Fragrance development produces experience. Very little of it becomes knowledge.
Every project runs through cycles of formulation, evaluation and revision — and most of what is learned slips away when the brief closes. ORIZOMIA builds the data, language and AI infrastructure that lets that experience accumulate.
Infrastructure
SystemsPublications
ResearchAdvisory
ServicesHow much of what the industry learns really turns into durable knowledge — and how much quietly evaporates with each “finished” fragrance?
The missing foundations of the olfactory domain, built as systems.
Perfumery has vocabularies without governance, documents without structure and literature without a common index. The ORIZOMIA framework — an eight-layer descriptor and governance architecture — separates what teams usually conflate. The systems below put it to work, and each is built to be audited.
Olfactory database
OperationalA versioned relational database that connects the commercial, chemical and regulatory names of ingredients across three languages, with semantic and chemical embeddings and a maintained canon of the 80+ fragrance allergens under Regulation (EU) 2023/1545. Every design decision is documented in written architecture records.
Document extraction engine
OperationalThe engine reads supplier documents — safety data sheets, allergen declarations, IFRA certificates — into verified, structured data. Each field stays anchored to the exact passage it came from; deterministic validators check CAS numbers, composition sums and allergens against the closed EU list. The output flags what needs review; it never declares compliance.
Retrieval over the literature
Internal useA retrieval engine over the olfactory literature with usage rights tracked source by source: answers are grounded only in sources the user is entitled to use, and the system refuses to answer when the evidence is thin. It is currently in internal use, with a per-source rights register.
CPA · Process observability
In developmentCycle Project Analysis — a quantitative diagnostic of how development projects actually move through documents: repeated versions, reopened decisions, informal handovers that leave no trace. The diagnostic yields formalised indices, a maturity scale, and an automated executive report; a front-end prototype shows the intended workbench.
Client formulas are never centralised: analysis happens within the client's perimeter, and leaves with the report.
Sources without a licence remain bibliographic references only.
Artificial intelligence proposes; a human confirms. Every automated step keeps an audit trail.
No compliance verdicts — review signals only. Regulatory responsibility stays where the law places it.
Thirty-two working papers on why the industry's knowledge stays tacit.
The ORIZOMIA research series examines the olfactory domain as an economic and linguistic system. The abstracts of all thirty-two papers are published below; full papers are available on request while public release is in progress.
Every white line is a curated, typed relation from the ORIZOMIA knowledge graph — hover it to read the relation, click a paper to highlight its connections. Cross-paper relations cover WP 01–16; the formalisation of WP 17–32 is in progress.
Structure and costs
Structural constraints of the domain, its cost structure, coordination costs and the functional coincidences that shape how fragrance work is organised.
Read the four abstracts WP 01–04
Structural constraints of the olfactory domain
A perfume cannot travel as a file: the olfactory stimulus coincides with the matter that carries it — a difference the paper takes as one of kind, not degree. Four layers of constraint follow — physical, systemic, socio-cognitive, regulatory-institutional — with recognition and playback separated as distinct trajectories. ORIZOMIA enters only at the close, as a neutral meta-institutional space for standards, language and pre-competitive infrastructure — together with the conditions under which the whole construction would fail.
The cost structure of the olfactory domain
Why can a perfume not be multiplied at zero cost, like a file? Because matter that enters the process must leave it in some form. The paper separates incompressible material costs, fixed by physics, chemistry and regulation, from compressible systemic costs born of informational friction. Its conclusion, argued in falsifiable terms, places the sector closer to structured chemical manufacturing than to any information industry — with a precise consequence for where the remaining margins lie.
Reducing coordination costs: a structural analysis
Not every cost in the olfactory domain comes from matter: a large share arises from how information is produced, exchanged and validated, and is in principle compressible without touching physical or regulatory constraints. The paper models these informational frictions and sets three criteria for recognising compressible areas; the analysis is logico-structural, not empirical, and states its KPIs and falsification criteria. Eleven operational fields, from formula development to audit, then take the test.
