Part 1 Ambroxan Mundi

“Air is simultaneously an aesthetic medium of scent and a biopolitical medium that conditions life and death: airborne chemicals may convey not only disgust or enjoyment but also environmental slow violence that insidiously disperses environmental harm across space and time. Distributed unevenly across space, smells also condition subtle gradations of capacity and debility in addition to killing, they can temporarily or chronically affect one’s embodiment, cognition and mood” (Hsu 2020, p. 59).

The enticement of a mall[’s smells] does not elude me. All critical theory and knowledge of how commercial spaces are meant to sell lifestyles have never been enough to transcend the notion of hanging out at a mall to smell things. Smelling has become my forte. Focusing on the smell of things, the discovery of high-end perfumes led me into stores and malls of various sizes and setups. Exploring perfumes seriously for the first time, I would mull over note breakdowns of perfumes and ponder, what this magic ingredient called ‘oud’ smelled like. Sometimes this would transform the remembrance of notes like magnolia into the nagging question, if I ever even smelled the scent in nature before learning about the synthesized smell through deodorants and shampoos.[1]

Without curation and beyond branding, finding a perfume within the open retail space of a mall featuring many different brands and counters is an impossible task. Searching for something specific, failure is prone to happen in the advertisement of the same ten scents a brand or counter is peddling. Amid perfume and cosmetic aisles, a specific perfumey smell can be experienced. Meant as enticing cues for us to enter the space and increase foot traffic through placing perfume and cosmetic aisles at the entrances, the active air-conditioning and control of air fails the task of wanting to buy a scent. Every pot of coffee bean and incantations by salesclerks to ‘relax our sense of smell’ by having a whiff is not enough. Regardless of neutrality and how much air might be blown out over the day, standing in the space of a perfumery for 15 minutes, the perfumey slurry penetrating the space never fully dissipates.

We grow accustomed to the ambience of powdery blues and florals. Sensitive noses might become aware of the fatigue themselves and notice how their sense of smell is afflicted by this tapestry of smells. In theory, our faces should light up at the first whiff of a scent sprayed. What hits our nose are the most fleeting components of a scent, the top notes that create immediate vistas of fruits, woods, flowers and real or fictitious visions of places we long for or people we want to be. These places, however, are as ephemeral as these initial top notes of a perfume. Sales talk notwithstanding, fragrance consultants and brands know that this initial reaction to a perfume is where most products will move hands, in the strength and overwhelming notion delivered through this nascent whiff. Time as a factor or questions on the base of the perfume holding surprises play a role for highly engaged perfume consumers. But these sensations are reserved for after the sale and – considering that most perfumes are sold and bought as gifts – for other people living with the scent. The top-notes of a perfume may always be a unique selling point but will seldom retain their luster in living with a scent and wearing it as a personal olfactive atmosphere on one’s skin (or clothes). The moment we leave the mall or boutique the scent on our skin is pitted against the vulgar life-world, secluded from the enticing atmospheric bubble of the mall.

From a notion of timespace (Voegelin 2010, 124) in the experience of something ephemeral such as perfume, scenting oneself breaks down into a co-presence (Boehme 2001, 74) or relation with a scent.[2] This includes carrying the sensation through a day and various spaces and mingling the self and the atmosphere of your person with the olfactive components of the scent to create a personal “force-field” (Diaconu 2005, 290).[3] The notion of a linear progression of time is implicated in the ordering of top, heart and base notes and through the solution in alcohol perfumes (Barwich 2020, 27) possess the ability to reveal their progression simultaneously and showcase different aspects of their makeup through time. A perfume might appear in the first minutes to hours, recede into the background during a full and smelly day only to rear its scent at certain moments in the wearer’s time.

Perfume as a specific example of creating olfactory experience within commercial structures, however, is only the most obvious example. The mall and other spaces hold numerous smellscapes that we as consumers explore by means of our very breathing. What Drobnick titles “toposmia” (2006, 85), the combination of place and smell is the aesthetic experience and understanding of our environment as olfactory places conveyed through the air we breath (Hsu 2020, 60).

When entering a mall not only as a visual or auditory consumer, but as breather, the act of smelling the air around us creates an epistemological means of encountering smelly spaces and their agencies. While the assumption of modernity diminishing olfactory experiences or neutralizing them altogether, malls and other commercial spaces point towards a “disorientation” (Hsu 2020, 60) and rapid shifting of smellscapes that go beyond deodorization as eradication of scents. As breather moving through these spaces, I want to achieve an understanding of the disorientations and shifts in contemporary smellscapes that move between the neutralization of smells and their intentional implementation as sellable experience that create environments and identities. Here I follow Hsu’s suggestion of olfactory ekphrasis, a subversion of the visual device of detailed description to glean epistemological value through the detailed description (and intake) of olfactory atmospheres (2020, 62). This breathing and its descriptions are necessarily involved and affected by histories of smells and various trajectories of their compositions and emplacements, a mode of breathing moving within and between the commercialization of olfactory experiences and their effects.[4]

Breathing the mall atmosphere, buying fragrances and distinct experiences when smelling perfumes inside and outside a controlled atmosphere contributes to the inquiry at hand. Without using gas spectrographs or means of capturing the air present in malls and analyzing it by methods of the natural sciences, the experience of understanding smells in their dissimilarity and following their emplacements, a perfumey deodorization appears to be a ‘base note’ running through most mall spaces – even if this smell is far removed from the actual atmospheres at the core of perfume or cosmetic aisle of most malls and appears closer to a deodorized neutrality of a social space.

