64. Scented Reliquary

Pink Pepper. Bergamot. Vetiver. Osmanthus. Cassis. Iris. Cedar. Tuberose. Cherry. Juniper. Apple. Basil. Cardamom. Black Tea. Oud. Tobacco. Civet. Papyrus. Ambrette. Iso E Super. Seaweed. Gunpowder.

Pink Pepper. Bergamot. Vetiver. Osmanthus. Cassis. Iris. Cedar. Tuberose. Cherry. Juniper. Apple. Basil. Cardamom. Black Tea. Oud. Tobacco. Civet. Papyrus. Ambrette. Iso E Super. Seaweed. Gunpowder. Just a few notes in perfume that I’ve been gravitating towards lately. 

I’ve been trying to pinpoint where my fascination with histories of perfumery and fragrance began. Perhaps as early as wandering around department stores with my mom as a little kid, sampling their inventory when my head could barely reach the top of the perfume counters. It may have been a trip to a museum, like when I went to MAD’s groundbreaking exhibition The Art of Scent—where I got to smell my way through olfactory design history through scented indents in the wall—or when I stumbled across Folie À Plusieurs’s perfume inspired by the New Museum. Since then, I got to try making fragrance and continue sharing my olfactory opinions and recommendations online.

I have been so lucky to meet many great artists and creative perfumers throughout my journey into cultural histories of olfaction, and I continue to train my nose today. For this newsletter—on a subject dear to my heart—I didn’t want to just share a shopping list and affiliate links. Instead, I hope I can bring you into this complex sensory ecosystem I’ve been immersed in, using scent to make sense of the world around me.

TOUCH

Earlier this summer, I embarked on Arabelle Sicardi’s Perfumed Pages, a month-long program of creative prompts, workshops, and conversations with perfumers and fellow perfume-lovers. From July to August, we were encouraged to produce responses to a number of exercises in active smelling, sensorial immersion, and explorations into memories and feelings. I embarked on Perfumed Pages because I found myself in the classic post-graduation rut of wanting to jump back into creative, non-academic writing but feeling totally unable to actually do it. I found such a fun little community in my cohort, and I’m so grateful I got the opportunity to give feedback on work others generated over this period. I found these prompts really helped me flesh out some world-building for a science fiction short story I’ve been working about scent-making (no spoilers), giving me the experimental push I desperately needed. Can’t recommend it enough.

Of course, I had to read Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind for this month’s newsletter. It’s a cult classic among fragrance lovers for a reason. By far, some of the best descriptions about the experience of scent and the craft of perfumery I’ve encountered in literature to date. I was surprised at how satirically funny this book was throughout its brutal, grim story, with Suskind poking fun at French class hierarchies particularly in their fragrance industry. A gruesome feast for the senses.

Every once and a while, someone on the hunt for a new signature scent or a friend visiting from out-of-town will ask me where to go perfume shopping in NYC. My go-to recommendation has become Stéle. This place is so thoughtfully curated with perfume, incense, candles, and body care from an international array of indie and niche brands. Oftentimes, shopping for fragrance can feel really intimidating but I’ve found each experience to be wonderfully unpretentious and enriching with expertise about each brand’s unique storytelling and perfumery education more broadly. I highly suggest also signing up for their newsletter to catch one of their in-store events.

Hsuan L. Hsu’s The Smell of Risk: Environmental Disparities and Olfactory Aesthetics explores histories of olfactory literature and art and how smell has been used as an atmospheric tool of socioeconomic oppression, environmental harm, but also as an opportunity for decolonization and political resistance. Hsu draws on perspectives from disabled, Latinx, Asian, and Indigenous scholars and artists, as well as disciplines such as critical race theory and ecocriticism to make connections between the regulation of smells and their embodied role in social marginalization. At times a dense academic book, it should be a must-read for anyone interested in the olfactory.

