Brooklyn Brainery
Grab Bag with Jessica Murphy

Scent & Style: Iconic Perfumes (1950-2000)

Scent & Style: Iconic Perfumes (1950-2000)

Just like a work of visual art, fashion, or architecture, a perfume can capture a specific time and place.

In this illustrated lecture, we'll learn the stories behind five classic fragrances released between 1950 and 2000. As we smell them together, we'll consider these perfumes as olfactory innovations, expressions of identity, and reflections of their original cultural contexts.

Jessica Murphy

About Jessica Murphy

Jessica Murphy is an art historian and museum professional with a longtime passion for perfume. She's been a contributor at the blog Now Smell This since 2007, and since 2015 she's been giving presentations about the cultural history of fragrance via the Institute for Art and Olfaction, the Brooklyn Museum, the Corning Museum of Glass, and other venues. Her writing about scent has appeared in Atlas Obscura and Viscose Journal and she's been interviewed by VogueThe New York TimesBloomberg BusinessweekHarper’s Bazaar, Decoder Ring, and other media outlets. She shares her thoughts on olfactory and visual topics at her Substack, Show & Smell.