Smelling is not only passive – a mere reception of an olfactory environment – but also active. It relies on the act of breathing, inhaling and exhaling, and this activity can be enhanced, become intentional and be traced back to consciousness. One of the challenges for designers is to produce a smellscape that will be fully experienced. […]. This smell environment is described and acted upon in terms of detection, concentration, dilution and dispersion. Hence, smellscape design highlights the importance of sensory background in the experience of an environment (Thibaud 2018, p. 80).

Betwixt and between modes of perception, apart from experiencing the splendors of sights and sounds as a customer or designer of spaces, I smelled my way through these halls of commerce. In this split between globalism and locality, heralded as the unique selling point of glocality, obvious qualities of malls around the world and the particularity of smells of specific malls grow into striking sources of experience for the olfactory inclined.[5] As we are alert observers of how products are propped and sold in their visual brand marketing, wandering the mall as an active breather and smeller alters even the banal details and coincidences into essential markers of an olfactory experience. We can be sure to expect a McDonalds meal to look, taste and even smell the same in Canada or Japan. The same assessment can be made for the smell of clothes mass-produced and logistically spread across the globe by H&M or Zara. Yet, can these microcosms of smell always be built to smell the same regardless of their place, implementation and composition in today’s mall complexes? Beyond these secondary olfactory experiences – assuming consumers don’t actually eat their Quarter Pounders for their singular olfactory components which recently were made into scented candle’s themselves[6] – how do the smells of cosmetics and perfumes fare in the overall aesthetic experience of mall spaces?

Consuming products in the attention economy of malls move between questioning the viability of our older acquisitions and sustaining our time – consumer retention as spectral experience along a sensory line of traffic that leads us along various sights, sounds and smells (Howes and Classen 2014, 128).[7]

In the commercial world of style, the fundamental assumption underlying the ‘shaping of life’ is that life must visibly change, every day. Roland Barthes called this phenomenon neomania, a madness for perpetual novelty where ‘the new’ has become defined strictly as ‘purchased value’, something to buy. What will appear next is not always predictable. That something new will appear is entirely predictable. ‘Style obsolence’, reported a major industrial design firm in 1960, ‘is the sine qua non of product success (Stuart 2018, p. 48).

Although we can construct the aim of the mall to overwhelm and entice our senses in making us followers blind to the beliefs of consumption, the scope and intent of the commercialized playgrounds of experience move between their emplacement in a specific locale such as a city or country as well as in the commonality of global consumer experiences, tagged store design, corporate branding and the formula of market research. As Wolfgang Haug connects his work on post-war consumerism with the cultural critique of the Frankfurt School, the modern experience of trade – rather in the realm of buying than selling things, is signified by the creation of wants and needs through commercial means themselves. In other words, we search not for the satisfaction of internal desires as such, but for the quenching effects of buying experiences as products, in turn purchasing what was suggested to be our actual desire (Haug 2009, 84).

Breathing through malls, streams of air smell and flow in the synthesis of what could be titled a “hyper-commercialized” (Haug 2009, 300) atmosphere. Depending on temperatures outside, the breather is met with a blast of hot or cool air and double doors that retain and shield the atmospheric composition of the inner sanctum.[8] While this blast of air is a tactile and thermoceptive kiss of comfort for most, contrasting the dynamic sensation of weather outside, for breathers, this blast of air is composed of dry neutral air, seldomly fresh but always secluding from external factors such as food smells, smog or other experience that can’t be sold or hinder the focus needed for the commercialized airs inside.

Hsuan Hsu’s reiteration of Peter Sloterdijk’s statement on the age of air conditioning beginning with the usage of mustard gas in World War I (2020, 7), transforms entering a mall or air-conditioned space by way of the blast of air directly above.[9] While far from mustard gas, the mall wavers between the control of air and the accidental or intentional variety of experience contained within (Medway and Warnby 2018, 124). This exemplifies the age of air-conditioning set off by war machinery in the early 20th century transforming into a spatial and especially commercially viable modulation of air and our ability to breathe: externalized control against the ability to perceive free of impression or harm.

