An Incomplete History of Perfums Ads
As a part of the 2024 Printing Fashion Festival, which explored the them of “Desire,” the MA in Fashion Studies at Parsons Paris presented the exhibition An Incomplete History of Perfum Ads.
Browsing through the donation of Palais Galliera Musée de la Mode de Paris to Parsons Paris, the exhibition aimed to present an incomplete historical trajectory of magazine advertisings and techniques of displaying perfumes in major mainstream publications, like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. This subjective and intuitive selection of promotional images and texts seek to demonstrate the transformative and shifting nature of marketing the idea of desire.
Amongst the different examples displayed in the gallery, visitors were asked to browse and make connections between ads from iconic brands such as Chanel, Lanvin and Dior to more unknown and forgotten houses active during the 20th century. The selected pages showcased the use of bodies, graphic layout and typographic games, changing trends in still-life techniques.
Divided in three sections (Bodies & Sexualities, Still Life & Design, and Exotic & Colonial), An Incomplete History of Perfume Ads invited the viewer to reflect on the different archetypes in commercial advertising and the ways such a central product in the fashion industry has not only remained, for centuries, a central tool for profit but also has generated iconic techniques of image-making and typography in the history of publishing fashion.