Perfumes Parade — How Paul Poiret Dressed Perfumes

What perfume are you wearing today? And what is your perfume wearing?

A small selection of Armand Vallée’s illustrations of Les Parfums de Rosine costumes, published initially in Fantasio magazine, issue number 190 from 15th June 1914.

Perfume advertising is a rather complex and challenging task. Scents and their nuances are subjective and do not allow themselves to be accurately described or depicted through words, images, sounds or touch.

Commonly used media for products advertising, such as TV, radio, magazines, newspapers, and social media, struggle to convey the actual scent of perfume and instead focus on triggering emotions and feelings. And as such, perfume is frequently described through qualities like elegance, sex appeal, power, freedom, popularity, beauty or wealth.

The premise is to play on peoples’ insecurities, desires, and fantasies. Instead of telling consumers how great the perfume smells, the advert tells them how great they and their life will become if they purchase the product.

Fashion parades for perfumes

Everything exists in a three-dimensional space, including perfume. Even though one cannot see, hear, or touch the scent itself, it is nevertheless present and detectable through the sense of smell.

Someone who understood scent’s limited perceptibility and knew how to translate it into a solid, tangible…