As a breather navigating vast spaces with a focus on olfaction, what smells, from where and how it mixes, especially the cosmetic and perfume aisle unveil a unifying sensation: Neutralizing smells and the air from the outside world, the mall’s welcoming salve is one of indistinguishable cleanliness paired with a distinct ‘perfumey’ atmosphere. Beyond neutral, and perceived to be enticing in that it binds the air in renewal, beauty and artifice, this atmosphere makes these attributes tangible by olfactive means, even if they are presumed to be enhancements of the visual splendor of displays drawing in the crowd.

Observations on the structure of malls give little to no sense on the olfactory world retained within. While each mall certainly has its own individual smell and propagation thereof, of special interest is the consideration of overarching airflows and smells within these mega-structures. Most of which are directly influenced by the floor setup, air-conditioning policies and products. While the focus on smell might lead to easy associations of mingling smells of clean retail environments with striking smells of food courts or heady perfumes, the mall maintains a quality of distinguishable neutrality through its air-conditioning and floor-planning.

The following subsection will try to manifest this supposed neutrality in its olfactive trajectories of ‘perfumey smells’, while considering design decisions and air-conditioning. The third section will connect the olfactory experience of malls with ideas of differential deodorization and agency in consumption and will try to think of implications for sensory design in channeling Achille Mbembe’s Necropolitics.

But deodorization was not evenly realized across space: rather, it was a partial and differential project of air conditioning. While efforts to deodorize public and private space claim to improve public health, they frequently focus on semiotic and cosmetic forms of deodorization (covering up unpleasant smells or moving them around) rather than equitably reducing atmospheric risk (Hsu 2020, p. 14).

Perfumey Smell

Flows of air in a large space of public scale, especially in closed-off and windowless spaces such as malls, requires the inclusion of air conditioning. In the abstract this entails the control of airflow and atmosphere in a space. In actuality, this requires intricate systems of ducts, ventilators, humidifiers and heating coils working above our heads and out of the direct view of breathers to guarantee the circulation and exchange of outside and inside air. This is done to provide atmospheric consistency in the interior through circulating and mixing air with a stream of air that has been processed (heated, cooled, humidified or dehumidified). Air is released and ‘sucked’ up from the outside to maintain the inside of these spaces. Air Conditioning: System Design (Legg 2017), a publication centering on the workings of air conditioning from a technical engineering side, reveals the physical and thermal intricacies of various air conditioning approaches, yet, does not mention the words smell, olfaction or scent even once. While aware of the composition of air (mostly oxygen, nitrogen and other gases) and properties such as its molecular mass, pressure and water vapor contents (Legg 2017, 2), the actuality of air as the medium of scent and carrier of olfactive experience is considered tertiary. A chapter on air filters elaborates on different qualities of contaminants that create impurities that might affect the consistency of the air for the breathing subjects as well as the system of conditioning itself (Legg 2017, p. 213). As smell or smelly particles remain absent here as well, it is safe to assume scents and scent molecules to fall into the realm of impurities beyond the measures of what systems of air conditioning or disembodied breathers as ideal recipients of conditioned air may be exposed to.

The scientific breakdown of solving the issue of ventilation and air-flow, the atmospheric qualities of ‘air-conditioning’ still begs to be explored for the olfactory experience of breathers, beyond breathing fresh air that isn’t harmful or stale in its oxygen levels. Hsu (2020, 7) redresses the physiological harm of ‘bad air’ though the term risk and draws up the similarities to smell as “immersive, imprecise, subjective, interactive, involuntary, material, and resistant to representation”. Olfactory risk points towards the atmospheric qualities of breathing air, rendering air as an acting material index (Hsu 2020, 57) and experience between environment, design and necessarily beyond a perspective of air as natural occurrence within space. This state of inbetweeness and connection makes air-conditioning and breathing this air a viable mode of inquiring and thinking about the design of spaces:

Thinking about the materiality of air and the densities of our many human entanglements in airy matters also means attending to the solidifying and melting edges between people, regions, and events. In addition to calling attention to our material interactions with multiple atmospheric substances, air embodies the frequently overlooked flow of lively materials between differentiated spaces and across geographic scales. Air is thus an important element for theorizing social relations and affect in material terms (Hsu 2020, p. 57).

Entering a mall, the initial blast of air welcomes us into the atmospheric bubble of space freed from the perceived ‘risks’ of the outside world. The breathing and smelling subject – eventually without masks, I assume – encounters a blend of scents meant to entice and retain attention mixed with attempts of suppressing unwanted, external smells and accomplishing this under the guise of smelling good. This is what deodorization captures in its double step: At once the suppression of scent and the modification of smells to move between neutrality and inoffensive relationality.[10] As the neutrality of smell might be thought of as the absence of smell or the muting of it altogether, the mall in particular does not operate solely through strong cleaning and disinfecting agents or air purification methods (as might be the case in hospitals) – even if air filtration units are a central part of sustaining this air conditioned atmosphere. We would be alienated by strong citric smells or entirely fresh smells, for instance of peppermint or ethanol, in the context of malls. These smells evoke associations with cleaning agents and the suppression and sterilization of dirt and refuse and create a distance of interaction and participation in a commercial setting.

