Stinking to high heaven: olfactory aspirations and discourses of desire

At once ephemeral and intrinsically corporeal, fragrance for many of us offers an entry point into luxury and elite status. As is well known, the perfume industry is fundamental to the economic viability of the contemporary luxury industry, but with basic ingredients consisting of water, chemicals, and infinitesimal amounts of plant and animal extracts, the frugality of its composition must be offset by the richness of the discourses used to promote it. This article will discuss how these discourses of desire and aspiration in fact constitute fragrance’s rarest of ingredients, their linguistic riches far surpassing the supposed costliness of its chemistries