The concept of "aura," originally describing the unique presence and authenticity of an artwork, has been significantly diluted and commodified in the digital age, particularly within the fragrance industry, where marketing and perceived authority now dictate desirability over intrinsic scent.
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Walter Benjamin, the original aura
farmer, used aura with reference to art.
He described the aura of a piece of art
as its unique existence in time and
space, an interpretation derived from
perception. It encompasses the
experiences of contemplation,
admiration, reflection, and analysis.
For example, the Mona Lisa, as you stand
beneath her in the muz, the silence
filled only with the occasional musings
of a French man. the sensory embodiment
of the encounter and the experience as
you contemplate, admire, reflect and
analyze. Dear Lisa, Benjamin would
describe as aura. It is derived from the
sense of authenticity, reverence, and
immediacy that comes from the object's
originality and history. Maximum aura is
experienced when these components are
also maximized. And as such, you would
experience the Mona Lisa's maximum aura
as you stand beneath her in the Lou.
Benjamin's sentiment in his paper on the
mechanical reproduction of art where he
introduces us to the concept of aura is
that reproduction results in aura decay.
A picture of the monise does not elicit
the same emotions as the original
painting would. You can understand that
this person would be experiencing more
aura than this person. So whilst
reproduction can democratize art, what
you experience from it is a diminished
version of its original aura.
Reproduction similarly democratizes
fragrance. In the current landscape of
mass marketing in social media, the
perception of scent and the aura of
fragrance itself has undergone a process
of decay, originality is one of the core
components of the colloquialized version
of aura. And whilst accessibility allows
many people to experience something, own
something. It makes it less exclusive.
And if you're familiar with the concept
of chicomics, you'll understand that the
feeling of exclusivity induced by lack
of exposure is essential in its
definition of chic. In case you're
unfamiliar, chicomics is the science of
fashion trends. When something is new,
we have little exposure to it and it
feels exclusive. But over time, as our
exposure increases due to such factors
as influencer marketing, ads, and
ubiquity amongst muggles, chic value
depletes. Benjamin would translate this
as aura decay. And the same mechanisms
apply with fragrance. Perfume was once
considered a deeply personal expression
of taste, an extension of social
anesthetic identity.
>> Golden Rolex, red Ferrari, Jeremy
fragrance. If any of you listen to Miss
Tuber Avalon, I'm sure you'll be well
acquainted with Pia Bodo. Um, but in any
unfortunate case where you're yet to
watch Tuba video, I should introduce him
now. Bordaux considered the expression
of taste as a function not only of
personal preference, but as a social
marker of class through displays of
refinement. He suggested that taste is a
form of cultural capital, a resource
through which we assert both belonging
to the social groups we believe to be
refined and distance from those that we
believe not to be. So with regard to our
discussion of fragrance, choice of
perfume cannot be attributed merely to
personal preference but to the assertion
of status. As fragrances become
increasingly commodified by trends, the
distinction of a once subtle perfume
becomes blurred by our overexposure to
shared marketable identity. Although
Benjamin and the principal economics
share the same theory, aura decays with
the proliferation of exposure through
algorithmic trends, influencer
marketing, celebrity endorsements, and
viral Tik Tok moments. The originality
of fragrance has become a symbol of
conformity. One perfume is reproduced
over and over, worn by millions,
everyone smelling the same, and its aura
is diluted by repetition. That scent no
longer suggests uniqueness, refinement,
but symbolizes our participation in a
collective performance of taste, where
our identity is mediated through
marketing rather than individuality. It
is a very recent cultural phenomenon
that the highest compliment someone
wishes to receive is to be told that
they smell good. But when we say this
with reference to the smell of someone's
perfume, we are acknowledging the signs
of status inscribed within it. Because
we would similarly say something smells
good when we smell something cooking. [bell]
[bell]
>> Something smells good.
>> And yet this translates emotionally to
something else entirely. If your hinge
date turned up smelling of spaghetti,
you wouldn't say, "Oh, you smell good."
Similarly, if your pasta smelled like
duty-free, you wouldn't be saying it
smells good either. The smell of a
person is more symbolic. Complimenting
the smell of a dish is essentially you
Whereas Bordeaux would argue that a
person smelling good is an accumulation
of symbolic knowledge he calls cultural
capital. The unspoken literacy of taste
that allows us to observe the
distinction between the unique and
layered fragrance of a handsome European
man from the commercial best-selling
aftershave that reminds you of boys in
school. For example, Axe or Lynx as we
affectionately know it in England is
owned by Unilever and sold at a pocket
money price point resulting in its
popularity as a fragrance for teenage
boys. Unfortunately for Lynx, you cannot
isolate the actual smell of Lynx from
the cultural context of the smell. I'm
not sure about my boys over in the US,
but over here, Lynx Africa has reached
meme status, but I personally believe
>> Every perfume campaign tries to sell
sex, but Lynx tried to make it funny.
