06 Monday Jan 2020
Posted in Advertising and Scent, Art and Scent
Bourjois is remembered today primarily as the brand behind affordable but high-quality fragrances like best-selling Evening in Paris (Soir de Paris), launched in 1928. Another pre-war release was Mais Oui (launched in 1938, no longer in production). Mais Oui’s bottle featured a flirtatious fan-shaped cap and a twist of two-sided, pink-and-blue ribbon.
18 Monday Nov 2019
Posted in Advertising and Scent, Art and Scent
“Freetrapper is our most modern masculine scent, but its origins are early America.”
Freetrapper is a fragrance from the NYC-based niche perfume house of D.S. & Durga, whose website goes on to explain,
“Beaver trappers were the cowboys of early America. Renegade mountaineers of the Jacksonian era who cut trails through the wild in search of beaver pelts — prized by hatters, doctors, and perfumers. Dark cedar, snake root, synthetic beaver castor, and wild bergamot.”
So far, so good. Frontiers…settlement…hunting…goods and trade. Earthy, animalic smells. I get it.
But there’s more to read, plus this ad that’s been appearing in my social media feeds lately:
14 Thursday Nov 2019
Posted in Art and Scent
yasiin bey (American, born 1973). Alämayyähu and yasiin, 2015. © The Third Line
I always try to keep an ear (and a nose) out for works of olfactory art that I can visit in New York. This time, the opportunity has come right to my workplace, in yasiin bey: Negus (November 15 through January 26 at the Brooklyn Museum.
From the Brooklyn Museum website:
“We present the U.S. debut of yasiin bey: Negus, a listening installation of yasiin bey’s latest studio recording, which will not be released in any digital or analog mediums. . . .The latest in a series of international presentations of Negus, the exhibition acknowledges the importance of hip-hop as a fundamental American art form by making the 8-track, 28-minute recording available without the distractions of technology. . . .In addition to Negus, the exhibition includes artworks by Ala Ebtekar, Julie Mehretu, and José Parlá created in collaboration with bey, as well as original music by celebrated pianist by Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou.
Negus is presented as an immersive sound installation that can only be experienced in person. The recording is unavailable for purchase via digital or physical platforms. Bey designed the multi-track recording as an installation to encourage people to be fully present while listening to it.”
In fact, the experience is even more immersive than visitors may initially realize…
02 Wednesday Oct 2019
Posted in Art and Scent
If you visit The World of Anna Sui at the Museum of Arts and Design, you’ll come across a gallery space decorated to evoke Anna’s boutiques (and her apartment), with black lacquer dressing tables and cabinets lavishly stocked with boots, handbags, jewelry, and yes — perfumes.
I really wished I could have opened that cabinet and sampled some of the fragrances while viewing the show! Of course, as a museum person, I understand why that’s not possible…but I couldn’t help playing a mental game of matching the fragrances to various looks and “archetypes” in the exhibition.
Here, I’ve paired a few of my photos from the show with quotes from Anna Sui herself and some of her branded perfumes. Read on for my thoughts…
24 Wednesday Apr 2019
Posted in Art and Scent
A pleasant surprise during a hectic day: I found out that my presentation “Frida Kahlo: A Perfumed Portrait” had been covered by two writers for the All Arts website.
I’m grateful to Gillian Edevane and Britt Stigler for attending last Thursday’s event and writing such a detailed and observant summary of my talk and Kahlo’s taste in fragrance.
You can read it here!
28 Thursday Mar 2019
Posted in Advertising and Scent, Art and Scent
Fragrance aficionados don’t pay much attention to Elizabeth Arden’s fragrance line these days, and I can’t really blame them (us)—the brand’s perfumes, and even their marketing, aren’t too memorable…
28 Monday Jan 2019
Posted in Art and Scent
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Andy Warhol, Polaroid photograph, 1979. Via Kasmin Gallery
I just re-read The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again and enjoyed it much more than my first reading, more than a decade ago. Plus, I was even happier to re-familiarize myself with some of Warhol’s thoughts on perfume. Here’s an excerpt…
14 Wednesday Nov 2018
Posted in Art and Scent
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I came across this delightful piece of printed ephemera on the New York Public Library website. It was produced by the French lithography firm of Lithographie F. Appel and it probably dates to the 1880s. It’s a trade card from a series promoting the shops and businesses of the city of Saint-Denis, just north of Paris. In this image, a perfume bottle is transforming into a woman, or vice versa—we’ve all been there, haven’t we?—while surrounded by other toiletries, a powder puff, and an artist’s palette. It’s a nonsensical image, like some kind of “Alice Through the Belle Epoque Looking-Glass,” and I love it.
Image: The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library. c1876-1890. Scrapbooks of colored advertising cards in English and French: volume 3.
30 Tuesday Oct 2018
Posted in Art and Scent
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“I am my own muse. I am the subject I know best.”
I’m currently reading Frida Kahlo: Making Myself Up, edited by Claire Wilcox and Circe Henstrosa and published by the Victoria & Albert in 2018. It’s the companion publication for the exhibition of the same name, open at the V&A through November 4, 2018.
This exhibition includes art by Kahlo and photographs of Kahlo taken by an international roster of photographers, some of whom were personal friends of the artist. Its main theme is Kahlo’s keen sense of self-presentation and her symbolically (and literally) layered self-fashioning, exemplified by rarely seen objects from Kahlo’s home in Mexico City—intimate possessions like clothing, accessories, jewelry, and cosmetics.
