It began in 2007 with a website called Auparfum, co-founded by Jeanne Doré and Dominique Brunel in Paris — a place where perfume criticism could exist with the same seriousness that book reviews and film criticism enjoyed. Then in 2016, Doré teamed up with creative director Mathieu Chévara and Brunel to launch Nez — French for "nose" — as a biannual print magazine. It is, to this day, the only periodical in the world entirely dedicated to scent and the sense of smell.
What makes Nez extraordinary is its range. A single issue might contain a scientific report on olfactory rehabilitation after illness, an interview with a master perfumer at Grasse, a literary essay on the smell of old books, and a critical review of new fragrances that gets, as the editors cheerfully admit, "very critical." Each issue ships with actual fragrance samples tucked inside, so readers can smell what they are reading about — a trick no other magazine can claim. Published in French, English, and Italian, Nez treats perfumery not as a luxury-goods beat but as a cultural discipline deserving the same depth as architecture or cuisine.
The operation has since grown into what the founders call the Olfactory Cultural Movement: a publishing house (the only one dedicated to olfactory culture), a podcast, a subscription perfume box, a concept shop, and events like Paris Perfume Week at the Palais Brongniart and a new satellite edition launching in Shanghai. Their book The Big Book of Perfume has been translated into Chinese, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese.
Nez won the Art and Olfaction Award in 2022 and has become the reference point for anyone who believes that what we smell shapes how we understand the world — which, once you read a single issue, seems obviously, intoxicatingly true.
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