I have had the very good fortune to develop a connection with an artform that I was almost completely ignorant of, one that I find captivating, uplifting, challenging and deeply meaningful.
Perfume.
My first encounter with perfume was a miniature of 4711 that lived for decades in the bathroom cabinet of my parents’ house. I would open it every few months to enjoy the curious way that it smelled. The next time perfume came into my awareness would be a recommendation from Loaded magazine: Issey Miyake L’Eau D’Issey Pour Homme. I purchased a bottle and it was the only thing I wore for perhaps 20 years. I had been given an answer and stuck with it.
Then I walked into UStudio on Gloucester Road, where at the back there is a perfume counter. The first few times I didn’t even approach it, somehow this was forbidden territory, in my mind there was a barred gate. I had a rule I was not even aware of: perfume is not for me, perfume is a frivolous luxury, and I should only buy things I need. But I noticed a tension because I was also pulled towards it, curious and hesitant.
Who had given me this rule?
Where was this story around luxury from?
What would happen if it dissolved?
In the last few weeks I have been thinking about how our experience of culture is shaped by narratives of necessity and luxury.
I perceive within myself and the wider culture a complex of narratives which paint essentials as good and non-essentials as bad. Within this framing to be a good and sensible person you must:
- not enjoy luxuries
- reject art
- ridicule culture
Real people, worthy people can only appreciate functional products. To think of meaning is an indulgent heresy. Arts funding is a waste of money that should be spent repairing roads. It is a material culture which seeks to eradicate the unseen.
I was disappointed to find this anti-cultural ideoform alive within me. I make art for a living and find the act of making meaning to be the calling of my life.
Luckily I was helped away from the path of ignorance by a friendly worker in Ustudio who caught my eye and asked if I would like to try any of the samples. Holding a strip of card I inhaled an enchanting complexity of fragrances all at once. I had never experienced anything like it: oh yes, this is creation, sensory exploration, I know how to enjoy myself. The gate was open.
Within perfume there are of course products, but there is also story, art, craft, experience. I have wept because the sharp smell of rhubarb in Jorum Studio’s Pony Boy awoke a vision 40 years deep in my memory of Sunday lunch with my grandmother, the garden green and bright in the sunshine. Thanks to the beautifully considered curation with the Shy Mimosa boutique I have felt the generosity of rose within Le Mat by Mendittorosa lift my spirit on the stage and open me to the present moment.
Just as to enjoy beer you don’t need to buy a whole barrel, I recommend finding out what you like with perfume samples, they are sometimes free and very often about the price of a pint. Discover what excites or disgusts you within your means.
Certainly we must have our essentials, and more of them, free food, water and shelter for all would be my ideal. But don’t let anyone set a rule for you to say you cannot enjoy what they deem a pointless luxury. Anyone who propagates this sense that only tables, chairs, and cars are worth caring about is a thief who has come to steal your joy, a con artist who wants to defraud you of the greatest inheritance we have: human culture.