Andy Warhol on Perfume

I really love wearing perfume...

I switch perfumes all the time. If I've been wearing one perfume for three months, I force myself to give it up, even if I still feel like wearing it, so whenever I smell it again it will always remind me of those three months. I never go back to wearing it again; it becomes part of my permanent smell collection...

Smell really is transporting. Seeing, hearing, touching, tasting are just not as powerful as smelling if you want your whole being to go back for a second to something. Usually I don't want to, but by having smells stopped up in bottles, I can be in control and can only smell the smells I want to, when I want to, to get the memories I'm in the mood to have. Just for a second. The good thing about a smell-memory is that the feeling of being transported stops the instant you stop smelling, so there are no aftereffects. It's a neat way to reminisce...

I get very excited when I read advertisements for perfume in the fashion magazines that were published in the 30s and 40s. I try to imagine from their names what they smelled like and I go crazy because I want to smell them all so much:

• Guerlain's: "Sous le Vent"
• Lucien Le Long's: "Jabot," "Gardénia," "Mon Image," "Opening Night"
• Prince Matchabelli's: "Princess of Wales" in memory of Alexandra
• Ciro's: "Surrender," "Réflexions"
• Lenthéric's: "A Bientot," "Shanghai," "Gardénia de Tahiti"
• Worth's: "Imprudence"
• Marcel Rochas': "Avenue Matignon," "Air Jeune"
• D'Orsay's: "Trophée," "Le Dandy," "Toujours Fidèle," "Belle de Jour"
• Coty's: "A Suma," "La Fougeraie au Crépuscule" (Fernery at Twilight)
• Corday's: "Tzigane," "Possession," "Orchidée Bleue," "Voyage à Paris"
• Chanel's: brisk "Cuir de Russie" (Russian Leather); romantic "Glamour; melting "Jasmine"; tender "Gardénia"
• Molinelle's: "Countryclub," Demi-Jour" (Twilight)
• Bonwit Teller's: "721"
• Helena Rubenstein's: "Town," "Country"
• Weil's: Eau de Cologne, "Carbonique"
• Kathleen Mary Quinlan's: "Rhythm"
• Lengyel's (pronounced "len-jel"): "Impérial Russe"
• Chevalier Garde's: "H.R.R.," "Fleur de Perse," "Roi de Rome"
• Saravel's: "White Christmas"

— From The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again) by Andy Warhol

(I think most people reading this will identify a little sheepishly with how long this list is, his perfume lusts becoming more and more obscure. I like the way he puts the perfume names in quotations, as if they were titles of books or movies. I wonder how Andy would have felt about Bond No. 9 branding his name into their perfumes. On a side note, Andy Warhol's syntax and deadpan style has a way of creeping into your own writing if you read his prose even for a brief time... Anyway, I'm touched and surprised by the King of the Hipsters' love of perfume — especially his love of vintage perfume!)