blur of ochre and bronze tones, with what looks like textured flower petals on the left. Not entirely surprising, since I was drawn to musky, darker scents, with a few floral and fresher notes thrown in — scents that carried deeper historical meaning, or were once considered almost magic.
Once my portrait was ready, I received an email with my portrait and a link to my scent personality. Ladies and gentlepeople, I am officially “The Signature Scent,” a personality shared with 1.3% of visitors to the Gallery of Scent. This scent personality is described as: “November, 5 P.M. A brownstone vestibule in Brooklyn. The scent of a wool coat carrying traces of sweet osmanthus and cedarwood from the afternoon. A key turning in a heavy lock. The quiet relief of finally being back inside.” Essentially, I’m an old lady in the body of a woman in her 30s. I’m not complaining. A brownstone vestibule in Brooklyn does sound like the kind of life I want to be living.
The scent profile comes with product recommendations. I gave their Campfire Stereo candle a sniff since it was in my top personalized recommendations, and while it wasn’t my favorite, I would enjoy its rich fragrance if I were to burn it in the brownstone I don't live in. Perhaps my scent portrait is a portrait into my future self. A girl can dream.
The Gallery of Scent is open through December 30, 2026. What does your portrait look like? 🌀
Laura Rocha-Rueda is a Colombian fashion and fiction writer based in Brooklyn who holds a Creative Writing MFA from The New School. She is your local Swiftie and will gladly chat about anything glittery and soft, and about why dismissing pop culture as frivolous is misguided and sad.
