Vol. II · No. 2026
Nose Training, Volume II
Sept 2026 – Feb 2027
A declaration · the curator
From the desk of Arabelle Sicardi · Vol. II · 2026

"The industry sells scent as a feeling or a fleeting kind of promise. We're going to study it as a material legacy — slowly, in order, with our hands and in community.

Read the full declaration

Every molecule is connected to a place, a people, and a history. When we do this together, slowly, against the wave of perpetual launches, in the face of endless consumption, we actually know our desires and our own tastes better than before. By doing this together, we make community.

Our events together are always centered around an effort to honor the materials that make life worth living, that honor the people who make it possible and the places that sustain us. This kind of study, by nature, is deeply political. We will not shy away from that.

We will name perfumers as artists at every opportunity and bring them into the room; we will be open to collaboration, to play, to curiosity, and to connecting ourselves to the innovation and legacies that are under our noses. Scent is often considered a lesser sense: here, we will revere it as the oldest custodian of our survival, and understand the materials that compose our current smellscape.

We're here to learn our noses better, the world around us better, and the products we consume with better intimacy and appreciation.

Welcome to nose training."

Tuition
$150/mo
4 payments · or $600 in full
Returning alumni
$124/mo
4 payments · or $495 in full
Kit · purchased direct
$107
Perfumer's Apprentice · 40 materials
Duration
6 months
Sept 2026 – Feb 2027 · 12 live sessions
Chapter II The evidence · syllabus in six plates

The curriculum is the argument, staged in matter.

Four materials a month, rotating selection from the forty-material archive, organized by family — not by the French canon. Each plate is an argument about where fragrance history actually comes from.

Janice Wu
Plate I · Foundation
The ubiquitous molecules
The invisible architecture
Synthetic · Global production
Linalool, hedione, ISO E Super, ambroxan — the invisible architecture of nearly everything you've ever smelled. Why they dominate. What they do structurally. Who gets credit.
Janice Wu
Plate II · Resins & Incense
The ancient materials
Where this story actually starts
Oman · Somalia · India · Southeast Asia
Frankincense, myrrh, oud, benzoin, labdanum. Materials traded on the Incense Route before Europe had a perfume industry. We start where this history actually starts.
Janice Wu
Plate III · Florals
The source geographies
Who grows them. Who harvests them.
Grasse · Kannauj · Taif · Comoros · Egypt
Rose, jasmine, tuberose, ylang, neroli, muguet. Who grows them, who harvests them, what the labor conditions are, and why the perfume bottle never mentions any of that.
Janice Wu
Plate IV · Woods & Earths
The structural materials
Knowing the material = knowing the crisis
Haiti · Java · India · Atlas Mountains · Japan
Vetiver, patchouli, sandalwood, cedarwood, oakmoss. Materials with ongoing environmental and labor crises embedded in their supply chains. Knowing the material means knowing the crisis.
Janice Wu
Plate V · Animalic & Musk
The body materials
The transition from animal to lab
Synthetic (formerly Tibet · Siberia · Ethiopia)
Musk, civet, ambergris, castoreum — now nearly all synthetic, but with histories of extraction and exploitation that shaped entire industries. The transition from animal to lab and what it cost.
Janice Wu
Plate VI · Citrus & Fresh
The democratic molecules
The 1990s aquatic revolution
Calabria · Synthetic · Calone: USA
Bergamot, neroli, petitgrain, calone, dihydromyrcenol. The 1990s aquatic revolution — how synthetic "freshness" became the dominant aesthetic of mass-market Western fragrance and what it replaced.
Chapter III The curator
Arabelle
Sicardi
Curator · Perfumed Pages
Taiwanese American They / She Beauty writer Queer Scentiments columnist
"Beauty is an art form, an act of care, and a tool of political possibility. Fragrance is where those three things get the most interesting — and the most dishonest."
The House of Beauty — W.W. Norton
Allure · Harper's Bazaar · Elle · The Cut
Institute for Art and Olfaction
Perfumed Pages event series
Statement of position

Arabelle Sicardi is a Taiwanese American beauty writer whose work focuses on beauty as an art form, an act of care, and a tool of political possibility. Their book The House of Beauty (W.W. Norton) investigates the power structures — colonial, capitalist, patriarchal — behind the beauty industry. They've been a recurring judge for the Institute for Art & Olfaction Awards, the Coveteur Beauty Awards, and are considered by CULTURED Magazine as one of the top fragrance critics working today.

Perfumed Pages began as a hybrid workshop pairing scent with creative writing prompts and informal gatherings celebrating scent culture. It expanded with focused workshops centering diverse perfumers working today, growing from their belief that fragrance education should start where the history actually starts — not with Chanel N°5, but with Tapputi-Belatekallim in 1200 BCE Assyria, and with Al-Kindi in Baghdad, and with the Kannauj attar tradition that predates French perfumery by centuries.

The project and its events have been covered in T Magazine, Dazed, Allure, and elsewhere.

From the curator's desk · new in paperback
The House of Beauty
Lessons from the Image Industry · W. W. Norton

Arabelle's book on the power structures — colonial, capitalist, patriarchal — behind the beauty industry. The same politics that shape this curriculum, at book length. Out in paperback October 20, 2026.

Pre-order the paperback →
Chapter IV Appendix A · the kit

Forty vials. Pre-diluted. Bought direct.

