Perfume Shrine has the honour of presenting you with a rare document today: One of the most aesthetically creative editorials on fragrance, appearing on the glossy pages of US Vogue magazine, issue May 1977, and photograpphed by Helmut Newton, following a plot of erotic jealousy played on the exotic locale of Marrakesh. My historical research on the work of photography in relation to interpreting smells into images often leads me to discover old clippings & snippets on yellowed pages, and it strikes me how the main allure of fragrance hasn't waned, connecting perfume with memory and mood enhancing. It's interesting to note that by 1977 the editors of Vogue US were claiming that fragrance was
everywhere, being definitively on the rise; it would become a serious industry in the 1980s with the cementing of the fragrance wardrobe idea and the concept of projecting an image through it.
The following pictures can be enlarged by clicking on them, revealing their full size which allows the images to display both their impressive glamorous aesthetics and their retro 1970s text, referencing some of the fragrances we have reviewed on Perfume Shrine, such as
Paco Rabanne Calandre and
Shiseido Inoui (classified as "greens"), Jean Couturier's
Coriandre or
Halston by Halston. It also gives some tips on skin type reacting with perfumes,l psychology of choosing a personal fragrance and weather-suiting advice, though I suppose most of our readers know about (and occasionally disregard) the latter. I hope you enjoy!
US Vogue May 1977
The Meaning of Perfume
Photographed by Helmut Newton
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