Breathe in deeply through your nose... What can you smell right now? Can you identify it? How does it make you feel? Is it fresh, bright, pleasant? Nostalgic? Disgusting? How often do think about smell? If you only tend to notice when it's something particularly lovely - your favourite dish being cooked, a preferred flower - or horrid (let's not go there); you're not alone.
As this week's guest Susan Irvine explains, a couple of thousand years' of western philosophy has conditioned us to prioritise sight and sound, relegating smell to the senses' lower division. Why? Well, short of holding your nose (spoiler alert, there's some of that in this podcast!), smell isn't something we can generally choose to take in or shut out; it doesn't invite us to apply our discernment. But while the art and design worlds have long overlooked scent, that's changing. Agenda-setting creatives are using it in their storytelling - and we're not talking about perfume campaigns.
Welcome to the mind-blowing world of smell as material. We'll leave it to Susan to explain further.
Susan Irvine is a writer of excellent books including novels, short stories and non fiction. A former Vogue beauty editor, she's a current Visiting Lecturer at London's Royal College of Art, where she teaches a course on using 'smell as material' based in the Fashion Programme.
NOTES & LINKS
SUSAN IRVINE is journalist, lecturer and writer of excellent novels, short stories and nonfiction. She is the author of Perfume: The Creation and Allure of Classic Fragrances and The Perfume Guide, as well as the volume about Cristobal Balenciaga in the Vogue on Designers series. She's a fab person to talk about to about anything, but for our intents & purposes today, it's her role as a Visiting Lecturer at the Royal College of Art that draws us to her. For the past decade, Susan has been teaching fashion MA students about the concept of smell as material.
The course begins with Smell Immersion Week, during which students expand their understanding of the historical and cultural significance of smell, and what it takes to design a scent…
Susan Irvine. Image supplied.
SLEEPING BEAUTIES: REAWAKENING FASHION The Costume Institute’s spring 2024 (May - September 2024) exhibition “reactivates the sensory capacities of masterworks in the Museum’s collection through first-hand research, conservation analysis, and diverse technologies—from cutting-edge tools of artificial intelligence and computer-generated imagery to traditional formats of x-rays, video animation, light projection, and soundscapes.
When an item of clothing enters the Costume Institute collection, its status is changed forever. What was once a vital part of a person’s life is now a motionless ‘artwork’ that can no longer be worn or heard, touched, or smelled. This exhibition reanimates these objects, helping us experience them as they were originally intended—with vibrancy, dynamism, and life.
The exhibition features approximately 220 garments and accessories spanning four centuries, all visually connected through themes of nature, which also serves as a metaphor for the transience of fashion. Visitors will be invited to smell the aromatic histories of hats bearing floral motifs; to touch the walls of galleries that will be embossed with the embroidery of select garments; and to experience—via the illusion technique known as Pepper’s ghost—how the ‘hobble skirt’ restricted women’s stride in the early 20th century. Punctuating the galleries will be a series of ‘sleeping beauties’—garments that can no longer be dressed on mannequins due to their extreme fragility.” Discover here.
2024 The Garden installation at Sleeping Beauties: “Garments in this gallery have been reawakened by reproducing their smell molecules. The process involved extracting the molecules using a microfilter to trap air and moisture drawn through a glass barrel with a pump. The molecules were adsorbed and then analyzed using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, allowing for their identification and replication. The peak molecules from the objects in this gallery listed below can be smelled in the corresponding numbered orb on this wall.”
SISSEL TOLAAS is a Berlin-based Norwegian smell designer, artist, chemist, researcher and odour theorist working across research, commercial and creative innovation. While smell is Tolaas's medium, her approach to scent is anything but conventional; for the artist, smell is information.
“Her stated mission is beyond the world of perfume: it’s to help the world reclaim its olfactory systems, especially here in the “smell-blinded” West. The thousands of smell samples that are archived in her lab are aimed at exploring and uncovering (rather than camouflaging) the world’s odorous realities, an unflinching collection that includes sweat, toys, rotting bananas and dog poop.
Tolaas’ exhibitions have not been without controversy. In a show at the Foundation Cartier in Paris, she simulated the smell of the city by capturing the aroma of ashtrays and slaughterhouses. With her 2006 exhibit “the FEAR of Smell — the Smell of FEAR” at MIT’s Visual Arts Center, she synthetically rendered the smells of men prone to acute, chronic fear, creating special “scratch & sniff” panels that visitors could touch to release the respective odours.” Read about the rest here.
ANNICK GOUTAL founded her eponymous fragrance house in 1980. Here’s a good article about her legacy.
JACQUES POLGES was Head Perfumer at Les Parfums Chanel for 35 years from 1978. He retired, he was succeeded by his son Olivier Polges.
ORRIS is a rare perfume ingredient sourced from the root of the bearded iris flower. Here’s a lovely BBC article about the age old way they harvest.
RHINOLOGY is the medical science devoted to the anatomy, physiology and diseases of the nose and the paranasal sinuses. SIMON GAIN is a consultant Rhinologist and ENT Surgeon at the Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital and Moorfields Eye Hospital. He’s the one who turns up during Smell Immersion Week and gives students a closeup of the back of his nasal passage…
Connections between the different cerebral areas in our brain show that the different senses interact with each other – this interaction is called CROSS MODALITY.
PROFESSOR CHARLES SPENSE is Head of the Crossmodal Research Laboratory, at Oxford University’s Department of Experimental Psychology.
HOW DO WE SMELL? “Smell begins at the back of nose, where millions of sensory neurons lie in a strip of tissue called the olfactory epithelium. The tips of these cells contain proteins called receptors that bind odor molecules. The receptors are like locks and the keys to open these locks are the odor molecules that float past, explains Leslie Vosshall, a scientist who studies olfaction at Rockefeller University….” Read the rest here.
What if we can’t? ANOSMIA is the partial or total loss of the ability to smell, also known as smell blindness.
Susan mentions can’t, right? No, not that one. KANT, as in Immanuel. The 18th-century philosopher singled out smell as the sense that was “most dispensable” because “the pleasure coming from the sense of smell cannot be other than fleeting and transitory.” That’s one of the reasons that the visual has dominated Western philosophy at the expense of other senses. But there’s also this long-held idea that because we are less able to exercise our discernment when it comes to smell - smells literally invade us - this is the most base of the senses. Aha. Nice people prefer looking and listening. Kinda. Smell is a bit, well, on the nose, a bit animal.
That NOT ALL SMELLS ARE GOOD surely goes without saying, but when artists consider using smell as material, it’s a long way from striding down the perfume halls at your favourote department store. Cutting edge artists and galleries are using smell to make us feel something, often something visceral. Smell can super-charge an experience.
““And suddenly the memory returns....””
SMELL AND MEMORY are all tangled up. Susan gives the example of PROUST. Want to read the madeliene extract from Remembrance of Things Past? Here you go.
Turns out OLD PEOPLE SMELL REALLY IS A THING. “Contrary to harmful stereotypes of older people, age-related changes in body odour likely have nothing to do with personal hygiene. Instead, experts think it’s the result of odor compounds and bacteria interacting on the skin. The major odor compound at play is called 2-nonenal. When certain chemicals break down in the body with age, 2-nonenal is one of the byproducts. The breakdown of omega-7 unsaturated fatty acids may be the biggest source of 2-nonenal.” Read the rest here.
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