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Browsing by tag: andy warhol

The beginning of Warhol’s love of fragrance

Posted by Robin on 26 November 2025 1 Comment

Jessica Murphy, a fragrance culture writer, pinpointed the beginning of Warhol’s love of fragrance to his Catholic upbringing. Warhol attended a weekly mass with his devout mother at his local Byzantine Catholic church in Pittsburgh. “The mass was enhanced with candlelight, vocal chants, and rich incenses… I can completely understand how Warhol’s love of objects, including his collection of perfume bottles, may have been tied to that upbringing,” Murphy told British Vogue in 2022.

— Read more in Inside Andy Warhol’s Lifelong Obsession With Perfume at Artnet.

His now-legendary personal perfume collection

Posted by Robin on 22 April 2022 5 Comments

It was in the early ‘60s that Warhol began regularly wearing fragrance and adding to his now-legendary personal perfume collection (the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, which holds hundreds of Warhol’s possessions, is home to a wide variety of his perfumes). “Andy said that he’d wear one perfume for a few months and then switch to another, so each short period of his life would have its own unique scent-association,” explains Murphy.

— Our own Dr. Jessica talks to Vogue about Andy Warhol's obsession with fragrance, in conjunction with the Andy Warhol: Revelation exhibit at Brooklyn Museum (she's also giving tours there; the next one with tickets still available is on May 5). Read more in Andy Warhol Was Fragrance-Obsessed—Here Are the Perfumes He Loved Most. (And you can find Jessica at Twitter, Brooklyn Brainery or at her blog, Perfume Professor.)

Estee Lauder Beautiful Absolu ~ new fragrance

Posted by Robin on 12 October 2020 5 Comments

Estée Lauder has introduced Beautiful Absolu, a new concentration of 1985’s Beautiful in packaging reflecting Andy Warhol’s connection to the fragrance…

Read the rest of this article »

A kind of smell museum

Posted by Robin on 18 July 2020 7 Comments

One of the less well-known things about Andy Warhol was his obsession with fragrance. He is said to have had a collection that he called his “permanent smell collection,” which was made up of hundreds of bottles, many half-used. Halston cologne, Penhaligon’s Blenheim Bouquet eau de toilette, Braggi cologne, Ma Griffe by Carven, Paris by Yves Saint Laurent, and Devin cologne by Aramis are a few he collected.

[...] Warhol began amassing his collection of semi-used perfumes in the early 1960s— “Before that, the smells in my life were all just whatever happened to hit my nose by chance,” he wrote. “But then I realized I had to have a kind of smell museum so certain smells wouldn’t get lost forever.”

— Perfumer Francis Kurkdjian, in a 2018 interview with Rain magazine. Read more in Francis Kurkdjian, Hitting the Right Notes.

New from Bond no. 9

Posted by Robin on 12 February 2013 15 Comments

bond-9-no-andy

Bond no. 9 has introduced five fragrances: Bond Silver (above left), Union Square (above center), Lexington Avenue (above right), Success is the Essence of New York and Montauk. These appear to be the former Andy Warhol series, repackaged and reintroduced as Andy-Warhol-less standalone products. All are available now at Saks Fifth Avenue.

(via saksfifthavenue)

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