While the building that house churches, courtrooms and laboratories may share with the white cube a certain transcendence, formality and efficiency, they also flaunt extremely distinctive olfactory identities […]. Deodorization is thus always incomplete and imperfectly realized – places still have characteristic smells. The hygienic impulse operative here, then, is one that exists at the level of discourse and ideology, but which is only partially enactable at the level of practical experience (Drobnick 2005, p. 266f.).

Rather than deodorizing and suppressing the conditioned mall-air to a ‘muteness’ of strong neutrality, the mall uses scents in an intentional and at times incidental manner to create a scented neutrality that I will describe as perfumey at base. Contrasting spaces such as hospitals or government offices, a perfumey scent is ‘permitted’ in order to convey the feeling of novelty, modernity and enticement that a positive consumer experience entails. Yet, this perfumey smell is unlike the scent experienced in the midst of cosmetic aisles, where heady aromas fight for your attention and the scent of certain products mingles into a cloying sensation that can strike people with sensitivities as headache-inducing. The powdery smell of perfume and cosmetics is dissolved into a small fraction of itself, independent of the cosmetics, scented products on display or actual perfumes in their composition over time, entirely dependent on their common base of differentiating the air from any notion of neutrality or ‘purity’. The perfumey smell of mall spaces can be best described in Barwich’s use of olfactory white:

Olfactory white is a nondescript odor quality created when you mix thirty-plus molecules with diverse, nonoverlapping chemical features. The remarkable thing about olfactory white is its quality. It has no associated ordinary semantic object (like apple). Its smell is not encountered in nature. It is meaningless to ask to what kind of object its content corresponds since there is no ordinary object available (Barwich 2020, p. 106).

An overarching ‘heart’ of most cosmetics and what is most often described as powdery is a composition reminiscent of iris, especially iris butter. While this natural ingredient is expensive and unlikely to be used for either cosmetics or perfume in a high concentration, it resembles the smell of Linalool mixed with fatty or waxy bases used to achieve creaminess in lipsticks.[11] Adding a floral component to a fatty or waxy composition comes close to the distinct smell of many cosmetic products, with powdery notes of heliotropin as well as floral components such as rose adding to the distinct smell most would recognize as cosmetic.[12] The smell of what most would characterize as perfumey is historically close to the smell of classic perfumes, especially the aldehydic notes of Chanel No.5 and their effervescent metallic-floral qualities. While today, most perfumes are further removed from using aldehydes in the high concentration of Chanel No.5, this perfume set the trend and genre of ‘fresh florals’ since its inception. Historically, Coco Chanel was one of the first designers making the transition of selling her signature perfumes (Reinarz 2014, 74), such as Chanel No. 5, at retail stores beyond her own boutiques, ushering in the contemporary trade of perfumes in store and mall settings and to an extent, their distinct smell.

The remaining question regarding this perfumey scent is the degree of intentionality involved or, in opposition to this, the controlled lack of curation of this conglomeration and dissipation of scent. Mall spaces may be conflated with white cubes, vacated from outside influences that could disturb the display and experience of products meant for acquisition. However, a whiff of  paint, plastic, cold concrete or metal in a gallery or museum reminds us of the actual “marked” (Drobnick 2005, 67) materiality of artworks. Their made-ness amplified in interaction or the interdiction of interaction at a proximity where art bears an accidental or incidental scent component we smell in lieu of touch.[13]

This distancing of bodily interaction in favor of visuality for the sake of conservation of unique artworks as a mode of disciplining (Howes/Classen 2014, 2) is altered in the setting of malls and commerce. Malls design the “museumification” (Howes/Classen 2014, 24) of objects through deodorized atmospheres to validate our acquisition and experience of what is purchasable. Suggesting renewal of our material means, malls project an altered atemporality (Howes/Classen 2014, 23). Following Entwistle (2000), fashion and designed objects as cultural forces present differing concepts of bodiliness and timespaces moving between cultural and economic values. Our identities are shifted and intervened in through consumption or the promise of consumption in the experience of a malls timespace. Objects and the atmospheres creates are marked as carriers of agency and meaning in their symbolic framework of use, necessarily imbued with notions of action and intent. This connections of identity and experience can be best exemplified in this phrase “design makes things happen” (Potvin 2020, 4).

Similar to artist intervening in deodorized art spaces through olfactory art (Drobnick 2005, 266), product designers and the scenting of products and spaces in malls appear as a new kind of ‘whiteness’, a deodorized but experiential and multisensory mode of artificiality. Artificial in the layering of olfactory cues and scents pervading the products we are free to handle in malls. Should we trace the smell of PVC, metal, packaging, or even raw cotton on the objects we handle, the reminiscence of ‘manufacture’ or naturality might alienate and remove us from the experience of shopping for lifestyles and identities before seeking accumulation of material wealth.

