What Was Your Teenage Fragrance?
I know everyone already knows that one of my major teen fragrances was Sarah Jessica Parker’s Lovely since I’ve talked about it too much—but I also was a fan of Chanel’s Chance and even in my younger years I was a disciple of Bath and Body Works sprays, CK One, and the Gap fragrances. For this issue of Middle Notes, I did my first (and hopefully not last) interview, so get ready for a great read about teenage perfumes.
With Valentine’s coming up, which is also the opening reception of the fabulous art exhibit below, I thought about what to wear for the day to be seen as a sexy, carefree single woman and decided on Atelier Cologne’s Rose Anonyme, a rose fragrance I adore. Judging from what they describe the fragrance as on the site, “mysterious encounter, “requite and risk,” “needs to be tamed”—the copywriter and I are on the same page. Read on for a great interview with Elizabeth Renstrom, a very special perfume ad of the week, and catch me at Renstrom’s art exhibit next week if you want to chat perfume IRL.
An Interview with Basenote Bitch’s Elizabeth Renstrom
By day, Elizabeth Renstrom is a New York based photographer and photo editor who has done work for The New Yorker, Vice, The New York Times, SSENSE, and many other cool brands and publications. But in her spare time, Renstrom’s personal Sasha Fierce alter ego is Basenote Bitch, an Instagram that peddles delightfully unhinged fragrance reviews coupled with gorgeous imagery. While Renstrom reviews all sorts of fragrances, one of Basenote Bitch’s focuses has been the fragrances of the 90s and 2000s, revisiting the scents of teen girlhood. This ongoing project has culminated in a Basenote Bitch art show which opens on February 14th at New York’s Olfactory Art Keller gallery with an opening night party with scents and candy and plenty of cool new merch. If you can’t make it, the exhibit will be running through March 30th.
Renstrom talked to Middle Notes about the Basenote Bitch exhibit, her inspiration for the project, and the scents she has been and currently is crazy for.
Has fragrance always been something that you've always been into and interested in?
Definitely as a kid a lot. My high school scent was Ralph Lauren Cool. I smelled like a watermelon. But I didn’t have a refined interest in perfume, probably until when I moved to the city and I had more exposure to things outside of major retailers or the mall. I'd say I've always been interested, but my collection has not grown substantially until probably the last eight years.
What was your inspiration for Basenote Bitch? It feels like there are two sides to it—one where you are reviewing fragrance but the other side that excavates fragrances from when we were teens.
I was kicking around ideas for a new project about beauty advertising and our nostalgia for certain products that help evoke memory. I knew I wanted to make a couple of images about specific fragrances that were geared toward our early ideas about sexuality. So I did want to do Victoria’s Secret Love Spell from the start.
I did the first 10 images for the project and I had so much fun doing it. Just the research for the perfume and when it was released, the decade, and who would've been wearing it became a fun prompt for me to continue shooting. And then because I put it on Instagram, it was a way to connect with this community.
What's been your research process for it?
I try to work in shoots of five to seven. I scour forums and beauty articles I can find of perfumes that have reflected the decade, and then I will refine and see which ones have the most conversation around them. It started with that kind of research, and then it's just me referencing books on perfume for staples of each of the decades. In my work, I like to think about people's personal spaces. So in applying that to this project, say I find the Bath and Body Works’s Country Apple. If it came out in 1999, what were the huge cultural moments happening then, and what would be in and around this perfume bottle?
That was one of my questions is about the staging process. I love that each one feels like it's creating a persona around the perfume with all the items around the fragrance and how they make sense with the reviews. Do you smell the fragrance you’ve chosen and see what it evokes?
It's part of that. And then the biographical details of the fragrance because I want people, even if they haven't smelled this fragrance, to be able to connect with the vibe of the photo or the time period. I did Samba Kiss and for that, I was like, okay, the person or teenager wearing this, they're bored at night and they are looking at infomercials. What would they have bought on the infomercial? Maybe it was TrimSpa. It's sort of that [process] because things have a second life online, so I'm also kind of trying to figure out again, what people enjoy indulging in. Trying to find those other signifiers so that people can get some context clues.
How has it been smelling a lot of these? I’m sure it brings up all kinds of weird memories and thoughts.
It's so fun because it really does bring you back. Even ones, I wasn't even sure that I had smelled before, like Elizabeth Arden Green Tea, when I smelled that fragrance again, it's just so visceral. I know the 2000s is pretty fruity, floral forward, but in re-smelling some old classics, I'm constantly surprised. Hilary Duff's With Love is coveted online and I smelled it and I could see why. There's a nice sandalwood note and it's a little different from other celebrity fragrances.
I'm so excited for the show. How is it putting that together and why did you decide that this was a project to put into a bigger framework?
I feel like this is such a fun experiential show. I was approached by Andreas at the Olfactory Art Keller gallery and he convinced me. I'm first and foremost a photographer, so I tend to do more traditional showings but I never thought I could have a presentation of this with a diffusion oil of Love Spell that'll be pumping through the space.
He took a chance on me being more of a photographer, but he was like, oh, yeah, we'll figure out how to bring smelly elements to it. It's such a cool way to connect with people and I'm looking forward to people being able to look at the photos outside of just the context of Instagram and while they're reading the captions have the bottles on hand right away to smell. I'm just excited to give people something special to do on Valentine's Day for the opening. I'm working with a chef who has done Olfactive projects, and she's going to be making custom candy and drinks for the day of.
You’ve been doing this project for a while, where do you see it going next after the show?
Initially, it was meant to kind of feed into this larger idea, as I said, about beauty and women's media, but now I feel like it's an anthropological ongoing sort of series. I'd love to organize it in a book format and explore more decades in the same way that I've broadly explored the 90s and 2000s. It's been such a surprise for me because it's a pretty new hobby, and I just have loved getting to know so many different kinds of thinkers in the space.
Is there anything that you've been wearing or smelled recently that you would want you would recommend?
OLO Fragrances in Portland, Oregon. They used to do just fragrance oils, and they just released spray versions, check them out. I just went to Bergdorf's and they just put in Dries Van Noten. I went and I'm such a sucker, and I got a couple of travel-size bottles [including] Raving Rose.
Perfume Ad of the Week
When Hilary Duff’s fragrance With Love was mentioned in the above interview, I knew I immediately needed to check out the commercial for it. Somehow, this piece of art exceeded my expectations. I love that it’s basically a condensed version of her music video for “With Love.” You immediately know what year (2007) it’s from because of her paparazzi fooling wig, a lady fedora, and the casting of lunkhead Kellan Lutz as the romantic interest. Granted, I shouldn’t be too much of a hater since he was in the Lisa Kudrow series The Comeback. This seems to be framed as Hilary’s bad girl era because there’s so much purple, stripping, and making out in elevators. No notes!