And unfortunately, it's weakened their
brand as a fragrance because you end up
smelling like a joke. And you may argue
that Lynx is not a cologne, so whatever.
It's not really that important. But is
this not worse? That a deodorant is not
about hygiene, but about sexual power. I
don't know. To me, that's weird. But I
think to be honest, this is why the
marketing is so effective for teenage
boys. Why get a deodorant to stop you
from smelling when it can get you girls?
In any case, marketing exploits this
grammar of distinction. We are not
simply being sold objects. We are being
sold belonging. A promise that to own
the right scent is to be recognized as
someone who knows, aka
I Y K Y K.
Selling a pleasant smell is easy. Yet
only the most talented marketers
communicate semiotic fluency, the
ability to read and reproduce the codes
of taste through branding. This dynamic
explains why we are so willing to
believe in an influencer when they tell
us the perfume is extraordinary.
>> This scent is derived from an extinct
flower in Hawaii. They are the most
unique fragrances I have ever
experienced. Their endorsement carries
cultural authority. We understand as the
content consumer that the creator is in
possession of a membership to a class of
people whose taste we wish to emulate.
If the brand is smart enough, the
influencer chosen to front a campaign
will reflect the brand's identity. The
aura of the influencer and the aura of
the brand must align in order to present
a believable narrative. The influencer
acts as a bordan figure, the taste
maker. And this is why choice of
influencer in fragrance campaigns in
particular is so important because an
influencer cannot endorse scent through
demonstration. As the consumer of the
influencer, we can't smell what we see.
And so, the brand relies on the consumer
simply believing the influencer. As
such, we find ourselves not buying a
scent, but buying the taste and identity
that the influencer represents. This
phenomenon is not isolated to social
media marketing or influencer culture. I
remember watching Darren Brown present
an audience with a bottle of highly
>> The moment you smell it, it will only be
faint. Please put your hand up. He
opened the bottle and asked the audience
to raise their hands when they could
smell it. [music]
>> That bottle had water in it.
>> Uh, so here's the twist.
>> That is not peppermint oil. That's
actually just water.
>> Revealing how easily sensory experience
can become shaped by suggestion and
authority. Darren Brown's credibility as
the psychological mind readading I don't
know magician scientist I don't know I
don't know whatever but if you're
sitting in the audience you believe him
this gives his narrative weight and you
believe him to such an extent that you
experience what he is merely suggesting
influencer marketing functions in the
same fashion the influencer occupies a
position of perceived authority the
influencer is believed to be credible
for having good taste so when the
influencer says this smells good us as
the content consumer respond not to the
fragrance itself because we can't smell
but to the creator's cultural capital.
>> I've seen a video of Molly saying it's
like her favorite perfume and she
doesn't get keep. It genuinely smells so
unreal. This is like Molly May's
favorite perfume. It is just unreal.
Demonstrating that aura is nothing more
than collective conviction. Benjamin
posits that aura refers to the unique
presence an object possesses. But in
these examples, both Darren and our
influencer dismantle this and expose the
idea that presence is produced through
belief. The audience didn't actually
smell the peppermint because there was
no peppermint. He has the credible
perceived authority to create smell
through suggestion. Aura only exists
because we agree it does. I'm sure
you've all heard of it because you're
very intelligent over here on the Ash
Caligan channel, but in any case, you
haven't. For the imposters watching, in
1961, Stanley Mgram conducted an
experiment where participants were
assigned teacher roles in a study that
they were told by a scientist in a white
lab coach was on learning and memory.
They were told to press a button every
time the scientist told them to. The
teacher [music] would ask the learner
questions in a word game and administer
an electric shock when the answer was
incorrect. He was told to increase the
voltage with each wrong answer. And
every time they did, they would hear a
scream of agony from behind a wall in
which they believed the learner to be.
At every wrong answer the learner gave,
the scientists instructed the teacher to
press the button. And every time it was
pressed, the screams became louder and
more agonizing. The majority of
participants continued to press the
button despite showing visible signs of
distress and questioning the scientist.
>> I can't stand THE PAIN. I DON'T
>> STAND. I'm not going to kill that man. I
mean, who's going to take the
responsibility if anything happens to
that gentleman?