Perfumer's Apprentice · Perfumery Notes Kit · $107 · 40 pre-diluted materials, ready to sniff. You buy the kit directly from PA — no markup, no middleman. The curriculum lives in the members-only dashboard.
Kit · 01
Linalool
Synthetic · 4.64% dilution in DPG
The molecule Western "cleanliness" is built on. Present in 60–90% of scented cosmetics. You've been smelling this your entire life without knowing its name.
Kit · 02
Hedione
Synthetic · Firmenich, Geneva, 1962
The diffusion molecule. Activates pheromone-response pathways (NeuroImage, 2015). At 12% in Eau Sauvage it changed perfumery forever. Study what radiance actually means.
Kit · 03
Frankincense
Boswellia sacra · Dhofar, Oman
Used in ceremony since before recorded history. The Incense Route. The material that connected the ancient world. Smell it and understand why empires were built around it.
Kit · 04
Vetiver
Vetiveria zizanioides · Haiti / Java
Smoky, earthy, rooty, otherworldly. The perfumer's fixative of choice. A material with deep Haitian agricultural history that rarely gets mentioned in fragrance marketing.
Kit · 05
Rose absolute
Rosa damascena · Bulgaria / Turkey
The most expensive natural material per gram after oud. The Taif rose, the Damascus rose, the Bulgarian rose — all the same species, all different worlds. Start learning to distinguish them.
And 35 more
Full archive
Six continents · Ancient to synthetic
You buy the kit directly from Perfumer's Apprentice — $107 for all 40 materials, pre-diluted and ready to sniff. Enrollment gives you the members-only dashboard: my notes on every material, political and sourcing context, scent profile maps, exercises, and the full tool suite. One material, fully understood, per week.
Chapter V The system

This isn't a PDF and a Zoom link.

I built out a custom interactive platform for this program, inspired by my own needs and the needs of years of student feedback.

When you sit down with your kit, you have tools that work alongside your nose: an Accord Builder for combining materials into classic fragrance families, a Perfume Deconstructor that maps your kit materials into iconic perfumes so you can sniff along, and a Timed Sniff Notepad with auto-timestamps for structured sensory testing.

As your vocabulary develops, a Smell Word Cloud tracks the language you reach for — words grow larger as you use them more. Flashcards cover study, visual identification, and quizzes. A Scent Journal captures how your perception shifts week to week.

And for context beyond the vials: a Comparison Wheel mapping the full 40-material archive by scent family (including the ones not in your cohort's rotation), and a Bookshelf of essential reading across perfumery science, history, and craft.

Explore the Origins Map, Bookshelf, and Hall of Fame right now — no enrollment required. Cohort members can suggest books to expand the Bookshelf at any point, or promote their events via the Classifieds.

Desk notes · the recurring questions.

Chapter VI · FAQ · eight items
i. Do I need any prior fragrance knowledge?
No. The curriculum assumes you can smell and that you're curious. It does not assume you know the difference between a terpene and an aldehyde. We build that vocabulary from the ground up, with the political context attached from the start.
ii. What's the time commitment per week?
Reading the material note: 20–30 minutes. Smelling exercises: 30–45 minutes over the week. Optional writing prompt: 1–2 hours. You can engage lightly or deeply — the archive remains yours after the six months close.
iii. How do I get the materials?
Materials are purchased directly from Perfumer's Apprentice. The kit is their Perfumery Notes Kit — $107, 40 pre-diluted materials, ready to sniff. An optional accompanying book is $20 (hard copy) or $15 (ebook). This keeps your spend with an independent supplier and gives you full transparency over exactly what you're buying.
iv. Are there discounts or payment plans?
Payment plans are the default — 4 monthly payments at no extra cost. New students: $150/month. Returning alumni: $124/month. You can also pay in full ($600 new, $495 alumni) if you prefer. This is the price; it isn't negotiated below these rates.
v. What does the tuition actually cover?
40 individual material pages — each researched, written, and designed by me with sourcing history, molecular context, cultural geography, and structured exercises. 12 live sessions — a lecture and a workshop every month for six months. 12 months of access to the full digital archive, plus the full interactive platform (Chapter V ½). If it hurts you financially to take this program, I want you to put your needs first.
vi. What makes this different from Scentbird, YouTube, or a weekend workshop?
Depth, politics, and tooling. Subscription boxes send you samples with no context for what you're smelling or why it matters. YouTube teaches fragrance as consumer opinion. Weekend workshops compress everything into a single session and call it done. This is six months with a rotating selection of materials from a 40-material archive — a political and historical lens on each one. You aren't watching content. You're building a vocabulary.
vii. What happens after the six months?
The live program runs September 2026 through February 2027 — six months of new material, live sessions, and cohort access. After that, you have six months of replay access to everything: the 40 material pages, all the tools, your scent journal, the full archive. When the next cohort opens, you have the option to rejoin at the returning alumni rate. The work you did doesn't disappear.
viii. Can a brand sponsor a seat?
Yes. Sponsorship means paying full price ($600) plus materials (~$107) for a participant to attend. It is not a brand placement, a discount, or an editorial relationship. Sponsored participants are full members of the cohort with the same independent curriculum as everyone else. Guest perfumers do not influence what I write about their materials, and sponsorship does not purchase editorial influence of any kind. Learn how you can support this program.
Not ready yet?
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2026 cohort $150/mo