The inodorateness of the white cube “assumes[s] a neutral” or “zero-degree status of display” (Drobnick 2005, 267) in dissolving any relations to commerce or a social world beyond the artwork present for interpretation. Apart from inducing ‘the air’ of authority this olfactory “nowhereness” (Drobnick 2005, 267) establishes a sense of universality and Kantian disinterestedness. The odorate whiteness of malls can be discerned from this universality when following Haug notion of “Schein” (2009, 80-81) in his channeling of Adorno and Horkheimer: the luster of perfumey whiteness serves to protect the perception of labor when shopping. Malls aim to avoid the made-ness of products to create a layer of enticement we consider leisure and the experiences of lifestyles as modal identities – stressing beauty of efficiency and desire over need (Haug 2018, 46).

Beyond conditioning the air and preventing olfactory upset through external mustiness from the outside world, the mall creates an atmosphere of subtle enticement that envelops. Here, processing methods of coating surfaces of materials to alter and disguise their underlying material should be considered beyond the creation of hapticity. Apparent, for instance, in lacquered wood furniture but nowadays included in the processing of cardboard to feel like velvet or smooth metal surfaces that retain their grip and a sense of texture. These surfaces may appear neutral in a strictly olfactory sense, their enhancement of tactile smoothness and visual luster however indicate a multisensorial understanding of our engagement with products (Stuart 2018, 46).

This balance between filling the air without overwhelming the sense of smell may run counter to the very specific and intentional act of scent marketing or re-odorization of spaces. With Abercrombie & Fitch or Lush stores serving as obvious examples of olfactory marketing (Sokell Thompson and Barnett 2018, 145 and Bacci 2015, 133), other than adding scent components to brand and market products, scent marketing can happen in less obvious or more diffuse/ambient ways as well. Beyond respraying a specific scent over time or letting the scents of the products exude and mingle on their own, devices like Scent Air diffusers are able to use the circulation and conditioning of air to add a scent component into the atmosphere of a space (Medway & Warnby 2018, 126; 135).[14] This control (or lack thereof) over the olfactory experience of a space points towards the explicitly multisensory approach of scent marketing and perspectives on the consumer experience. The engagement with a product to be sold or bought relies not solely on its own sensory elements, but on the addition and balancing of atmospheric elements spanning from the sounds played in a store to the lighting and visuals used and scents employed to create engagement (Medway & Warnby 2018, 124).

Entering a new space, breathing the air and surmising to be subject to scent marketing can be a fickle endeavor. As we still struggle to grapple with the ethical and bodily consequences, for instance the notion of congruent and incongruent scenting of spaces, such as the reality of ‘bread smells’ in supermarkets and the external question if we are ‘led’ by our nose, we can never be sure on the depth of design we encounter in spaces of commerce. For instance, three articles in the compendium Designing with Smell grapple with concept of aritificial bread smells employed in spaces to drives sales of groceries and create retention. While Medway and Warnby mark the infusion of bread smells a sustained urban myth and acknowledge the usage of diffusers such as scent air (2018, 124), Sutton depicts the usage of bread smells where bread is baked or sold as product-congruent scenting and odor control (2018, 133). In contrast, Sokell Thompson and Barratt take the usage of artificial bread smells as a given in the experience of spaces of commerce and as an ability to design olfactory experiences (2018, 142).

You can always ask the clerks if they are using a specific scent or anything other than the products present to scent their space, but most will deny and vow their honesty in affirming a notion of ‘seeing is believing’. Others might point towards little spray bottles hidden beneath their desks that are not different from Febreze apparently. Or as the third option they may even point towards the air conditioning and the smell being the smell present without any interference by external forces. While never solving the question of control, congruency and intent, scent marketing or the usage of scent to market is situated firmly between questions of personal choice, manipulation and subconscious pandering (Medway and Warnby 2018, 127) as a next-to-obscure technology that is taken for granted in the splendor and want.

Amid these atmospheres, I calibrate my sense of smell towards the perfumey smell that remains discernable in the overall experience of a mall, its hallways, between stores and beyond ‘natural environments’ (Roquet 2016, 4). The notion of ambience as a specific iteration of atmosphere accomplishes a shift towards the intersubjective reliance of environments on human agency (Roquet 2014, 4). While atmosphere as defined by Böhme implies human interaction and agency of others to be present, Roquet uses ambience to stress (human) agency and design to be present in the moods and experiences of atmospheres.

In everyday English, ambience is a synonym for atmosphere, the dispersed and overall tone or feeling of a place. But unlike its more objective sibling, ambience always implies a more subjective element of mediation at work: some kind of agency behind the production of mood and a focus on the human body attuning to it (Roquet 2016, p. 3).