>> I'm responsible for anything that
happens here. Continue, please.
>> All right. Next was slow
>> all the way to the end of the experiment
where the concluding button press
resulted in silence from behind the wall.
wall.
>> 375 volts.
>> I think something's happened that I fall
in there. I don't get no answer. He
[clears throat] was hollering a less volage.
volage.
>> The Mgrim experiment demonstrated that
authority when symbolically legitimized,
in this case by a white coat, can
override sensory evidence and moral
intuition. They press this button until
they thought they killed someone because
a scientist told them to. The scientist
telling them to press the button held a
perceived authority credible enough to
kill someone. With reference to
fragrance, when an influencer tells you
a perfume smells good, their perceived
authority and credibility as a taste
maker leads us to believe them. We can't
smell it, but they can and we trust
them. The popularity of the influencer
acts as social validation that their
opinions are correct and reflect good
taste. And it is this collective
agreement demonstrated by a number of
followers as an example metric by us as
content consumers that sustains the
illusion. Therefore, aura, if we define
it as we have, cannot therefore be an
intrinsic quality of an object, but of a
socially manufactured response to
perceived authority. Social media and
the digital age has created a paradox in
the realm of fragrance. We buy perfume
without having smelt it. We are no
longer buying based on alfactory
experience but on semiotic cues. A
consumer proficient in the symbolic
literacy of sense will understand that
oud implies opulence, musk implies
intimacy, white flaws imply femininity.
Brands utilize this understanding to
allow the consumer to project their own
sensory associations and imagine sensory
congrent if you will. Exploiting the
ability to simulate alactory sensation
through visual or linguistic cues.
Evidence for this phenomenon can be
found in the marketing of Bakarat Rouge.
It rise in popularity did not stem from
the tradition of spraying a little piece
of paper in a department store with
copious amounts of liquid from a bottle
but from digital semiotics red glass
gold typography and ad briefs that
require influencers to use certain
language that evokes wealth, exclusivity
and sensuality. So despite Bakrat Rouge
being first released in 2014, its
popularity seemed to begin at the launch
of Tik Tok, the launch of Tik Tok as we
currently know it at least. And ever
since the popularity of both variables
is parallel, suggesting that social
media has had a great influence in the
popularity of Bakarat Rouge.
Furthermore, Backrat Rouge was the most
popular perfume in 2022, suggesting that
the success of a perfume no longer
depends on its scent, but on its ability
to perform well within the digital
marketplace. And so, if we believe this
to be true, it must also be true that
symbolism and social and cultural value
are more important factors in selling
perfume than its scent. This case
encapsulates the logic of imagined
sensory congruence. Through collective
linguistic and visual association, we as
consumers construct an internal
simulation of how perfume must smell.
The literal sense of smell is supplanted
by social meaning. And as such, we might
now consider the perfume to be less so a
scent, but more a vessel for the
performance of taste, status, and
belonging. This is not a unique
phenomenon confined to fragrance. The
mechanisms of imagined sensory
congruence are very popular in the use
of food in fashion marketing. In this
context, the alignment is no longer
between sight and smell, but between
sight and taste. Fashion campaigns have
recently been saturated with pictures of
indulgent desserts, fresh vegetables,
and butter.
Um, the choice of produce is carefully
selected to evoke a certain emotion. But
the choice is not just based on the
taste in the literal sense, but also in
the figurative sense, on what the food
represents. So, instead of simulating
the taste of whatever food is being used
by the marketing team, it is, as
Benjamin would say, the aura that is
simulated. You can see this all over Tik
Tok and Pinterest that people are
matching food with fashion, food with
fragrance, food with literary
preference. And I think what we are
seeing is a flip in the narrative.
Instead of food simulating the
desiraability of a product, we see the
product simulating the desiraability of
the food. For example, in this image,
you may align more with the supposed
output. And so you reverse the equation.
Instead of being influenced to buy what
is being marketed, what is being
marketed influences what you eat. And
then we find ourselves in the age-old
sticky situation of making certain foods
fashionable. and for the mental and
physical health of probably more so the
female population but let's just say
it's the general population as a whole
this is a bad idea because in this case
the diet is not being pushed for its
nutritional value but for its aura and
when this is a desirable aura a diet
consisting of this is not going to end
well furthermore just to drive home how
much of a bad idea this is not even
going to end badly if this becomes your
diet but also if it does not because
it's propaganda like this that suggests
that you are only cool if you eat this
and so if you don't eat this you are not
Cool. Oh. Anyway, I think this is a
discussion for another video. So, if you
want to have the conversation, do help
yourselves in the comment section below.
