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Welcome to Back of the Napkin, musings from Serviette for the cultured world. On the eve of launch, the reviews for Immacula are beginning to roll in. If you’re eager to secure a coveted bottle of what early adopters are calling a “subversive” and “unusual” take on tuberose, might we suggest you bookmark this page here for tomorrow ante meridiem. A brief personal aside: formulating a perfume, assembling the story around it and its cast of characters, planning and executing its rollout—all of it is truly a joy. I hope some of that pleasure is obvious in the finished perfume.
Serviette often thinks about the importance of language—the vocabulary we use to describe smell! The ways in which we define personal taste! The invisible forces that shape the words we choose! But lately, we’ve been preoccupied with the slow attrition of the language of the natural world. Here, we must make the case not just for touching grass, but for knowing what to call it.
A study published last year found that, between 1800 and 2019, the use of nature-related words declined by more than 60%. Without many of us realizing it, the Oxford Junior Dictionary made room for words like “chatroom” and “blog” by dispensing with such useful specimens as “acorn,” “bluebell,” and “kingfisher.” Over the past 200 years, Americans have also begun to write about trees and forests differently, losing words that suggest majesty and nobility. References to nature in songs, books, and film storylines have been on a steady decline since the 1950s; even children’s media has experienced a marked shift away from portrayals of the natural world. (Hansel and Gretel would be a rather different story if the witch lived on the 84th floor of a supertall.)
This phenomenon is related to an idea anticipated by landscape architect Ian McHarg in his 1969 manifesto Design with Nature, and later termed ‘shifting baseline syndrome’ by fisheries scientist Daniel Pauly. It’s a useful term for the way in which the modern landscape is compared with the one known to previous generations. Because the change is gradual, we rarely notice what we’re losing. The same is true of our vocabulary: with each generation, the baseline is reset, and the words available to us to describe the natural world become increasingly scarce. The finch, egret, and red-tailed hawk all become “birds.” Willows, maples, and oaks are simply “trees.” The world is stripped of some of its drama and complexity, and our disconnect grows accordingly.
The antidote might lie in what author Jackie Morris calls “rewilding” our imaginations: learning to recognize, name, and appreciate the harmony of elemental souls that make up our surroundings. Serviette believes that perfumery, too, can play a part in this rewilding. Consider it a sort of exposure therapy, an exercise in familiarizing oneself with the scents of the natural world—including those one might otherwise never encounter firsthand.
Perhaps a sniff of a beloved fragrance even provokes a curiosity about the provenance of its raw materials. And do remember: as our vocabulary for the world becomes thinner, curiosity becomes a rather useful means of putting some of it back.
We thank you for reading this week’s newsletter. Do remember to check our website tomorrow to claim your bottle of Immacula while supplies last—after all this discussion of extinction, we would hate for you to experience a small one of your own.