My calibration towards the perfumey ambience of malls serves the purpose to become aware of the agency that creates these spaces and the olfactory experience thereof. It is a smelling that is perceptive of the design of specific products and their olfactory qualities, such as perfumes and cosmetics with their distinct smells, but tries to turn towards the ambient and atmospheric diffusion and diffused sensation of these products in the timespace of the mall to experience scent design. Simultaneously it attempts to smell enticing without drifting towards the artificial or industrial, good scent designs appears split between the control of the intentional olfactive experience and the minute mingling of scents that create a distinct air.

Ambroxan mundi

Approaching this perfumey scent leads me back to the catalogue of my olfactory experiences and its strongest impressions. As perfume has been formed to include the lightning-fast association with Chanel No.5, even one hundred years after the launch of the scent in 1921 touched the noses of breathers (Reinarz 2014, 137), I find this novel perfumey-nothingness and enticement of mall and commercial spaces reflected in the smell of today’s No.1 top selling perfume: Dior Sauvage,[15] more specifically its main notes of Ambroxan and ISO-E-Super.

Released in 2015 and bearing the name of 1966 Dior’s Eau Sauvage, Sauvage without the ‘eau’ is a modern designer fragrance moving between categories of sportive, fresh and classy at once.[16] The initial blast of fresh, citrusy synthetics is quickly complemented with ‘silvery’, wood notes reminiscent of cedar wood and hints of light patchouli. The resulting fragrance develops into a fresh, artificially sylvan fragrance that forgoes any semblance of sweetness known from previous best sellers such as Le Male by Jean Paul Gaultier or previous hit One Million by Paco Rabanne. The main quality of indistinct wood, citrus and freshness often titled as ‘blue fragrance’ in perfume communities is mainly attributable to the components of Iso-E-Super and Ambroxan (or Ambrox).

Iso-E-Super can be understood as an aroma chemical and a fixative component similar to vanilla, patchouli or other notes that contribute to the longevity of a fragrance and serve as base notes.[17] Only that Iso-E-Super enables longevity without the cloy of heavy woods, spices or sweetness. In its highest concentration, for instance, in the niche and concept perfume of Eccentric Molecules, Molecule01 which is a fragrance built solely from Iso-E-Super, Iso-E-Super moves between zesty grapefruit and ultra-light cedarwood or indistinguishable wood shavings that bears a resemblance to human skin. In perfumer Geza Schön’s own words:

The second scent, ‘molecule01’ […], contains only Iso E Super (1+2), which, on its own, is less of an aroma than a transparent woody effect. The wearer may notice a subtle velvety woody note which will vanish, then resurface after a while, but more than this, (s)he will notice the aura and indefinable radiance the fragrance has on other people (Schön 2008, p. 1155).

Mixing Iso-E-Super with other components, even those that smell muted or are inherently fleeting, enhances their perceptibility while veiling them in a gray shine, not quite elevated and in the forefront, but discernable through the energetic burst of ‘smelly semblance’. Schön (2008, 1155) used this sensation, which he describes as an effect rather than an aroma (!) to stress the sensation of an overdose of aroma chemicals used in contrast to an opulence found in classic perfumes that use obscure or imaginary ‘natural’ ingredients to create a sense of intrigue. Iso-E-Super much rather points towards simplicity that many other perfumers before Schön tried to recreate with the use of this specific kind of ‘grey luster’. For my sense of smell, this exemplifies the move away from a mélange of scent finding semblance in nature set forth by Guerlain’s Jicky as the perfume using synthetic ingredients (Reinarz 2014, 73-73). The abstract sensation of synthetics here points towards a minimalism and groundedness that does not rely on the recall of expensive and rare natural ingredients. This becomes especially striking in Schön revealing the different percentages of Iso-E-Super contained in classic fragrances such as the first Serge Lutens’ fragrance Féminité de bois. Released under Shiseido in 1992, this fragrance is still critically lauded as establishing a minimalistic woody fragrance targeted at women without the usage of typical floral or powdery notes.[18]

Ambroxan, as the name of the smell component derived from the chemical synthesis of Ambrox, is an ingredient initially meant for the recreation of the smell of Ambergris.[19] As the natural ingredient is scarce and a health hazard in terms of allergic reaction,[20] Ambroxan tones the complexity of what was often only known as amber and, historically, as king of fragrances down to a conglomeration of smooth woodiness between cedarwood and patchouli. In high concentrations, Ambroxan becomes sweaty and cloyingly maritime, but blended and balanced just right it is an unsweet reminiscence between clean, washed skin and bergamot.