I shall join you as I see fit. Anyway,
fragrance-like fashion follows trends.
What we now understand to be clean girl
aesthetic is just the most current and
refined rebrand of what we would
consider minimalism to be in the 2010s.
Clean girl aesthetic is a result of
minimalism being filtered through
cultural eras of self-care and wellness
influence of individualism and the rise
of hyper femininity marking a neglect of
2010 minimalism's original architectural
and philosophical influences. Clean girl
aesthetic is a branch of minimalism as a
result of filtration and refinement
through the 2010s. And as such, I would
consider it correct to suggest that
before there was clean girl aesthetic,
there was minimalism. One of the first
brands to capitalize on the breakdown
and refinement of minimalism into its
aesthetic was Glossier. 2014 saw the
colloquial conception of the term no
makeup makeup, a beauty branch of the
aesthetic component of minimalism.
Glossier was the embodiment of this
trend. Founded in 2014 at no makeup
makeup's peak, in 2017, minimalism
reached its own peak. So, it's no
surprise that this is when Glossier
became popular as it was one of the only
brands identifying with the minimal
makeup and skincare at the time where
the most popular trend at the time was
actually full glam, smokey eye, filledin
eyebrows, Alla, Jeffree Star, James
Charles. So, in the scheme of things,
there was actually little competition.
At the start of Glossia's rise in
popularity in 2017, they released their
first fragrance, Glossier U, which was
popular, but his popularity was limited
by the Jeffree Star effect. It wasn't
until the conception of the Clean Girl
aesthetic in 2022 that it reached its
full potential. By then, Glossier was
already an established brand, and so
when the full glam look fell out of
favor, it was the natural replacement.
With the rise of the clean girl
aesthetic and Glossia's cultural value,
their fragrance U garnered correlating
attention, suggesting that this
fragrance wasn't bought for its scent,
but it semiotic value, a tool for
performing alignment with the Clean Girl
aesthetic. Rather than smelling nice,
you simply owned Glossier U. No matter
what it actually smelt like, owning a
piece of the Clean Girl aesthetic was
more important. Currently, we are
experiencing clean girl fatigue. To fill
the clean girl void, the most popular
trend circle 2025 ad a
a
>> AI. Do you use AI? Do you use church?
>> Is individuality and authenticity. As
you might expect if you're listening
carefully, this cultural turn is
mirrored in fragrance. So with the same
sentiment in mind, in order to adhere to
this new aesthetic, if you want to call
authenticity an aesthetic, which to be
honest, I think it is, you must smell
authentic and individual. But notice how
these are not scents. We have completely
dismantled the expectation that perfume
should smell nice. This is reflected in
the rise of popularity of fragrance
houses like Labo and Brio. Labo was
supposedly created as a scent revolution
and desire to rebel against the rising
tide of conformity.
Where traditionally fragrance has been
quite heavily gendered, for example,
floral and sweet for women and woody and
musky for men, the Labo combined scent
profiles to create a unisex fragrance.
The androgyny supposedly allows the
wearer to project their own identity
onto the scent. The genderless
composition, clear liquid, and antibrand
concepts like the illusion of a
handstamped label claims that every
perfume is handmade to order and poured
upon purchase and the lack of celebrity
or influencer marketing is all a
marketing technique in itself to create
the illusion of individuality.
Projecting the idea that the wearer
imparts their own identity, making it
more than a mass-produced object. But
The visually inept of us will not see
difference between the two. I know I
can't. Both Elabo and Brio make
fragrances that traditionally would have
been considered unpleasant for being too
animalic or smoky because there has been
a sociological shift from the desire to
smell pleasant to the desire to smell
different. This pursuit of individuality
is a paradox. In the age of mass
production and consumerism, authenticity
has become a commodity. The rhetoric of
realness that brands like Halabo and
Brio are marketing to us with
androgynous, raw, handmade, anti-trend
promises are just another layer of
branding. These markers of originality
have become aesthetics in themselves,
endlessly replicated and reproduced. And
so it stands to reason that if we assume
Benjamin was correct in his theory of
aura decay, the sustained repetition of
consumer behaviors based on the desire
to be unique results only in the
illusion of individuality. The desire to
smell unique ultimately collapses into
the same logic as the desire to look
fashionable. Which is why we now cringe
at the idea of doing too much. Because
paradoxically, individuality looks the
same. And unfortunately, following the
same reasoning, individuality also
smells the same. What if we do actually
consider buying and wearing perfume or
cologne for its scent? This final
Who actually value the smell of their
cologne over its identity. For those of
you who understand the meaning of a top
and a bottom, who choose their scent
based not on research, virality,
exclusivity, or popularity within the
niche fragrance community, which in
itself is also a paradox, but on smell.