When grammar becomes law: functional coincidence in technical-institutional systems
In highly formalised technical-institutional systems, the line between producing a valid description and issuing a binding rule tends to collapse. The paper formalises this as functional coincidence — semantic, epistemic and decisional authority no longer distinct — and separates Domain-Specific Language from Domain-Specific Authority. The analysis is conceptual-structural: it clarifies, it does not prescribe. The question at its centre: under what conditions can a description keep the first two authorities without acquiring the third?
Taxonomies and language
Olfactory taxonomies and their genealogy, fragrance as social practice, brief ambiguity and vocabulary as shared infrastructure.
Read the seven abstracts WP 05–11
The ORIZOMIA taxonomy: a descriptive, relational and governance system
'Fresh' means one thing in a fine-fragrance brief, another in a panel report, a third in a safety dossier: a dictionary cannot carry that load. ORIZOMIA answers with an eight-layer architecture, from core ontology to ambiguity control, under explicit governance. Two moves set it apart: the reversed sequence Semantics, Ontology, Pragmatics — language precedes ontology — and ambiguity modelled as an object with predictive power, not an error to correct — a wager that divergence can be anticipated.
ORIZOMIA and the existing classification systems
Does perfumery not already have classification systems enough? The paper takes the question seriously, comparing six — Edwards' Fragrance Wheel, the French SFP families, houses' internal vocabularies, IFRA categories, Dravnieks' ASTM Atlas, ISO 13299 — along seven axes, from functional mandate to governance of change. Each fulfils its own mandate correctly; the finding lies in the space none of them covers, and in what coexistence — import, map, dialogue — with six working systems would have to mean.
Fragrance as social practice
Perfume taxonomies describe their object as a chemical-sensory entity; this paper turns to the substrate of social practices on which each rests. Five dimensions are developed — lexicon as cultural practice, scent as identity marker, embodied perception, ritual traditions, material labour behind the formula — with supply-chain sustainability emerging as a sixth. The thesis is not revisionist: technical taxonomies remain valid in their mandate. What none documents is what it presupposes — the substrate ORIZOMIA proposes to record.
A genealogy of perfume classifications
The classifications perfumery treats as natural orderings of smell are sediments of specific choices, made in specific contexts for specific purposes. The paper traces four phases, from pre-industrial manuals (1709–1860) through the synthetic revolution's named accords (1860–1973) to regulatory institutionalisation (1973 to today). The method is genealogy in Foucault's sense, not revisionism: each institution answered real problems, and its classifications remain valid within their mandate. The live question is the structural space they leave open.
Pre-competitive coordination in the olfactory domain
Wine, whisky, cocoa, olive oil and coffee have all developed shared descriptor systems; perfume alone has none. The paper treats that contrast as grounds for a hypothesis — a knowledge commons for the sector, in the Ostrom-Hess sense — offered as theoretically plausible, not empirically established: Ostrom's principles transfer only in part, and primary research is flagged as future work. The conclusion is methodological: right or wrong, depositing the argument first lets others contest it.
Irreducible ambiguity in fragrance briefs
The ambiguity of a perfume brief, the paper wagers, is not a drafting fault but an intrinsic feature of creative communication where shared vocabulary is structurally poor. Four types operate — lexical, pragmatic, contextual, intentional — and competence lies in knowing which to clarify and which to preserve as interpretive space. ORIZOMIA's L4 and L8 layers are offered as light scaffolding; the paper declares itself the first deposit in a field no peer-reviewed study has yet examined.
Formalised olfactory vocabulary as company infrastructure
A formalised olfactory vocabulary, the paper argues, pays off not as a composer's tool but as company infrastructure: value accrues across R&D, marketing, compliance, training, commercial relations and AI integration, largely through cross-functional effects rather than an additive sum. The supporting theory is verified; its application to perfumery is the paper's proposal. A dedicated section weighs what adopting AI before this linguistic anchor exists would cost — from semantic contamination and technical debt to supplier lock-in.
