{"id":234,"date":"2025-10-04T15:32:36","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T22:32:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/?p=234"},"modified":"2025-10-04T15:32:36","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T22:32:36","slug":"make-it-make-scents-the-evocative-power-of-perfume","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/archives\/234","title":{"rendered":"Make It Make Scents: The Evocative Power of Perfume"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Illustration by James Taylor \/ Harvard Gazette<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Have you ever been out in public and smelled a scent that brought you back to a certain time in your life? Or remembered a specific person?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I put on perfume, that is the goal that I set out to have\u2014to be associated with a fragrance so intimately that one can\u2019t help but remember me in public if they encounter it. I remember an anecdote my friend once recounted to me of her sleeping at a library and being woken up by smelling my perfume somewhere. She looked up and I wasn\u2019t there, but she knew at one point that I was. Thus, for me, my perfume mediates my expression of self in how it becomes part of my identity\u2014so much so that if I leave the house without putting it on, I\u2019ll go back to just ensure that I have so I can rid myself of the sense of something missing. On the other hand, for my friend, my perfume mediates her perception and memory of me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another friend once texted me that they put on an old hoodie that I borrowed in high school and the scent of my perfume had still been left behind on its collar. At that point, we hadn\u2019t spoken to each other in over a year, and I had changed what perfume I wore daily by then. How much more had changed between us, between how they see me, between how I saw them? Their memory of me was confined to that one instance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We forget that objects have a history. They shape us in particular ways. We forget why or how they came to be. \u2013 Sherry Turkle<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Dawn Goldworm, the co-founder of an \u201colfactive branding company\u201d explains that smell is the most developed sense in a child up until the age of around 10 when sight takes over; thus, \u201csmell and emotion are stored as one memory\u201d in your childhood. (Walsh, 2020). We can liken this back to Marcel Proust\u2019s evocative object (which Turkle (2007) put as \u201cperhaps the most famous evocative object in all literature\u201d): the madeleine. When dipped in tea, the madeleine brings Proust back to his youth, opening him to \u201cthe vast structure of recollection.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This phenomenon, aptly named the Proust effect, is when strong, vivid, and emotionally-charged autobiographical memories are involuntarily triggered by smell and taste (Green et al., 2023). Scientifically, this is because the part of the brain that handle smells and odours have a direct connection the regions of the brain related to emotion and memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One role of theory here is to defamiliarize them. Theory enables us, for example, to explore how everyday objects become part of our inner life: how we use them to extend the reach of our sympathies by bringing the world within. \u2014 Sherry Turkle<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

If we look at scent through the lens of Proust and relate it back to Charles Sander Peirce\u2019s Model of the Sign, we begin to see how scent emerges within a system of signification. In my case, my perfume becomes a signifier that represents me, the signified, through memory and scent-association. The interpretant is then capable of interpreting this meaning only if they have both encountered me and my perfume before. Scent becomes a means of language and communication in a way that is profoundly human: we understand it only in relation to and in terms of other things\u2014and memory is formed through a social system of constantly remembering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we go even further, then scent and perfumery become a powerful and evocative form of media, in the way that mediation is a form of negotiation between the mediator, our olfactory senses, and what is being mediated, our memory. Yet, this medium is often untapped. When we think perfume, we think of an aroma that is pleasant, fragrant, and palatable to be used for everyday\u2014but this limits and confines the form completely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The infamous Secretions Magnifiques from Etat Libre d\u2019Orange<\/a><\/em> seeks to subvert this by creating a nauseating, eerie odour reminiscent of melting plastic, sweat, blood, semen, rot, and perversion. Would anyone wear this perfume? The average person would say no for fear of smelling repulsive, yet reviews on Fragrantica, an online database for perfume enthusiasts like Letterboxd is for film and Goodreads is for books, describe it as \u201cdeliciously offensive\u201d, an \u201cexcellent conversation starter\u201d, and \u201ca work of art.\u201d This specific perfume becomes a medium for evoking a feeling that is vile and primal to the extent of disgust. It transforms the idea of perfume from being one for daily use into an object to be consumed as an art form that inspires memory in a guttural sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hence, if scent and perfumery are a medium of communication, then it is important to emphasize that, along with every other medium, it is also political and tied to institutions of power. Dr. Ally Louks\u2019 thesis on olfactory ethics presents this argument through the intersectional study of olfactory oppression by establishing the underlying logics of how smell creates and subverts power structures through film and literature (2024). A poignant example she uses is how in Bong Joon Ho\u2019s Parasite<\/em>, the rich associate the poor with the smell of sewage. Let\u2019s place this idea in the context of our everyday life: how often do we associate femininity with flora, masculinity with musk, wealth with cleanliness, ethnicities with the smell of their food? These associations have relevance in understanding what we know of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, my perfume can evoke the memory of me, but only if you know me. Recognizing that rose is feminine but Axe body spray is masculine and Aesop incense is upper-class but Bath & Body Works\u2019 A Thousand Wishes<\/em> is middle-class and so on is a learned behaviour. Our ability to associate a fragrance with a memory is limited by what we understand from our own experiences\u2014how we can put this unknown scent in relation to what we already know. That last part, what we already know<\/em>, is key. Certain scents become analogous to certain concepts and ideologies, which calls into question our preconceived notions and biases about gender, class, sex, and race. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I ask: what can conversations about the evocative power of scent teach us about how we see\u2014no, smell\u2014and thus perceive, the world?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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References<\/strong><\/summary>\n

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Green, J.D., Reid, C. A., Kneuer, M. A., & Hedgebeth, M. V. (2023). The Proust effect: Scents, food, and nostalgia [Abstract]. Curr Opin Psychol, 50<\/em>(101562). https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/j.copsyc.2023.101562<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Louks, A. (2024). Olfactory ethics: The politics of smell in modern and contemporary prose <\/em>[Doctoral dissertation, University of Cambridge]. Cambridge University. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.17863\/CAM.113239<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Secretions Magnifiques Etat Libre d’Orange. <\/em>(n.d.). Fragrantica. Retrieved October 4, 2025, from https:\/\/www.fragrantica.com\/perfume\/Etat-Libre-d-Orange\/Secretions-Magnifiques-4523.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turkle, S. (2007). What makes an object evocative?. In S. Turkle (Ed.), Evocative objects: Things we think with <\/em>(pp. 307-326). <\/em>MIT Press. https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/j.ctt5hhg8p.39<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Walsh, C. (2020, February 27). What the nose knows: Experts discuss the science of smell and how scent, emotion, and memory are intertwined \u2013 and exploited. The Harvard Gazette. <\/em>Retrieved October 4, 2025, from https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2020\/02\/how-scent-emotion-and-memory-are-intertwined-and-exploited\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/details>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Illustration by James Taylor \/ Harvard Gazette Have you ever been out in public and smelled a scent that brought you back to a certain time in your life? Or remembered a specific person? When I put on perfume, that is the goal that I set out to have\u2014to be associated with a fragrance so … Continue reading Make It Make Scents: The Evocative Power of Perfume<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93263,"featured_media":235,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[30],"class_list":["post-234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-other","tag-my-evocative-object"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/93263"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":240,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234\/revisions\/240"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}