on the term "functional" in clothing, perfumery and food

In Germany "Funktionskleidung," i.e. functional clothing is the uniform of the middle class, especially as regards jackets.Legions walk around in hiking or trecking gear by Jack wolfskin, or, if you wish to be more exclusive, The North Face, or, if you're a trendy pseudo-elitist, perhaps Moncler. The term functional as applied to these synthetic textiles is ambivalent. On the one hand it (rightly) suggests that they are purely functional, without any pretension to style or aesthetic expression. On the other, they (wrongly) seem to suggest, that a traditional Crombie, Chesterfield, Duffle or Caban made of wool  is somehow dysfunctional or at least a lot less functional. Which may be true in the antarctic or when climbing the Nanga Parbat, but certainly not in some Western European city center.
Likewise, functional food conveys the image that its "conventional" alternative somehow fails to  function in terms of  providing specific nutrients, which the latter, as a redesigned industrial product sold at a premium supposedly does perfectly. Of course, the primary function of functional food is to generate profits for the food industry and little else. Again, nobody in the prosperous parts of the world requires complements of this sort to a regular, intelligent diet.
In fragrance, the distinction between functional and "haute" perfumery is old and seems entirely sensible. The former employs perfumery a means towards modifying (theoretically: improving) a product, be it cosmetics or car seats; the latter constitutes perfumery as an aesthetic end in itself aimed only at titillating our noses. But there's the rub. I doubt this distinction is still capable of being maintained in view of the nature of the perfume industry today. For one there is not much "haute" in most "haute perfumery" these days. The great mass of releases are formulaic, redundant, assembly-line concoctions made from the cheapest available materials and the only way you can tell them apart is by the Potemkin image campaign they are dressed up with. In fact, it is often hard to tell a perfume from a cleaning product, because both use the very same materials. Thus, to me, Jean Claude Ellena's Jardin series for Hermès smells in no way like gardens, or like luxury, but like a series of airport toilets heavily deodorized with various fruit-and-floral scented sanitary products (Frankfurt "uses" Un Jardin sur le Nil"). And this is the work of one of the grand present-day perfumers, so it is said, who has more time and funds on his hands than most.
Besides industry policies dictating the cheapening of perfume, there is also a problem on the consumer end. A lot of people's noses have been entirely denatured. We all know of the tests with children who prefered artificial strawberry flavors in yoghurt to the real fruit, because they had been socialized into viewing the former as "strawberry" and could not handle the complexity, refinement and sensory challenge of the real thing. Well, most people are so overexposed to functional perfumery that apparently they no longer realize how strong and far from natural smells fabric softener, cleaning, and cosmetic products smell. When I sleep in so-treated bedsheets, I have to wash my pyjamas - sometimes twice - because from contact alone they reek to the heavens of "April-fresh" dihydromyrcenol infusions.Consumers seemingly don't mind or even demand of their personal fragrance to reproduce the virtual smells of their chemicalized environment - a vicious circle from an outside perspective, but a wet dream for Symrise or Givaudan. Ultimately, 99.9% of  perfumery today is functional - it's primary function is generating "haute profit." Like everything (and everybody) else in a neoliberal system, that is the criterion by which it will be judged. Happy 1984, err, 2012 y'all.

Smoke and Mirrors in perfumery and politics

Just read on basenotes about the apparent crisis of the house of Montale. It seems this perfume (and watch etc.) house is the brainchild of a Palestinian entrepeneur, Ammar Atmeh, based in the United Arab Emirates, who used Pierre Montale as a French "de luxe" front, the latter perhaps not even being involved with actual perfume creation and raising the question whether the stories about Montale's service to Arab royalty are true or just so much PR. As a house Montale's made a few nice fragrances (I personally enjoy Royal and Black Oud and would like to try Cuir d'Arabie), but their release policy bordered on the absurd in terms of quanitity, redundancy and confusing naming. They also seemed less than well-organized in terms of communications and PR (involuntary guerilla-marketing?).
While an end of Montale would not be a dramatic loss to pefumery at this point, it will be interesting to see whether further facts emerge from a possible mud slinging contest (apparently Messrs. Montale and Atmeh are doing battle over the trademark, which is why Montale perfumes have been recently appearing under the name "Tanelli" - so now it's an Italian front?). Also one can safely anticipate the appearance of lots of Montale perfumes on ebay and other grey market outlets, so fans will be able to stock up.

I gather that this is a sober lesson on never believing any of the marketing BS perfume houses invest so much energy in - except if you happen to enjoy the illusion - and simply to focus on the scent in front of you. Whether it's a fake M. Montale, a reengineered Count d'Orsay, Creed's phoney perfume history, or even Guerlain's real pre-LVMH history - it says nothing about the nature or quality of the product you are paying big $ for now. A few artisans aside, behind the dreamworld of perfume lie multinational cosmetics and chemical giants and slick business plans, big business and new economy and not all that much craft or art. You can smell the result in every department store. 

It's all the more vital that bloggers, since nobody else wants the job, apparently, do what they can to focus on what Andy Tauer christened "perfumism" - the sphere of quality-driven artisan perfumery, while contributing to as much transparency as is possible of the smokes and mirrors business of perfume. Certainly  pro fumum, burnt offering to the gods, has always also served the purpose of mystifying truths uncomfortable or not desired to be seen. Smoke gets in your eyes. Ask the Greeks and Italians, whose governments have just been taken over, without democratic legitimiation by the people at large, by so-called technocrats, which is just another name for the consultants and bankers who were responsible for the banking and Euro-crisis in the first place and are now supposed to solve it (hello to Mr. Geithner back in the US). Both Mario Monti of Italy (ex-EU commissar and Goldman Sachs advisor) and Lucas Papademos (former chief of Greece's  central bank and VP of the European central bank) are part of the "Frankfurt Group" a coterie of  functionaries who installed the dysfunctional EURO system fully aware of the potential consequences and beholden to the interests of big finance rather than ordinary Europeans (English readers check here for more) That's what their policies look like, too. The whole thing stinks. Like a cheap perfume.              

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