Skin scents, perfumes that wear privately and close are a holy grail for many perfume houses. Traditionally achieved with iris, carrot seed, osmanthus and white musks; ubiquity has encouraged alternatives, and rice, rice powder and steam accords are at the front edge of this search for difference.

Some folks find the concept of skin scents strange, at odds with wearing perfume that flaunts and dramatises their choices. Seduction, weapon and glamour are avoided to wear perfumes that veil the body, creating a soothing cocoon of scent. Perfumery as lullaby, the perfect veil suspended between personne fatale and rococo flirting.

It is a common misconception that dry, pre-cooked rice has little scent. Not true, if you plunge your hand into rice, there are starchy silken traces on your fingers or soft earthen echoes of the paddy fields. Sweet or savoury, steamed, fried, simmered, rice has an inherent cleanliness and lactonic comfort. Steamed rice has a gorgeous nutty clarity that smells like fresh skin, crook of elbow and forearm skin.

Basmati, sticky, jasmine, boiled, wild, arborio, rainbow, disco, glutinous, matta and bomba. Just a few examples of rice eaten across the world. More than half the world’s population exists on rice as a staple food. Over the past few years a new world of gourmet fragrances has opened up with coconut milk, lemongrass, melon, sesame, miso, galangal and rice being explored in an olfactory context.

Rice in perfume creates drifting hesitancies, the perfect balance between a heightened sense of one’s own skin and the shimmering sensation that you might just be wearing someone else’s.

Our Perfumer Euan McCall has used rice (and mimosa) in Jorum Studio’s latest launch, Unspoken Gesture, creating a gossamer frisson of haunted touch. A skin scent like no other.