Plinth

Aromas are particularly evocative, I am told, because of the location of the olfactory bulb (which processes them) in relation to the parts of the brain which deal with memory and emotion. Smells can take you back in an instant, fling you through decades and across continents. They can make you smile or cry – I remember confiscating my housemate’s deodorant at university because it was the same brand as a recent ex had used, and I couldn’t bear to be around it. All this to say: I’m no connoisseur, but I know what scent can do. Armed with sentimentality and a resolve to ‘really concentrate’, I headed to Perfume, at Somerset House.

Perfume is arranged as a sensory extravaganza, unfolding through almost a dozen rooms and opening with a kind of taster space, wherein we find one stand-out scent from each decade of the 20th century. This is the only room (until we emerge in the gift shop at curtain’s close) where we’re permitted to combine the visual with the sensual, i.e., see the bottles in which each liquid comes; after this, things get a lot more abstract. Here, though, there’s a pleasing correlation between the character of a scent and its presentation: from the chic Chanel No. 5 (the bottle as timeless as the smell it contains) to the sleek CK One – defining scent of the 90s – the examples in this introductory room tell us as much about the societies which demanded their creation as the concoctions themselves. High glamour, you say? No problem – for the 30s woman, Schiaparelli offers ‘Shocking’: daring, animalistic and all packed into the shape of a female torso decorated with vivid glass flowers. A decade later, and things are feeling lighter – enter Balmain’s ‘Vent Vert’, all fresh grass and citrus, floating in the most pleasingly utilitarian little bottle you ever did see. I learn enough about the different families of scent – green, oriental, floral etc. – and the intricacies of ‘naturals’ v.s. synthetic ingredients to equip me for what lies ahead.

In this newfound spirit of self-education, I turn my attention to a wall plaque: “It’s no longer enough for us simply to smell sophisticated, sexy or alluring”, apparently. “Today, we want to smell of the new century – of hot tarmac, cold metal, ink, dust and sweat”. Crikey. “Focusing on ten key scents, and the perfumers who have created them, this exhibition takes the visitor on an olfactory journey through some of the most important perfumes of the last 20 years.” We’d better get cracking, then. I enter the exhibition proper: ten interconnecting rooms, each dedicated to my immersion in the experience of one particular scent, its inspirations and evocations.

For all the hyperbole of the exhibition text, I must admit to being more interested in the 21st century scents which await me than I am in the classics behind me – hey, I’m a modern girl. The danger (especially for a philistine like me) when it comes to more conventional perfumes is that they all smell like… well, perfume. Sure, this one’s more floral and the other’s full of musk, but they’re all variations on a theme of ‘getting ready for a night out’, or your mother’s posh friends. It seems that the contemporary perfumers featured in Perfume agree, and any/all conventions are gleefully thrown to the wind. The explanatory text is confined to the foyer; I’ll have to follow my nose, so to speak, from here on out.

Despite the lack of exposition, there’s no shortage of visual prompts. What I later learn to be Antoine Lie’s ‘Secretions Magnifique’, for instance, is inhaled from rumpled bedclothes. Am I getting notes of sex and bodies because of what’s being suggested by the setting, or because of the perfume itself? Well, both. I’m relieved to find that my initial impressions correlate with Lie’s intentions: this scent is composed of ingredients meant to mimic ‘milk, blood, sweat, semen and saliva.’ Yum!

Further into the Perfume maze, I find another set-up which expounds a notion – increasingly compelling – that scent needn’t be ‘pretty’ to be interesting. Perfume is perfume taken seriously. If Lie’s heady concoction proposes a means by which a scent can capture or interrogate the very nature of physical humanity, then David Seth Moltz’s ‘El Cosmico’ is approaching the same problem with a lighter touch. His scent – presented to me in little pyramids set amongst thorny branches, dry seeds, empty beer bottles and the cracked earth of an American desert highway – evokes the memory of an experience I’ve never had. Suddenly, I’m driving through the Midwest, elbow hanging out the open car window and inhaling the heat in the air (and I can’t even drive). I have, however, seen enough American movies to absorb this trope, and understand what it represents: freedom, hedonism, joyful and directionless existence. Summer. Lynn Harris’ ‘Charcoal’ achieves something similar with its notes of leather and smoky juniper, and suddenly I’m around a campfire (admittedly, this effect is helped along by the log seating and orange light in Harris’ room, but ‘Charcoal’ takes most of the credit). That’s not all, though – it’s not simply a question of linking smell with origin. Wherever I am, it’s as a child, gleefully up-too-late and wearing my father’s jumper around my shoulders. This is transgression and safety, hot and cold at once as the scent calls up the chill of evening and the delicious heat of flames licking frozen cheeks.

I was surprised to find that the scent which hit me hardest, emotionally speaking, was ‘Avignon’ from Bertrand Duchaufour. Basically, it smells like a Catholic church, full of incense and silence, cold radiating from stone slabs and centuries of devotion. I’m not faintly religious, and I didn’t grow up attending church either; nonetheless, that middle-class-family-on-holiday tradition of ducking into chapels and cathedrals on the continent filled my childhood, and there’s nothing quite like the stillness and strangeness of a religious building to shut up an overtired eight-year-old. Duchaufour’s dedicated space is based on a confession booth, complete with wooden panelling on the walls and the opportunity to sit for a moment; after a morning of very deliberate inhaling, a chance to exhale.

The last room houses ‘Dark Ride’, a deliciously tacky foil for Avignon’s sombre pomp. A homage to the 1980s in general, log-flume rides at Disney Land in particular, Killian Wells’ acid-green concoction is sharp and stale at once. Notes of chlorine and fog-machines mingle with the sickly sweetness of candy and mildew. I mean, I wouldn’t wear it – but, conceptually speaking, it’s probably the bravest of the bunch.

What moves someone is as variable as they are. There’s no telling, I don’t think, which of the ten installations in Perfume will strike a chord with an individual; they might not realise themselves, until they dive in. After all, who’d have thought the smell of Mass would do it for me? However interesting 'Dark Ride' proved, experientially speaking, it called up nothing from my personal lake of memories. But, perhaps for you – certainly for Wells himself – that particular combination of chlorine and sugar would usher in a flood of emotions, unaccessed since that family trip you took in 1985 where you broke your tooth and ate too much candy floss. To know for sure, you’ll have to head to Somerset House – perfume is a strange kind of magic.

By Emily Watkins.