Barbara Herman, author of Scent and Subversion: Decoding a Century of Provocative Perfume, has launched Eris Parfums, featuring three fragrances developed by perfumer Antoine Lie and celebrating “unconventional beauty and dark glamour”…
The bold, the sexy and the downright odd smells
Barbara Herman, author of Scent & Subversion: Decoding a Century of Provocative Perfume, talks to NPR's All Things Considered about vintage fragrances:
Blogger Barbara Herman has spent the better part of the past six years taking a deep nosedive into the world of vintage fragrances. Her quest? To find the bold, the sexy and the downright odd smells that have defined women over the decades.
The segment is a little over 5 minutes long.
Scent & Subversion: Decoding a Century of Provocative Perfume by Barbara Herman ~ perfume books
Once or twice a year, someone will ask why I’m so fascinated with perfume — or, more bluntly, why I’m willing to pay more than $100 for a bottle. I have an answer ready: It’s a piece of art that you get to carry with you all day instead of leaving on/above the mantle.
It’s a half-truth. I also wear perfume when I can’t pile on enough cashmere, or black eyeliner, or gin flasks to keep up with my mood. That’s when I reach for Bottega Veneta, or Dior Poison, or Jean Patou Joy. Because, as Yesterday’s Perfume blogger Barbara Herman so aptly states in her book Scent & Subversion: Decoding a Century of Provocative Perfume, “Perfume’s power is that it has one foot in the elevated world of language, and one foot in the primal, emotional, visceral, and dreamlike.” They say what I really want to say, in a cut-to-the-chase, non-HR-involving language…