AI, regulation and limits
Structured olfactory coding for AI, regulatory compliance and machine assistance, contextual olfaction and the limits of AI in perfumery.
Read the seven abstracts WP 12–18
Olfactory AI as a structured-coding problem
No olfactory AI — graph networks predicting perception from structure, generative language models, recommendation systems — performs beyond the data pipeline that feeds it. The paper follows the chain from coding quality to model performance to operational decisions, and names the tetrad conditioning all three families: structured coding, calibrated panels, data governance, standardised documentation. Written for CTOs and R&D leaders, it fixes the technology's operating conditions — not the specialist competence each house must still build, or recruit.
Regulatory compliance and AI in the fragrance industry
AI in the European fragrance industry operates inside four regulatory frames: Cosmetics Regulation 1223/2009, Regulation 2023/1545 on allergens, the IFRA Standards with QRA2, and the AI Act (2024/1689). Their intersection is where an AI-assisted decision carries regulatory weight; the paper maps it and builds the operating framework, completing the triad of WP11's business case and WP12's technical feasibility. Written for compliance directors and CTOs, it precedes the technical investment; it does not replace it.
Standards, regulations and institutional gaps
The olfactory domain is among Europe's most regulated spaces, and among its poorest in semantic infrastructure: standards measure odour, govern its safety and environmental impact, yet none builds an ontology, a controlled lexicon or a governed vocabulary. The paper reconstructs the landscape and positions ORIZOMIA as meta-institutional architecture that integrates and translates rather than competes — a map, for the custodians of olfactory governance, of the space their own mandates leave uncovered.
Contextual olfaction
ISO sensory standards treat all five senses through one device: the neutral booth, calibrated on industrial taste analysis. That uniformity, the paper argues, fails olfaction: of Stevenson's three functional classes — ingestion, hazard avoidance, social communication — the booth suppresses two, serving panel calibration but not social practice. The proposal is an olfactory living lab with three domain profiles and an education pilot; the evidence is declared exploratory, not causal, awaiting confirmatory RCTs.
E = F(M, B, P, C): why olfactory experience is not additive
The same molecule yields different experiences depending on biology, memory and context; no single explanatory axis will do. E = F(M, B, P, C) treats olfactory experience as the non-additive interaction of stimulus, biology, psycho-mnestic profile and context, in nine conditional, falsifiable hypotheses tested across three scenarios that expose where single-component models break. The claim is not that the model is right but that it says what it asserts and what it ignores — hence falsifiable.
E = F(M, B, P, C) beyond the checklist
The literature accumulates variables — molecular structure, receptors, psychology, context — without specifying how they combine: a checklist, not a model. Within E = F(M, B, P, C), the paper formalises the criterion separating the two — at least some mixed partial derivatives differ from zero for biologically motivated pairs — mapped onto five implementation classes and an empirical agenda. The contribution stays declaredly formal: no dataset yet measures all four components at adequate N, and building one is the bottleneck.
The architectural limits of AI in perfumery
Debate on AI in perfumery swings between announced revolution and principled scepticism; both treat the limit as one threshold. The paper distinguishes three strata — architectural limits that data can dissolve, epistemic-structural limits that persist however much data arrives, institutional limits revisable by law. An explicit, falsifiable demarcation criterion assigns each constraint, from the roughly 5,000-molecule data ceiling to the perfumer's tacit knowledge — because confusing the strata, the paper argues, misallocates research and distorts expectations.
Aesthetics and knowledge
The autographic paradox, beauty without provenance, categories without foundations and the olfactory lekton — what fragrance language actually refers to.
