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The Scent of Rot

ROUGH TRADE #3 The Perfume of Refuse, Decomposition and Excrement (The third of three essays on unusual scent strategies) In the beginnings of Das Parfum, authored by Patrick Süskind, there is a grouping of expressions that I’d first read in the original German....

The Perfume of Sex

ROUGH TRADE #2 The Sense of Scent in the Most Profound and Personal Encounter (The second of two essays on unusual scent strategies) The design of the scents of evocation and emulation, storytelling legendary experiences It’s been said that perfume is the...

The Fragrance of Blood

The Fragrance of Blood ROUGH PERFUME TRADE #1 The Perfume of the Most Primal Liquid — the Scent of the Sanguine (The first of three essays on unusual scent strategies) I pricked my finger while I was sewing a torn shirt, and put the wounded in my mouth, to stop...

The Scent of Man

Exploring the Place of Masculine Fume: the Mind, the Memory, the Mystery of Maleness. There are those that might propose that any man being preoccupied with the idea of scent is a fool. What comes to mind is the self-styled buck that gets on the elevator wafting a...

You Smell Marvelous

What is the nature of the perfected marvel, in scent? Really — you smell marvelous? I got a note from Barneys New York. It was really about Byredo — I’d made some notes about them earlier. Y O U   S M E L L   M A R V E L ? Ben Gorham’s drawn up...

DUST

The scent of dust. The perfume of the journey. The spice of the road. I am sorting through a collection of delicate, sacred books. They come from many places, but like a bundled sanctum, they are all together — near by each other, in the darkness of a room that...

The Scent of the Prisoner

The Concept of the Fragrance — and the Prison. What’s Left in the End of Solitude? Listening to prisoners led Beaux to create perhaps the greatest perfume ever. I listen. I was talking to a prisoner — this, a casual aside — a man who’d...

TOXIC PERFUMES | Industrial Fragrances

Scents that celebrate urban experiences: the innovations of Comme des Garçons (and others) in fragrance concoction; there are fumes that might be called poisonous to some, others that live in the interpretation of city scents, industrially composed and material...