Perfume is sensual, animal, dirty and luxurious. Perfume evokes emotion on deep levels. Scent is possibly our least understood sense, and to me the one with the closest connection to magic.
It brings rushes of memory. It is considered unAmerican, overly sexual, overly sensual, and dirty. In American offices it is often banned, I think because it scares people.
For a long time women were not allowed to buy their own (Estee Lauder’s Youth Dew changed all that) because it was too sexual.
It evokes things, and I think all that magic, all that sex, all that being dragged back into memory by a whiff of the air passing by is very frightening to the American establishment.
Perfume is revolutionary. I really do believe the right scent can change the world. The scents of the 80s are ideological, big and don’t care about who they offend, with both the good and bad individualism of the age, Thatcherite and yet also punk rock. 90s are watery and gentle, a pull back from the oversized 80s. The history of perfume is the history of everything.
Perfume is evanescent and precious and not something to underestimate the power of.
Thoughts From The Peacock Angel 