Frankly, both Ambroxan and Iso-E-Super are often described as boon, bane and downfall of modern perfumery. While Dior made waves critically with its previous mainline male fragrances titled Dior Homme in 2011 and this fragrance featured distinct notes of iris and lavender with a vetiver and leather base, Sauvage follows a trend of smelling ‘blue’ as in sporty and indistinct and – yes – perfumey at its core.[21] For many in the consumer-centered fragrance community, Dior Sauvage sacrifices ideas of artistic expression (for whom remains a question!) and a daring quality for the safety of relying simply on ‘smelling good’ and receiving compliments for doing so. In 2015, fragrance blogger Victoria Belim-Frolova even predicted Dior Sauvage evoking many perfumes in the same style, while calling out its “fresh-enough-to-disinfect accord[s]”.[22] Contrasting this disregard for the new scent of the masses, the perfume Baccarat Rouge 540 by Maison Francis Kurkdjian, following a similar, Ambroxan heavy concept, is often heralded as the initiator of a new genre of ultra-synthetic but luxurious fragrances able to express abstract notions such as the smell of crystals (namely, red Baccarat crystals, which where Francis Kurkdijan’s inspiration for the fragrance). This schism warrants discussions on high-end perfumes and niche markets and how the visions of perfumer’s are made into marketable products of luxury in different consumer categories (Wilhelm 2015, 44).

From a standpoint of sensory design pertaining to an inviting fragrance that is unisex and atmospheric in a sense, the component Ambroxan appears to be the best contender. Marketed in Dior Sauvage and in other ‘blue’ male fragrances, the indistinct fresh-woody quality of the scent functions as an ambience or effect of smelling ‘good’ without allowing for a naturally occurring olfactory counterpart, or aroma, to come to mind. In a way, Ambroxan at a very low concentration can smell like new packaging materials or even air fresheners. Considering Dior Sauvage a direct consumer choice, made by the noses of consumers beyond the allure of marketing campaigns with Johnny Depp playing guitar in the desert and sales clerks recommending the fragrance backed by the most advertising,[23] the olfactory sense of everyday fragrance consumers seems attuned to the personal ambience created by Ambroxan.

This seems relational to an understanding of the smell of ambroxan as perfumey in its lowest possible diffusion, as with Schön’s comment between the spectrum of overdose and effect, enhanced by air-conditioned spaces and the component being as cheap as to be implemented in home fragrance, soaps and deodorants. Even if the experience of mall spaces as perfumey depends on more components than the sheer presence of a perfumery and cosmetics departments likely to peddle scents with ambroxan, such as the scent of mass-produced clothes and intentional regimes of deodorization employed by different stores, the ‘blue’ quality of this fragrance component speaks to concepts of hygienization and, again, deodorization present in contemporary times. I would even go as far as to dub this scent as the new scent of deodorization in places of commerce touching upon qualities of cleanliness and neutrality while retaining the allure of perfume. Regardless of the scent’s employment as personal cosmetic and fine fragrance for personal rituals of deodorization, the component of Ambroxan and the perfumey scent associated have become an atmospheric air-conditioning device altogether.

Continue to Part 2

[1] As the story goes, “real” magnolia absolute is said to smell unlike the actual flower and is mostly utilized to bring freshness to scents. As Beaulieu reveals in her article, the usage of real magnolia absolute is akin to a paradox of using a fantasy ingredient to evoke the smell of something non-existent in the natural world. In other words, we may only know synthetic magnolia in our scented products (2018, p. 101f.).

[2] The notion of timespace is taken from Salome Voegelin’s approach of listening: “The notion of ›time‹ in sound is neither time as opposed to space nor is it time plus space. At the same time the sonic of idea of ›space‹ is not opposed to that time nor is it space plus time. Sound prompts a re-thinking of temporality and spatiality vis-à-vis each other and invites the experience of ephemeral stability and fixed fluidity” (2010, p. 124). Co-presence can be found in Böhme: “Wahrnehmung, die sich aus dem Grundereignis von Wahrnehmung, nämlich dem Spüren von Anwesenheit herleitet, impliziert in nuce zwei Pole, nämlich das Ich und das Ding oder das Subjekt und das Objekt, die in der Wahrnehmung in einem Zustand der Ko-Präsenz zusammenhängen“ (2001, p. 74) and is thouroghly explored in the theories of performance by Erika Fischer-Lichte (cf. 2014 [2004], p. 315).

[3] „Ein Kraftfeld ist auch das einzelne Parfüm. Ein Parfüm wahrnehmen heißt, durch einen olfaktorischen Zeitraum wandern. Das olfaktorische Feld besteht aus Akkorden und Spannungen, die einzelnen Duftnoten sind Kräfte (forces) und Energien. Das Parfüm ist keine statische Form, sondern „une force vive, une quantité d’éngergie de rayonnement odorant“ (Diaconu 2005, p. 290).

[4] This speaks for and against the notion of disinterestedness of aesthetic experience set forth by Kant’s aesthetics. I use this breathing in relation to Frantz Fanon’s “combat breathing”, a mode of existence that is perpetually in the mode of critique and defiance, implemented in hostile or environments diminishing one’s agency (Cf. Hsu 2020, p. 64; 80).