Read the eight abstracts WP 19–26
The autographic paradox of olfactory art
Olfactory art is not transmitted but performed — on someone's body, at an unrepeatable moment, with a chemistry set by skin, temperature and hour. When panels rate AI-generated formulae level with a senior perfumer's, the anomaly becomes an analytical lever. The essay argues perfumery exceeds Goodman's autographic/allographic divide and needs a third category, the ephemero-corporeal work: algorithmic generation splits the aura of composing from the aura of experiencing. What remains irreducibly autographic — and for how long?
Without yesterday
A perfumer judges a fragrance on skin over hours; in that span a machine generates more formulae than a lifetime could assess. The essay names what generation does not contain: selective forgetting, which creative rupture requires (Nietzsche); embodied competence, built in time speed cannot shorten (Anders); incorporating practices, transmitted only in co-presence (Connerton). All three presuppose a subject constituted in time — and bear not on today's quality but on the conditions of tomorrow's.
Without where
Calabrian bergamot and Mysore sandalwood owe their value to a causal tie of place and chemistry: the molecule carries its terroir's trace. The essay reads the tie as Peircean indexicality, which generative perfume lacks: generalisation converts indices into symbols, leaving 'icons of indices', formulae resembling structures once bound to the world without being so. The loss is structural, not a data shortage; what results is a category founded on declared absence, awaiting its critical lexicon.
Free beauty, adherent beauty
The trade separates author perfume from market perfume without naming the frame beneath — Roudnitska's 1977 application of Kant's free and adherent beauty, which the essay recovers. It draws the consequence Roudnitska left undrawn: the evocative brief yields adherent beauty by structure of process, not by aesthetic inferiority. Production confuses categories under shared words; panels disagree because they never settle which beauty they judge; beyond the framework lies territory it does not cover — the olfactory sublime.
Apollo in the laboratory
Smell is immediate and name-resistant; a perfumer's training builds the opposite — classification, nomenclature, scales, families. The essay reads the opposition through the Apollonian and Dionysiac, a correspondence declaredly proposed, not authorised by Nietzsche's text; a genealogical lens then reopens three hierarchies — natural over synthetic, French over functional, niche over mass — as historical without being arbitrary. The tension, the essay wagers, is irresolvable — and productive precisely because, as in tragedy, it generates a third thing.
Three names for the same shelf
One line of perfumes carries three names — 'artistic' in the boutique, 'niche' in distribution, 'fine fragrance' in sales reports — used as synonyms for the serious perfume. The essay argues they answer independent questions — application, position, status — and their synonymy works as a circular loan: each term covers the gap the others leave, lending a guarantee none grants alone. The three referents still behave as distinct; it is that persistence that ends their tenure as synonyms.
Categories without foundations
Chypre, fougère, 'fresh', 'woody': perfumery treats its odour families as if they carved an order already present in things. Those families, the essay argues, hold up an entire industry while resting on nothing; the fault is not conventional categories — every trade uses them — but their presentation as discoveries when they remain choices. Are the families real or invented? The essay's ask is not abolition — only that the trade hold them for what they are.
The olfactory lekton
Naming a smell involves the molecule, its source and a third, elusive thing: what is said of it. The essay places olfactory meaning in that third layer, the Stoics' lekton, alive only while collective agreement sustains it: 'this is a chypre' is right or wrong against a norm re-granted at every use — a truth with an expiry date. Hence, for digitisation and archiving: a molecule can be fixed; the meaning a community gives it cannot.
Training, ownership, price
How a nose is trained, who owns tacit expertise, the comparative anatomy of the ineffable and the economics of the unsaid in luxury fragrance.
Read the six abstracts WP 27–32
The word on two levels
Terms governing the olfactory product are born in definition and end in positioning: 'alcohol-free' or 'hypoallergenic' carries two truth conditions at once. The paper names this slippage, classifies its forms by the definitional anchor's status, and adds a diachronic form where regulation empties the anchor and the name survives. Elsewhere gaps close with a measurement; the nose cannot verify the claim, so slippage turns permanent — and an honest taxonomy inherits the accounting.
