Perfumatic: The Role of Chanel No. 5 in the Construction of Migrant Biographies

This paper will examine the role of Chanel No. 5 as a marker of progress and assimilation for a migrant from the Scottish Highlands to Glasgow, in the early 1960s. It will delineate how use of this perfume was central to the construction of an identity distinct from that which had theoretically been left behind, and consideration will be given to the non-traditional means by which those unfamiliar with, or unwilling to enter, the rarefied world of the department-store perfume hall or specialist perfumery, accessed luxury scents. Particular attention will be given to the Perfumatic machine, a germolene-pink, coin operated, wall-mounted perfume dispenser that, for six pence a shot, allowed customers to sample one of four branded scents. Invented in Canada by Mercury Steel Corp these machines were located in ladies’ toilets and gas stations throughout the Americas and Western Europe from c.1950. Recalling the coin-operated dispensers of holy water invented by Hero of Alexandria in 215 BC, and the perfume taps depicted in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, these communally accessible dispensers provided many with their only access to perfume. Drawing upon oral testimony, a case study of the use of Perfumatic machines in the dancehalls of Glasgow during the early 1960s will be developed. Attention will be given to the affective qualities of sampling and sharing perfume within social settings, the multi-sensorial nature of the Perfumatic transaction, the tension that exists between the phenomenological and the culturally constructed in our olfactory preferences, and the central role that perfume can play in the development of our own biographies