LOOK

Once I heard that the Met Costume Institute’s Sleeping Beauties exhibition was going to feature sensory experiences designed by olfactory artist and historian Sissel Tolaas, I knew I had to go. Since the show explores this idea of reawakening fashion through the conservation and care for delicate garments and fabrics, I was curious about scent’s role in this historical exploration. Tolaas took an unconventional approach, with olfactory displays made from scent molecules extracted from individual pieces and recreated for visitors. You had a touch-and-sniff wall that released odors, could smell the remnants of a old wearer’s perfume, and see biochemical analyses of fragrances accumulated from years of wear and storage. Rather than recreating the obvious lovely, flowery scents, I liked that most smells were odd, off-putting, and sometimes downright rancid. A reminder of finding beauty even in fashion’s decay. 

Tucked into a corner of MoMA’s contemporary art wing is Montien Boonma’s House of Hope (1996–97). Signs around the gallery acknowledge the scented artwork, but it still doesn’t prepare you for stepping into the richly spiced room. Boonma constructed thousands of prayer bead strands with herb pigments and aromatic materials from Thai medicinal practices. The immersive smell experience is designed to envelope you like a temple and other kinds of protective, holy spaces. Boonma began this piece in the wake of his wife’s death after he turned to Buddhist rituals of healing to cope with her cancer diagnosis. House of Hope invites viewers to enter, inhale, and use the experience for an intimate moment of contemplation. 

Last year, I got to see the premiere performance of artist M. Dougherty’s Odor Organ and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. This olfactory work infuses the construction of fragrance with the language and playability of a musical instrument. For those not familiar, scents are constructed from individual notes and notes are blended together to form accords (example: rose, an accord, might be comprised of base notes like ionone beta and damascenone). The Odor Organ released scents of single notes yet, when multiple keys were played together, they produced familiar scents like leather and fig. I loved how Dougherty also explained the history of natural and synthetic notes and their production in perfumery as they activated the Organ, making the science of perfumery more accessible through sonic notation.

LISTEN

Every time I tune into an episode of Smell Ya Later, I feel like I’m joining a conversation with friends. Whether they’re interviewing perfumers and frag-heads, recapping the latest scent and beauty news, or reviewing perfumes, hosts Sable Yong and Tynan Sinks always have refreshing takes on smells and their role in our culture. Rather than solely focusing on the buzziest new releases, I love how their talks explore labor issues in the industry, histories of perfumery, and intersections of gender and race in expressions of fragrance. I always leave this podcast with new scents and brands to check out. A must-listen for newbies and smell veterans alike.

 In a recent trip to D.S. & Durga, I noticed a QR code by their checkout for the first time inviting me to check out playlists inspired by their different fragrances. Smelling can often feel like a synesthetic experience, with its embodied experience enhanced by the incorporation of other senses like taste, touch, and hearing. These playlists are just that, curated sonic explorations of some of their most iconic perfumes. My personal favorites? St. Vetyver, Cowboy Grass, and I Don’t Know What. 

I couldn’t talk about the intersection of perfumes and music without acknowledging the great work of Maxwell Williams of UFO Parfums. Williams is an olfactory artist, researcher, and DJ based out of L.A. Known for his “scent raves” (where fragrances are released onto the dancefloor), Williams’s explorations at this intersection have included collaborations with artists like DJ Python and the Institute for Art and Olfaction’s Nose Music project. In 2023, Williams curated 165 BPMs, a compilation dance music album and scent that rearranges scent molecules and sound waves.

LICK

When people asking me for perfume spots to visit in New York City, I always encourage them to step away from the usual selection of retail stores and pay a visit to Olfactory Art Keller. This contemporary art gallery is unlike others found in the city, with founder Andreas Keller focusing on showcasing olfactory artists and perfumers. Each show is a unique sensory experience, with the smells acting as creative mediums and tools for artistic exploration. In addition to regular exhibitions, Olfactory Art Keller also has great programming, like performances and workshops, that further enhances their curatorial mission to educate and experiment with fragrance.

