The Scent Designers Trying to Capture the Smell of the New Museum

The Berlin- and New York–based perfumery Folie À Plusieurs recently released two new scents that, at first blush, don’t seem too unusual. Aspects n ° 1 , as clear as water, smells hot and musky; Aspects n ° 2, an opaque, rose-ochre color, is more floral and metallic. But they differ from typical perfume in that these scents are sold exclusively at the New Museum, and are intended to embody the art institution olfactorily. That is to say, their makers set out to create perfumes that emulate the actual smell of walking through the museum. Eau de musée, if you will.

The first scent is said to include notes of, among other things, “neon light effect,” “green,” and “animalic”; the other scent is said to include notes of “damp concrete,” “paper,” and “cold.” I was, I admit, won over by the perfumery’s endeavor; there’s something charming about attempting to translate between senses—forging ahead while recognizing the impossibility of the task. But synesthetic pursuits like this are a specialty of Folie À Plusieurs.

The perfumery’s director, Kaya Sorhaindo, envisions for visitors to the New Museum to purchase the scents as they would a catalogue or a poster from the museum gift shop. “There’s that element of going to the New Museum and experiencing a show and remembering that experience, then revisiting it olfactorily on your own terms,” he said, adding that the scent is itself a kind of artwork that you can take home “and implement it into your daily life.”

Folie À Plusieurs has been attempting such transubstantial feats for years, translating sensations of all kinds to scent. (Sorhaindo prefers the term “scent” to “perfume,” as “perfume” carries with it too many connotations, and, as he put it, even though all of Folie À Plusieurs’s scents are made to be worn, some of them are “on the border of not even wearable.”)