Perfume clubs transforming scent into a social
As a casual form of entertainment, it's huge amounts of fun.
Attending a wine festival and tasting a smorgasbord of blends and varietals...is like taking your sense of taste and smell to the circus.
And when it's combined with the delight of joining other people in light frivolous banter (while also getting progressively more pissed) and the enveloping of the tastebuds and olfactory regions of the body in unique liquid terroir; the attention paid to the activity is intoxicating on multiple dimensions.
As a casual form of entertainment, it's huge amounts of fun.
So it makes sense that the same immersive mechanism (without the hangover) would translate to smelling perfume with other people too.
Perfume clubs are growing in popularity around the world.
The promise being offered is a chance to escape the mundaneness of our algorithmically-driven, isolated reality - and instead mingle with complete strangers, while discussing the merits of vetiver and patchouli.
Sniffing strips of paper together and analysing the layers of complexity presented might not sound like everyone's idea of a wild night out, but if the alternative is to sit at home and catch-up on the maelstrom that we call news these days, I'll take a whiff of 'dirty ballet tights' any day.
Perfume is just the prop
Much like the practice of disguising a drinking habit by calling the quaffing of large amounts of wine 'culture', gathering with others to sniff unusual perfumes is not really about the perfume.
Rather these events offer mystery and access to novel encounters that make life interesting and noteworthy. We're instinctively attracted to the unknown and yearn for any excuse to sniff around whenever the opportunity presents itself.
More:
Dazed