The lexicon of ghosts
In perfumery's lexicon words outlive their referents uncorrected: 'musk' covers synthetics owing nothing to the deer; 'Mysore' promises an Indian wood on an Australian oil. The essay's explanation is a property of the sense, not weak vocabulary: olfaction offers no authority with a mandate over names, so no word is withdrawn when it turns false. A name is a position materials occupy in time, not a label — which changes what a faithful taxonomy must record.
Training a nose
Perfumery's core competence is partly, irreducibly tacit; the sector teaches the chemistry, which can be written, and leaves the rest to apprenticeship. The fault, the essay contends, is not that this knowledge resists writing — it does — but that it goes unscaffolded: a sample-anchored lexicon, a cross-cultural frame and calibrated individual differences would make it examinable and more open, the residue intact. The declared risk: scaffolding built inside proprietary house tools, not as public knowledge.
Who owns the nose
In autumn 2022 the Pantone colours went behind a subscription: the colour survived; its name acquired a price. Colour rested on a public standard; smell has none — no shared base of 'primaries' — so the new 'odour map' can be licensed with nothing open to resist it, and secrecy, data and supply-chain control meet no counterweight. The best reading of odour is already someone's property. What, the essay asks, would a common floor beneath it require?
A comparative anatomy of the ineffable
Every expert trade knows more than it can say; what differs is how much becomes public — by notation, or by sample-anchored lexicon. Olfaction, the essay argues, comes last on both. Nature bars notation: no handful of 'primaries' composes all odours. Nothing bars the lexicon: wine, mostly smell itself, built its aroma wheel and calibrated panels. That gap is partly institutional — compressible, not eliminable; scaffolding does not democratise but moves the threshold from secret to code.
The price of the unsaid
A luxury perfume costs as much as a small appliance; the liquid inside is worth a few euros. Many conclude the buyer pays for an illusion; the essay argues the reverse: ineffability is a defended asset — comparable on the hedonic plane, yet kept beyond comparison on rare materials, author-nose and story, by the known mechanism of obfuscation. As dupes make the hedonic comparable, where the value sat starts to show — and whom the silence served.
Essays & articles
An eleven-essay series in Italian for a broader industry readership, alongside articles in English written for the international trade press.
Request →Working documents and detailed specifications are available on request.
Measured services for fragrance and cosmetics companies.
CPA stands for Cycle Project Analysis: a repeatable measurement of where a development cycle loses time and money in its documents. Engagements are fixed in scope and price, and produce documented, comparable results. Two things are deliberately excluded: subjective judgement about your people, and compliance verdicts.
CPA Screening
A preliminary check: how much of your development cycle is actually measurable from its documents, with a written result. It runs on existing material, under NDA.
CPA Pilot
A full measurement of one development cycle: where time and money are lost in repeated versions, reopened decisions and untracked handovers — with a technical report and an executive summary.
Allergen readiness audit
The state of your allergen declarations and supplier documentation against Regulation (EU) 2023/1545 and the applicable IFRA Standards — assisted by the extraction engine, verified by people.
Start small by design: a screening before a pilot, a pilot before anything larger.
If the measurements do not justify the next step, the honest outcome is to stop — and the reports say so.
Fixed scope, fixed price, no success fees. A mutual NDA is signed before any document exchange.
Screenings run on ORIZOMIA's internal tooling and are reviewed by hand. Client documents are processed in a segregated environment, are never used to train models, and are returned or deleted when the engagement ends.
Start with a conversation.
Enquiries about the systems, the research series or advisory engagements are all welcome. We reply within two working days with a concrete next step.
ORIZOMIA is the work of one person. Daniele Saro is an independent researcher and consultant in data and AI for perfumery and beauty; he came to the sector from finance, holds degrees in financial economics (Trieste) and philosophy (Vita-Salute San Raffaele), and completed the Italian Perfumery Institute's Fragrance Evaluation programme.
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