The Scent Museum: Smeller's Delight Part 1.

Sniffing everything under the sun in a search for something wonderful - and feeling olfactorily frustrated - has culminated in an idea for a museum to delight smellers like me.

Since I'm imagining this - I suppose the idea can be fantastic and out-of-the box - without considering feasibility.  Let's imagine you visit this museum:

The grey, stone exterior of the museum is not flashy, the only hint to the interior being a concrete walkway displaying sunken floral and herbal impressions... shadows or whispers of fragrant components.  There's a tranquil fountain, surrounded by neutrally-scented grasses and trees. 

Upon reception, you receive a necklace-contraption which works like a hummingbird's beak, but fits over your nose - and a map.  Aroma rooms are designated by origin - Floral, Wood, Herb, Spice, Fruit, Animal (or similarly appropriate classifications) and feature numerous smell-sampling stations. 

To obtain a scent, you - the sniffer, don your hummer's-beak and press it against a tiny rubber portal-spot (some conditioner bottles have these rubber seals, which open when squeezed... but in this instance, the fragrance beak penetrates the seal). 

I have also imagined the smell-sampling stations being built like mix-and-match candy bins, outfitted with magnetized lids and with vacuum and release buttons to retract or emit scents.

However you want to envision obtaining the scent... follow that idea from room to room - sniffing away at whatever intrigues you.  The idea here is that The Scent Museum is not affiliated with any certain perfumers and therefore is not promoting specific perfumers, but is instead educating the public nose and stimulating the common and collective imagination.

Even more scientifically - The Scent Museum might equip you with simple and non-invasive monitors that register your response to smells you experience during your visit - and upon journey's completion... you receive a print-out, which you can present at a mixing counter - where it is possible to purchase a completely personalized essential aroma that defines and delights you.

The Scent Museum would - at least, to me - be the fragrance-lover's equivalent of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

The Seven Dwarves of Beauty Products.

Stinky, Greasy, Rashful, Skanky, Clumpy, Sticky, Yucky:  Assessing an assortment of eye pencils, lipsticks, and perfume - I realized how these descriptions could very well be the names of a new set of dwarves - The Seven Dwarves of Beauty Products... except for none of these dwarves are good to have around.  The Seven Trolls of Beauty Products. 

How much money do we spend on little beauty/fragrance odds and ends hoping to enhance our appearance/aura and delight our mates... and how many of those beauty treats feel - instead - like a merchandising trick.  There are pencils that drag the skin and tingle the eyes, shallow shimmer sprinkled thinly on the surface of the lipstick or shadow, fragrance that lingers and becomes invasive - like a bad guest, colors that look promising in the container - thinning or morphing once applied.  Stinky, Greasy, Clumpy, Sticky, and Yucky make themselves known right away - but Rashful and Skanky, are even a bit sneaky too.

Maybe Skanky is the worst of these beauty trolls.  In hoping to look or smell chic, you try something different - and realize later - the effect is quite the opposite... what you thought was shimmer is instead chunky glitter... or the fruity fragrance casts a spell of fermentation.

Stinky, Rashful, Skanky, and Yucky most frequently appear at fragrance counters, but have not yet frightened me away - so persistent am I in my pursuit of sniffing out the perfect scent.  Here's a typical session... spritz, wave, sniff - floral alcohol... spritz, wave, sniff - floral alcohol... spritz, wave, sniff - alcoholic fruit... spritz, wave, sniff - fruity floral... spritz, wave, sniff - citrus floral... spritz, wave, sniff - floral vanilla - and so on, until - I bid farewell to Stinky, Rashful, Skanky, Yucky and the entire department of fragrance.  Where are Edgy, Advanced, Mysterious, Mesmerizing, Intellectual, Responsible, and Absolutely Great when we need them?

How the Bicycle Improved the Lives of Women.

After researching Victorian times and trends in February of 2012, I wrote this post sharing the positive effect of the bicycle in women's lives near the end of the nineteenth century.  Good reviews of Haifaa-Al Mansour's movie Wadjda have come to my attention recently - and therefore created a renewed interest in the role of the bicycle regarding women's history.

