Our own Dr. Jessica will be giving a talk next month for the Brooklyn Brainery — 10 Iconic Perfume Bottles: Culture and Design…
A custom scent
It turned out to be a custom scent. Mr. Guerrivil began with a base of Jean Naté After Bath Splash, then mixed in various scented oils bought on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. He pulled several vials out of a bag and started naming them: amber, bergamot …
— Reporter Kate Taylor, sommelier Pascaline Lepeltier and perfumer Céline Barel find out what summer smells like in New York City, and encounter everything from cabbage to the custom fragrance Jean Guerrivil uses to scent his cab. Read more at The Smells of Summer at The New York Times. Hat tip to Tara!
Holiday windows x 2
The holiday window reveals at Bergdorf Goodman and Barneys (below the jump) in New York City.
Adding an extra layer to the smellscape
Egner’s personal favorite haunted scent experience was another bait-and-switch scene: as visitors approached a dimly lit table, they could smell roast turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing, and see dishes piled high with food—which turned out, on closer inspection, to be cured hog guts and other viscera. “I’m sure that we ruined somebody’s Thanksgiving that year,” Egner told me gleefully.
The Soap Factory does make visitors sign a waiver before they enter the Haunted Basement. “It’s intense,” Egner said, adding that, most years, one or two patrons vomit during their visit (requiring a sanitary cleanup and adding an extra layer to the smellscape).
— Lillian Egner talks to the New Yorker about the use of smell in The Soap Factory's annual Haunted Basement in New York City. Read more at The Smell of Death.
Dover Street Market ~ shopping for perfume in New York City
If you’ve ever caught yourself saying or thinking that New York’s department stores have become too big, too bland, too same-old-same-old, then you need to schedule a visit to Dover Street Market as soon as possible. The original Dover Street Market opened in London (on Mayfair’s Dover Street) in 2004 and was followed by locations in Tokyo and Beijing. The Manhattan store opened in December 2013, stirring much discussion among architecture and design fans as well as fashion obsessives.
Rei Kawakubo, the designer behind Comme des Garçons and the founder and creative director of the entire Dover Street Market enterprise, is quoted as saying, “I want to create a kind of market where various creators from various fields gather together and encounter each other in an ongoing atmosphere of beautiful chaos.” The phrase “beautiful chaos” is perfect…