Do smells affect your mood?

Do smells affect your mood?

Rather more than you might think it appears. Not because you like or dislike a particular odour or find the scent of something pleasant or perhaps pungent, it seems to be much more complex than that according to research. Smell in fact, is a particularly interesting sense: There are hundreds of thousands of odours that the brain can recognise. Often you can't actually remember having smelt a particular odour in the past but the brain ‘remembers' far more than we think and is capable of associating a particular smell with a historic event that could have taken place some time in the distant past. The odour might have been in the air at the time of something good happening in your life and any semblance of that odour in the future can recapture that mood.

The smell of melted tarmac for example, reminds me of the lazy summer of 1976. In the blistering heat that year, there were fifteen consecutive days where temperatures were above 32C. Every child in the neighbourhood spent the best part of those fifteen days revelling in the sunshine. Pavements were cracking and roads were literally slipping away. Melted asphalt isn't the most wonderful of smells, but I only have to get the tiniest whiff of it now and I'm transported back to those lovely summer days of 2006. I don't just enjoy the memories, I feel the mood.

In 2005 I spent a considerable amount of time on business in New York. It wasn't my first time there but it was certainly my most enjoyable and when we weren't visiting the many sights, we spent much of the time in and around Fifth Avenue totally absorbed in the shopping. The strength of the pound made much of the designer clothing quite affordable and needless to say we made the most of it: A chance to fill the wardrobe with Dolce and Gabbana, Prada and my personal favourite, Paul Smith. But the store that I remember most of all had to be Abercrombie and Fitch. Not because I'm a great fan of their clothing, but simply because of the smell of the store. Staff spray the contents of the store with their signature scent, ‘Fierce'. It's a great smell and has been their best selling Cologne. I bought a bottle, loved it, and needless to say I bought some more. Evert time I wear Abercrombie Fierce, I feel the very sense of being in New York that great summer. Yes, I recall the memories of the trip, but the photographs can do that for me. What the photographs can't do for me however, is rekindle that holiday mood.