Body as Atomizer: Lucy McRae’s Swallowable Parfum Project
Swallowable Parfum is a project by Australian artist Lucy McRae, who explores the relationship between the body and the world at the …
Sissel Tolaas Knows the Smell of Fear
Smell enters directly into the limbic system. It triggers emotion. You identify first through your nose before you identify through vision. …
JK Huysmans on Perfume as Art
From Against Nature (À Rebours) (1884): For years now [Des Esseintes] had been an expert in the science of perfumes; he maintained that …
A Philosophy of Love: the Self and the Scented
“Does my heart move because I love someone who is an absolute singularity, or because I love the way someone is?”–Jacques Derrida …
Immaterial: perfume and contemporary art
When I began this blog, I intended it to be an outlet for me to get out my writerly urges, and …
The Liberated Woman: Feminism and Perfume Advertising
The late 1960’s and early 1970’s was an era of social and political conflict. As demonstrations against the Vietnam War were happening …
Dream Machines: Perfume as Signifier
Let’s begin with Michelle Obama. In her role as First Lady, the media doesn’t focus on her charitable work, her diplomacy, or …
David Lynch’s Perfume Surrealism
In the research I’ve been doing on awesome perfume ads, I realized that the CK Obsession ads I posted were directed …
80’s Perfume Ads and Camp: Calvin Klein’s Obsession
In 1964, the literary and art critic Susan Sontag published an essay in Partisan Review entitled “Notes on ‘Camp’” in which she enumerates …
The challenge of writing about smells
In 3QuarksDaily.com, Rishidev Chaudhuri writes a brilliant review of the now classic book on perfumes, “Perfumes: The A-Z Guide” by Luca Turin …
In 2010, the Museum of Art and Design in New York City appointed the former New York Times scent critic, Chandler Burr, to be the head of their newly created Department of Olfactory Art. Burr will … → February 16, 2012
The social significance of perfume: Antiquity
The Song of Solomon: Chapter 1 (excerpt) I have compared thee, O my love, to a company of horses in Pharaoh’s chariots. …
And suddenly the memory returns: Marcel Proust
Perfumers love Marcel Proust. The “episode of the madeleine” is the most famous passage from his multi-volume masterpiece, “À la recherche du …
The social significance of perfume: Introduction
Denyse Beaulieu interviews Antoine Lie on her fantastic blog, Grain de musc. Monsieur Lie has created scents for Burberry, Calvin Klein, Givenchy, …
Avant-garde style: is it possible in the perfume world?
Who doesn’t love Bill Cunningham? He’s been photographing New York fashion for decades on the streets of Fifth Avenue for the …
Baudelaire’s Perfumed Imaginary
There can be perfumes cool as children’s flesh, Like fiddles, sweet, like meadows greenly fresh. Rich, complex, and triumphant, others roll With …