Reading the accounts of Susan B. Anthony, Frances Willard, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman - the most profound impression was this:  The bicycle offered a sense of safety.  Victorian women - on wheels - were enabled for the first time to speed past strangers they did not wish to encounter.  Yes, riding a bike did require small changes to attire... a hem slightly shorter to avoid its getting caught in the bicycle chain... or some women opted for divided skirts or voluminous bloomers - but think of the sense of lightness the lifting of one small worry can create.

Now, riding my own bike and enjoying the fresh air and the improved circulation... I find it wonderful to know I share that same sense of lightness experienced by the first bicycling women long ago.  Less worries, better health, more happiness... these are improvements that enhance the lives of the people we love as well.

L'Heure d'Ete: Summer Hours Review.

Summer Hours, directed by Olivier Assayas, gracefully invites the viewer - like a guest - into the life of a family of older siblings who face - and deftly weigh - questions about values, connections, love, and continuity.  In the home of their youth, the familiar art objects possibly mirror and record the ups and downs of the family.  There are overall themes of the delicacy of life, longevity, effect, and simultaneity - with an examination of views regarding nostalgia, and a glimpse of interwoven beginnings and endings.

Of the same gentle, contemplative quality:  My Afternoons with Margueritte, The Hedgehog, Moonrise Kingdom.

A Bookstack for the Future from Our Past.

Astonishing as it might have been for my university 80s-self to witness my present-self cinematically appearing in the college dormitory, were it possible - I would present the following bookstack to that self:

• Dress and Popular Culture
• Fashion at the Edge:  Spectacle, Modernity, and Deathliness
• StreetStyle:  From Sidewalk to Catwalk

Interwoven with late night studies of English literature, French language, and Art - I was studying fashion, unofficially, and have been ever since.  It is a bookstack which offers answers and evidence in response to some whys of fashion:

• Why do styles shift in and out of popularity.
• Why are styles adopted by groups of people.
• Why do trends occur and sometimes reoccur.
• Why does being fashionable hold such importance for some people.
• Why is fashion often symbolic and not only functional.

If you've a burgeoning penchant or interest for... fashion+psychology+unspoken language+meaning - it's your bookstack too.  Here's a story for you.

Prologue: 

Knowing now what I knew and loved then, I contemplate how to impress my 80s self.  Past midnight, in the hallway of the dormitory - when everyone else is asleep  - is when I will find myself sitting there in a silly oversized t-shirt reading too many assignments for one night - face coated in minty-sulphuric, green, beauty-clay.

The matte, black, stretchy pleather leggings of a few twenty-first century years ago will be just the thing to catch my eye.  Those, I think - along with some over-the-knee, black leather riding boots.  The rest won't matter.  Long hair and double-pierced ears will be edgy enough to impress that person sitting there in her clay beauty treatment, growing out a mullet.

That self might recognize this self - perhaps critically... never mind that.

Scenario:

Me: Appearing in the doorway slowly and casually sauntering by, "It seems the studying will never end... I remember."

In response, a glance of surprise and scrutiny... also approval for the "look".  It worked.  I think I'm someone's visiting mother.

Me:  "These books are perfect for you and hold answers to many of your questions.  Read them between your assignments."

In wordless response, I retreat to the dorm-room, leaving the books on my desk and ascend the loft bed ladder... thinking I've missed too much sleep - as I drift off, unaware - until tomorrow - of the messages to myself tucked among the bookstack pages.

If that very short fiction left you in the mood for still more imaginary/fashion/time travel quick-fiction, your wish is granted here.  Or, if you'd like more than just the bookstack - there are more books and movies here.  More about 80s beauty and hairstyles here.  An 80s fashion post with more about leggings here.

The Perfect Bookstack for the Fashionably Curious:
Dress and Popular Culture, Patricia Cunningham and Susan Voso Lab.  Bowling Green State University Popular Press - 1991.

Fashion at the Edge:  Spectacle, Modernity, and Deathliness, Caroline Evans.  Yale University Press - 2003.

StreetStyle:  From Sidewalk to Catwalk, Ted Polhemus.  Thames and Hudson - 1994.