Ostrom - Perfume: a century of scents

Contents

Signature scents and now lost masterpieces; the visionaries who conceived them; the wild and wonderful campaigns that launched them; the women and men who wore them every perfume has a tale to tell.

Join Lizzie Ostrom, dubbed the Heston Blumenthal of perfume (Daily Mail), on an olfactory adventure as she explores the trends and crazes that have shaped the way weve spritzed.

Lizzie Ostrom is one of the most exciting commentators on all things perfume. A lifelong fragrance fan, she began hosting events for people to discover the world of scent in 2010, under her alter ego of Odette Toilette. From evenings on the aroma of outer space to scent tours of art galleries and trips to the past through perfume, Lizzie brings intelligence and wit to this most ravishing of subjects. She has worked with many fashion brands, as well as cultural and scientific institutions including Tate, the Royal Academy, Royal Institution, Royal Observatory Greenwich and The British Museum. She is also the co-host of the popular podcast Life in Scents. Lizzie lives in London and her favourite perfume changes far too often.

www.odettetoilette.com

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Epub ISBN: 9781473506084
Version 1.0

Published by Hutchinson 2015

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Copyright Lizzie Ostrom, 2015

Lizzie Ostrom has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

Cynthia Kittler has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the illustrator of this work.

Please see , which constitutes an extension of this copyright page

First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Hutchinson

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9780091954536

For Dan

S CENT IS THE SILENT AND invisible companion that marches through our history. Sprayed or dabbed on in the mornings as we blink out the sleep in our eyes, and more emphatically in the evenings when it is time to be noticed as we play, it comes with us as we go about our lives. Some scents cling, koala-like, to their owners for decades, till death do them part. Others are not so fortunate, getting a few years, or months, before the next one knocks them over the head and steals their place. Some become fossilised into a certain life-stage: my first perfume; college; travel; living in that damp flat that got burgled; that weird six months we dont talk about.

Scent has radiated from the collars of politicians as they stand on the steps triumphant, and when they leave, hounded and broken. It has been dabbed on by performers getting into character for their next role. And it has been present even playing a supporting or confidence-boosting role in negotiations, tussles, crimes, parties, productions and seductions, in instances both infamous and prosaic. Scent, depending on who is wearing it and why, can mean power, emancipation, beauty, perversion, belonging or escape. It can stand for a movement, a tribe, a sub-culture. It can represent tradition or, as with patchouli oil in the 1960s, its rejection. Even after a persons death, scent offers a resurrection of sorts: we cannot speak to our loved one again, but we can smell their perfume on their clothes, almost as if they have only just taken off a favourite jumper.

When it comes to the initial sales pitch, this most puffed-up of products, often commanding eye-watering prices, is certainly boastful about its potential. It needs to be. After all, this is alcohol with added bits. Its one of the most indulgent pleasures and, in an age of sanitation and disinfectants when we rarely need to cover a stink, sits so far up Maslows hierarchy of needs that the angels in heaven just saw a bottle shoot over their heads. When we are sold perfume, we are accustomed to also being sold the idea of a life we will never have. Of course sex whether in a penthouse overlooking the Eiffel Tower or in a floral meadow carefully cleaned of cow dung is a part of this. But with models lying draped across a lawn, chaise longue, bed or cliff-top, it also sells a mind-altering languor, a mood that is carefree, untroubled and peaceful. In enticing us towards this state, there is a fuzziness in perfume, a nonsense logic all too familiar from screen commercials with their bizarre moodscapes. To pastiche: She knew his essence. It was theirs. Their moment.

When it roams into la-la territory, perfume risks becoming the next emperors new clothes, more snake-oil even than bottled mineral water. Music is the pulse of an era, a portent of unrest, of revolution. Fashion demonstrates ideas about self-expression and acceptability. But perfume? A bit trivial, isnt it? What could it possibly have to say?

We are told that olfaction is the magic key to unlocking memory, and sometimes we do have a vivid picture connected to a particular smell. If we are lucky, it might be from an idyllic moment in childhood, when we had our own treehouse and hosted a tea party for the squirrels; if we are unlucky, it could be the classroom at school where we got thumped. But more often when we smell something not quite familiar, catching a whiff off another persons coat, it is as though we have been kidnapped and taken to a remote landscape. Blindfolded, disoriented, we sense something of the place but are unable to distinguish exactly where we are. There is that frustrating feeling of recognising a smell, of knowing we know it, but being completely flummoxed as to its identity. After a friend tells us thats Paco Rabanne and puts us out of our misery, there is that moment of relief. The Rubiks Cube is solved! All is well with the world. When fragrance more often than not renders us dumb, how are we supposed to start articulating its important role in our history?

Nearly all of us, though, are expert readers of scent. We may not be able to decipher individual notes or name the perfumer, but we are good at making judgements in order to place what we smell. These responses are personal to us, and they can feel unshakeable: That smells young. This one smells like my grandma. That one over there smells vintage. This bottle is cheap. That ones expensive. That ones for hippies. Thats for one-night stands. If we were to cluster together these archetypes the trashy broad, the femme fatale, the old crone we would be in the latest David Lynch project.