[5] For a concise run-down on the renewed focus on olfaction utilizing Howes, Majid and Diacanu respectively see Ahlers (2015, p. 22f.)

[6] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/20/business/mcdonalds-scented-candles-trnd/index.html

[7] I use the term attention economy in reference to Davenport and Beck (2001), whose understanding of attention can be related to Haug’s usage of “aesthetic abstraction” of products to enhance their appearance beyond their acutal usage to create desire (cf. 2009, p. 78). Further, Howes and Classen assess department stores to be “intentionally designed to derange as well as delight the senses of its visitors” (2014, p. 132).

[8] Howes and Classen make the reference to modern malls mimicking palaces and creating enclosed spaces for a focused shopping experience (Howes/Classen 2014, p. 129).

[9] Without titling it as such, Mbembe alludes this atmospheric warfare in his Necropolitics and analysis of war: “Gas attacks had transformed the atmosphere itself into a deadly weapon. With the poisoning of the air itself, even breathing became perilous. Thousands of cylinders released thousands of tons of chlorine gas into the trenches” (Mbembe 2019, p. 120).

[10] Drobnick captures this in his usage of “odorphobia” (2006, p. 14) with El-Khoury connects the movement of deodorization with the usage of white walls and surfaces: “The rhetorical power of the white surface in demonstrating and insuring cleanliness can hardly be overestimated. White paint became a staple of modern architecture and its persistent efficacy in the space of the museum testifies to the complexity of its genealogy […]: not only did it once represent olfactory silence, it has also come to visualize the absence of visual stimuli” (El-Khoury 2006, p. 27).

[11] On a note of disclosure, I did not have the chance to smell natural iris butter yet.

[12] Fragrance expert and perfumer Victoria Frolova wrote a piece on the smell of lipstick with a breakdown of the most common components: https://www.ft.com/content/19e7bb3a-9705-4644-819e-b3b84f51011e

[13] I always think about the story of Brian Eno orchestrating to pee into Marcel Duchamp’s famous “Fountain”, an anecdotal conflation of sterilization, concept art and performative interventions. https://dangerousminds.net/comments/how_brian_eno_managed_to_piss_in_marcel_duchamp

[14] See https://scentair.com/en_ca/.

[15] https://www.marieclaire.co.uk/news/beauty-news/dior-sauvage-bestselling-perfume-763046

[16] While the addition of ‘designer’ fragrance seems arbitrary, the fragrance communities distinguish between perfumes as ‘designer’ and ‘niche’ with the possible third and fourth categories of ‘indie’ perfumes and ‘private lines’ made as high-end alternatives made by producers of designer fragrances. As a short definition, a designer fragrance is made by a fashion company and is readily available throughout various retail stores and ranges between 80-120 $.

[17] https://medium.com/@olfactionscents/exotic-fragrant-materials-what-is-iso-e-super-1cff3eb8f954

[18] Cf. Schön (2008, p. 1156) for the percentage of Iso-E-Super contained in “Féminité de Bois” and a table containing fragrances with a high percentage of Iso-E-Super (ibid., p. 1158). For reviews of Féminite de Bois describing the production of the perfume see, for example: https://olfactoriastravels.com/2011/12/22/review-serge-lutens-feminite-du-bois/ and https://kafkaesqueblog.com/2014/04/11/serge-lutens-feminite-du-bois/.

[19] For a discussion of Ambroxan see also: https://thecandyperfumeboy.com/2018/06/05/all-about-ambroxan/

[20] In short, the expulsion of sperm whales after they digest octopi and their gastric juices coat the indigestible beaks of their prey and this blob then ages in salt water exposed to the sun.

[21] Blogger Elena Vosnaki offers a comprehensive breakdown of the “blue” trend in fragrances starting with best selling fragrances such as Davidoff’s “Cool Water”, which were the first fragrances to be advertised as maritime and sportive everyday fragrances for men. https://www.fragrantica.com/news/Why-Are-Blue-Perfumes-so-Blue-15369.html

[22] The discussion of the article mentioned in Footnote 45 is quite interesting in this regard. https://boisdejasmin.com/2015/11/christian-dior-sauvage-perfume-review.html

[23] The 2019 ad-campaign surrounding Sauvage and Johnny Depp was marred by a video depicting the actor playing guitar in an indistinct prairie location blended with images of a Native American women and indigenous cultural symbols. Facing the backlash of racism and cultural appropriation, Dior decided to cut the film to only the images of Depp playing guitar and sitting by a fire side, without the mention of the slogan of “We Are Land” featured in the ad. Principal photography and additional material, still using similar themes, can still be found in the advertising around Sauvage today. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/13/style/dior-sauvage-cultural-appropriation.html

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