You are speaking my truth here. If anything viral perfumery puts me off even learning what these big hitter successes are about. I simply do not understand wanting to smell like the herd. Why, when you can smell uniquely you?
Sweet sticky gourmands, smelling of cake batter? Why? People aren’t cakes. A gourmand that has the musk & vanilla biscuit note of furry pet paws is vastly more interesting, beautiful & amusing.
To me it's always read like there is an affiliation that grows around certain products. Take Santal 33 for example. Even though it basically became a meme, for a period it was representational of a generation. People bought it because they either belonged to it or wanted to. I think people will always want to feel like they belong, but maybe trying to do so through perfume can also feel like stamping another identity onto your skin. But, in my opinion, this is another symptom of overproduction, which, ironically, can lead to less exploration and experimentation.
I agree that personal taste should always be the key factor in choosing and wearing a perfume, and with most of what you’re saying here.
But the part of me that needs a roof over my head and wants to be able to keep creating beautiful and interesting things would love for one of our perfumes to go viral and sell like crazy. 😩
Yeah, I totally get that. Thinking about it from a brand perspective, that totally makes sense. For me as a retailer, it can feel like a more difficult thing to support due to the extra logistical steps and also having an assortment of brands, all of whom I want to see thrive, which I saw happen at the last pop-up. That made me very happy. :)
What a well articulated commentary about not only online perfume culture, but also what virality is doing across all areas where nuance and understanding matters. Thanks for writing this!
Thank you! :) I feel that the brevity of the short form mediums where virality often happens also contributes to that. There's such a small amount of information that can be shared there. Aside from all of the issues with that alone, I feel that, over time, it also contracts the desire for nuance and the kind of curiosity that allows for deeper understanding. I think / hope we are reaching a point of recognising the oversaturation of everything, but I also have to wonder if even that rejection, or the performance of it, becomes another kind of erasure. We hold such a deep desire to connect, I sometimes wonder if anyone thought of how that need could potentially play out across forums with the potential for hyper-connectivity and, ironically, increased atomisation.
You are speaking my truth here. If anything viral perfumery puts me off even learning what these big hitter successes are about. I simply do not understand wanting to smell like the herd. Why, when you can smell uniquely you?
Sweet sticky gourmands, smelling of cake batter? Why? People aren’t cakes. A gourmand that has the musk & vanilla biscuit note of furry pet paws is vastly more interesting, beautiful & amusing.
To me it's always read like there is an affiliation that grows around certain products. Take Santal 33 for example. Even though it basically became a meme, for a period it was representational of a generation. People bought it because they either belonged to it or wanted to. I think people will always want to feel like they belong, but maybe trying to do so through perfume can also feel like stamping another identity onto your skin. But, in my opinion, this is another symptom of overproduction, which, ironically, can lead to less exploration and experimentation.
Love your definition (and defense) of criticism as a practice.
Thank you. <3
I agree that personal taste should always be the key factor in choosing and wearing a perfume, and with most of what you’re saying here.
But the part of me that needs a roof over my head and wants to be able to keep creating beautiful and interesting things would love for one of our perfumes to go viral and sell like crazy. 😩
Yeah, I totally get that. Thinking about it from a brand perspective, that totally makes sense. For me as a retailer, it can feel like a more difficult thing to support due to the extra logistical steps and also having an assortment of brands, all of whom I want to see thrive, which I saw happen at the last pop-up. That made me very happy. :)
What a well articulated commentary about not only online perfume culture, but also what virality is doing across all areas where nuance and understanding matters. Thanks for writing this!
Thank you! :) I feel that the brevity of the short form mediums where virality often happens also contributes to that. There's such a small amount of information that can be shared there. Aside from all of the issues with that alone, I feel that, over time, it also contracts the desire for nuance and the kind of curiosity that allows for deeper understanding. I think / hope we are reaching a point of recognising the oversaturation of everything, but I also have to wonder if even that rejection, or the performance of it, becomes another kind of erasure. We hold such a deep desire to connect, I sometimes wonder if anyone thought of how that need could potentially play out across forums with the potential for hyper-connectivity and, ironically, increased atomisation.