Perfume Area, created by artists Laurel Schwulst and Sydney Shen, is a collection reviews of fragrances through brief, poetic text posts dedicated to “the savory funk of life triumphs.” Clicking through the site, you’ll come across surreal musings like “Mysteries are family” (Aesop’s Hwyl) or “This national park is confusing” (Le Labo’s Jasmin 17). My particular favorite page is their dreamy list of perfume concepts.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how smells can help orient us in the places we live and how different food cultures or environmental practices give neighborhoods unique scentscapes reflective of their residents’ history. Back in 2016, architect Annie Barrett and her research team created a scent map of Gowanus. Inspired by seeing litter when walking her dog, Barrett wanted to chart the olfactive human impact on Gowanus and its notoriously stinky, highly polluted canal. Members of her studio collected their olfactory data by sniffing over several days at different times and weather conditions to account for their subjective varied experiences. I find it very interesting how Barrett ultimately categorized these different odors, like the organic smells of Gowanus’s marshy ecosystem and their contrasts between pleasant urban smells like lumber and food and unpleasant odors like exhaust, metal, and sewage.

In my quest to find a great perfume education, the Institute for Art and Olfaction continues to be such a great resource. I cannnot recommend them enough if you’re interested in scent history or learning perfumery. They have a great selection of online courses (a personal highlight was a scent and cultural history class I took over COVID lockdown with the wonderful Nuri McBride) and in-person materials workshops in their L.A. location (only time I’ve ever been sad I don’t live in California). There’s lots of offerings for novices and experts alike and their website has so much information on suppliers, perfumers databases, and their collabs, exhibitions, podcast, annual awards, and reference library. Truly for the creative scent nerds.

CLICK

Earlier this year, Are.na and Dirt collaborated on Scent Access Memory, a series of 12 essays that explored the role of scent in how we remember, how we experience, and how we present ourselves. The project featured a manifesto, techno-poetry, a generative art project, and an interview. Subjects grappled with smelling spirtual, carcinogens, scents inspired by cities, childhood memories, meanderings through a mall, scent and illness, fragrance and death, and traces of cherry chapstick. Each is a unique response to and interpretation of the smells we wear and inhale around us.

If you’ve ever been on a dancefloor, you may have caught a glimpse of people passing small bottles with phrases like RUSH on them under their noses. You may have even gotten a whiff of what they’re inhaling: sharply chemical that gives way to a sense of giddy, light-headed warmth. Despite being such a prominent olfactory staple in queer nightlife today, I realized recently that I knew very little about the history of amyl nitrites (known, more affectionately, as poppers). Writer Annie Howard also reflected on this for Them, which led me to Adam Zmith’s book Deep Sniff. Both writers seek to unpack this scented material beyond its associations with hypermasculine gay nightlife, inviting us to consider it as a fluid olfactory tool for embodied queer liberation and subversive pleasure inherited throughout the generations.

In 1992, the legendary Brian Eno shared his thoughts about perfume and scents with Details Magazine. “Scents and Sensibility” charts his exploration into fragrance from a collection of 50 strange scents he made with his friend in college to oils collected on his travels. Eno uses his obsession with fragrance to tease out bigger self-reflections on the state of the world, on finding fluidity amidst pressures to conform to organized systems, on letting oneself get lost in the creative process. Perfumery can be an unpredictable, volatile art, as ephemeral in the air as music. I’m still ruminating on this particular passage: “And the point for me is not to expect perfumery to take its place in some nice, reliable, rational world order, but to expect everything else to become like perfume.” Paired best with his 1993 album, Neroli. 

Like other facets of the beauty industry, the fragrance world has also been grappling with issues of sustainable sourcing and ethical labor. For Atmos, Zoe Suen explored how perfumery’s supply chains and love of natural and synthetic processes of harvesting and extraction intersects with issues of ecological crisis. By focusing on the pervasive ingredient of alcohol found in nearly every kind of fragrance, Suen sparks a fascinating (and much-needed) conversation about brand accountability, controlling greenhouse gas emissions, and thoughtful consumption.

I’m still trying to make sense of Heather Warren-Crow’s prose poem “Automatic Teller, 2010.” Warren-Crow recounts fascinating attempts at the conversation of ATMs into machines capable of dispensing fragrance. In a time when our economy can feel so abstracted from our daily lives (just numbers and graphs on our screens), Warren-Crow’s fragrance management system distributes ephemeral, yet vibrant, sensory experiences that brings users back into embodied feeling. Warren-Crow writes: “Fragrance is an active countermeasure to the injury of national currency.”