How radical. Maybe you smell like the
bottle you bought in a foreign country.
The bottle you haggled a Moroccan man
for that you couldn't even read the
label of, let alone recognize the brand,
but you enjoyed the smell of. No prior
knowledge, no hype, no commodified
identity portrayed by marketing,
influenced only by smell. and maybe a
little bit by the Moroccan sales pitch
and the thrill of a haggle, but mostly
by smell. In 2014, Subbert and Friends
found that there was a positive
correlation between the pleasantness of
her smell and our perception of beauty.
Participants were placed in a room that
either smelled nice or smelt like fish
and were literally asked,
>> "What would you rate this girl on a
scale of 1 to 10?"
>> Those in the nice smelling room rated
her as more attractive than those in the
room that smelt bad, demonstrating that
a pleasant smell makes you sexy by
influencing and altering visual
perception. Essentially, to smell good
is to look good. Notice in this
experiment how the smell that was
influencing perception was blind. There
was no identity associated with the
smell, just a pleasant smell or an
unpleasant smell. When scent is isolated
from its identity as a product and
experienced only as the chemical, it is
moderation, not excess that attracts.
Heavy use of cologne or aftershave ala
links Africa masks the smell of being
someone potentially attractive. You want
your cologne to harmonize with your body
chemistry, not compete with it. From an
evolutionary point of view, you can
essentially smell if someone is going to
make good babies. There is not
necessarily a certain smell of wellness.
There is however a smell of illness. And
if you are attempting to medicate your
halattosis with Dior suage, uh maybe
this podcast is a waste of time. But
anyway, there is however a smell of
compatibility. And when you drown this
with cologne, you stop signaling nice,
friendly, superior species, ideal mate,
and start signaling danger chemical
warfare. There's a threshold, okay? You
want to be just above the detectable
level so that there is still that
unconscious response to combatibility.
So really, it's not a smell in the sense
that it is a fragrance because you
respond below the conscious level to it.
But when you match a fragrance with the
right intensity, it has the potential to
increase the level of attraction people
feel towards you. As well as intensity,
you want congruence. A Czech
zoolologist, which I found quite funny,
found that wearing your own perfume is
more attractive than wearing a randomly
assigned perfume. So by that conclusion,
there must be some kind of interaction
between yourself and your preferred
fragrance because it smells better than
an interaction between yourself and a
random fragrance. So what does that mean
in practical terms? You don't want to
smother yourself in perfume or you will
lose yourself part of that interaction
that ultimately makes you smell more
attractive. As I said earlier, perfume
marketing is based on sex because you
can't smell the marketing. You know,
gingerbread men smell nice, but
fragrance, as I said earlier, is more
than just smelling nice. But unlike the
smell of a gingerbread man, the smell of
sex depends on cultural context. In the
50s, Marilyn Monroe famously said that
she wore nothing but Chanel number five
to bed.
>> They asked you questions like, "What do
you wear to bed?" Uh, do you wear pajama
tops, the bottoms of the pajamas, or the
night gown? Or so I Chanel number five?
Cuz it's it's the truth.
>> And before 1998, Chanel number five
contained civet. The reason why post
1998 you no longer find this ingredient
in perfume is because you obtain it from
the anal glands of exotic cats. It's cat
bum juice. Bum juice that when diluted,
it actually smells warm, musky, and
sweet, reflecting the depictions of sex
that existed at the time. But the
semantics of sex changed in the 80s and
'9s. The AIDS epidemic reshaped how we
viewed sex and as it follows, how we
marketed perfume. In 1994, Calvin Klein
released CK1, a sterile frosted glass
bottle and transparent liquid. Is it any
wonder that instead of perfume smelling
alamalic or primal, it now smells of
cyst? Whilst they smell entirely
different, they are portrayed very
similarly. The sexy one.
>> Perfume hasn't always smelt the same,
but it has always smelt of sex. So, with
that, take what you will. Link smells
like a 16-year-old boy. Glossia smells
like a social media marketing intern.
CK1 smells like a kitchen. What smells
like you?
And that is everything we have time for
today. I really hope you enjoyed that. I
really hope to see you here very
incredibly soon. do come again if anyone
is wondering. My favorite scents are
white florals. Do tell me what your
favorite scent is. Do tell me if you own
Glossia, Bakrat Rouge, Labo or the like. Um
Um
Oh. Ah.
Ah.
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