During the time when Chalida Kunalai, a scent designer, was creating a mackerel odour for a set of 12 children's books titled Ni Than Lom Hai Jai (Scent Tales), a cat often roamed near the front door of her office, NOSEstory. Eventually she let the cat in the office, where it indeed nosed around to find the appetising fish. There was no mackerel, but there was some proof Chalida had succeeded.
Scent Tales is divided into three odour categories -- pleasant, undesirable and hazardous -- to educate visually impaired children. It's an ongoing project in which NOSEstory collaborates with many people and organisations, including the publisher Mana, creative agency Rabbithood Studio and story writer Ruxsita. As a group they work closely with two visually impaired people who provide initial feedback. The project is sponsored by the global flavour and scent manufacturer Givaudan.
"In schools, students are taught to use their eyes and ears, but they are not usually taught to use their sense of smell. Scent Tales narrates stories with settings both inside and outside a home such as a bathroom, kitchen, street, hospital, farm and historical park. This set of children's books was created to help visually impaired children use their sense of smell to navigate and detect hazards in their surroundings. The first few books focus on odours in the home because we want visually impaired children to initially practice their sense of smell inside their house before going outside. After they get better at using smell in their own homes, other books in the set guide them about smells in other places," said Chalida.
"The set of children's books is named Scent Tales because people usually notice their surroundings using their senses of sight, sound and touch, but the sense of smell is often overlooked. If visually impaired children are not taught about the smell of smoke and burning, they will not be aware of the danger and by the time they realise it, it may be too late to escape from a hazardous situation. When we presented the project to Givaudan... they were impressed with the idea. We used to wonder why nobody thought about this before, but after we created odours of things and surroundings, we discovered creating them was very difficult."
After graduating with a master's degree in communication arts, Chalida started her career at an international perfume house. She worked in several areas before realising she enjoyed designing scents the most. Among Chalida's duties at the perfume house was creating scents for laundry detergent and softener as well as dishwashing products for Asian markets. She also had a chance to travel to other countries and learn about their cultures before creating scents for use there.
"Fragrances that I design come from my observation about people's way of life. There is no knowledge about it in textbooks, and so direct observation helped me realise that people are different. While Indian people prefer strong odours since their spices have a strong smell, Chinese people prefer light and natural odours because they do not add many spices to their food," she explained.
The term scent designer became known to the public when Chalida spoke about her job at TEDxBangkok in 2015. At the event, Chalida met one of the founders of the Blind Theatre and they decided to team up to create scented colours for visually impaired people.
"Visually impaired people select colours by reading braille on the colour containers. They know that the sky is blue. The Sun is red and the Moon is yellow because non-visually impaired people told them about it. They do not choose colours from their feelings. Thus, we created scented colours based on key words about colours. For example, when we see the colour white, we think about purity, childhood and comfort. Black links to darkness and discomfort. Then, we organised a small group of visually impaired people to experiment with scented colours. When a visually impaired young person picked the colour white, we wept with joy. It was overwhelming to know that visually impaired people now have tools to express their inner feelings through their artwork," she said.
Her project involving scented colours, called Nose Project, later paired 10 visually impaired people with 10 non-visually impaired people and let them work on paintings together. The twist here was that the non-visually impaired people were blindfolded. At the end of the project, their artworks were displayed at the exhibition "Everyone Can Do Art: Imperfect" at Paragon in 2018. After the project, Chalida and her crew created more scented colours and gave them to the Bangkok School for the Blind. One of the participants, Waruncharat Laaiadsin, became the first olfactory artist to use scent as a medium in Thailand.
Because of Nose Project, Chalida realised that her talents in scented design can be useful to society in several ways. Some of her more challenging projects have included creating odours of a dental clinic for the art exhibition "Tooth Clinic" by Note Krisada in 2020. Another interesting project was the art exhibition by Noir Row Art Space for which Chalida created odours reminiscent of American GI soldiers at an Udon Thani camp during 1957 to 1977. The artist explained to Chalida that the smell of an American GI was a mix of cologne, aftershave, cigarettes and menthol.
One of the toughest jobs for Chalida was when she had to create odours of the Saen Saep Canal for an exhibition about smells in Bangkok.
"The exhibition was opening the next day, but I still had not been able to create odours of the Saen Saep Canal. I had to figure out what causes the foul smells of the canal. I thought that people probably dumped their body waste and urine in it. Also, when boats sail in the canal, they stir up mud and cause a stink. I blended these scent notes together and they became the foul smell of the Saen Saep. Some scent designers may say they are experts in making good smells, but I am an expert in making foul smells," Chalida said with a giggle.
In February, Chalida organised the workshop NOSEstory 101 – Design Your Own Scent, which aims to provide basic knowledge about perfume and scent design as well as how to create a brand. The workshop filled up quickly and will be offered again sometime this year. The excellent feedback from the workshop reflects that new generations are enthusiastic about and interested in the fragrance industry.
"Many young people came to talk to me about the job of a scent designer and the scent industry. A father of a four-year-old girl asked me if his daughter could participate in the workshop. He told me he had noticed that his daughter likes to sniff things and ask about them. But unfortunately the workshop is for adults. However I'm glad that people recognise there is a career path in the fragrance industry," said Chalida.
Along with several projects as part of NOSEstory, Scent Tales is scheduled to launch in May after visually impaired students at the Bangkok School for the Blind and the Northern School for the Blind in Chiang Mai have experimented with the books.
"The teacher will read stories from Scent Tales to the students and the students will sniff the sample odours, which are in containers attached to the books. Some of the odours may not smell exactly like the real thing, but they will provide students with the idea of the smells in real life. We hope that the project will encourage visually impaired children to spend their lives outside. As of now, there are 10 sets of Tales Of Breath. If the test receives positive feedback, we will publish more books. Apart from the job at the perfume house, I like to work on many projects related to scents because people usually link scents to only perfume, but there is a lot more to them," said Chalida.
