"I really love wearing perfume...
I switch perfumes all the time. If I've been wearing one perfume for three months, I force myself to give it up, even if I still feel like wearing it, so whenever I smell it again it will always remind me of those three months. I never go back to wearing it again; it becomes part of my permanent smell collection...
Smell really is transporting. Seeing, hearing, touching, tasting are just not as powerful as smelling if you want your whole being to go back for a second to something. Usually I don't want to, but by having smells stopped up in bottles, I can be in control and can only smell the smells I want to, when I want to, to get the memories I'm in the mood to have. Just for a second. The good thing about a smell-memory is that the feeling of being transported stops the instant you stop smelling, so there are no aftereffects. It's a neat way to reminisce...
I get very excited when I read advertisements for perfume in the fashion magazines that were published in the 30s and 40s. I try to imagine from their names what they smelled like and I go crazy because I want to smell them all so much."
— From The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again) by Andy Warhol
I love piece. I love how he has a discipline about giving up a certain perfume for the purpose of future reminiscence.
He really describes so well how the memory just stops the second the perfume is removed... I know sometimes when I'm walking around downtown and I catch a whiff of my mums, now discontinued perfume in a crowd my nose sniffs around hungrily wanting the memory tape to run its course. I'd probably follow them down the street if I could identify the source.
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