Warning: This article contains some adult themes.
There's nothing like a particular perfume to bring back a memory or recall a person, place or time.
For some, the 1990s smelled a lot like CK One while Davidoff Cool Water brings to mind that ex-boyfriend you'd rather forget, and Tea Rose reminds you of Sunday afternoons at your grandmother's house.
But according to a new exhibition in London, the future of perfume could smell very different.
Perfume: A Sensory Journey Through Contemporary Scent, which opened recently at Somerset House, promises to take visitors on an "olfactory journey" from the Moroccan desert to a Catholic confessional, a water theme park and a lover's bed.
The exhibition features "10 extraordinary perfumes and their pioneering creators, who have radically changed our perceptions of fragrance over the last 20 years".
Dispensing with conventional notions of good taste for visceral, surprising and sometimes unsavoury smells, the perfumes in this exhibition are about evoking unexpected places or moments.
From perfumer Antoine Lie there is 'Secretions Magnifiques', which is described as "the scent of sexual pleasure", recalling the smells of sweat and semen.
Bertrand Duchaufour delivers "an olfactory portrait of French Catholic mass" with 'Incense: Avignon'.
'Dark Ride' by Killian Wells promises "a thrilling scent simulation of a water theme-park", while Geza Schoen's 'Molecule 01', which is made up of just one ingredient, smells like...nothing, apparently. "It is known apocryphally as a perfume that will make you irresistible," Claire Catterall, senior curator at Somerset House tells the Evening Standard.
These perfumes are questioning what perfume can be, Catterall says, while the rise of niche brands means perfumers are being more experimental.
She says the modern perfume-wearer doesn't want scents that remind them of the past, they want to smell different from anyone else and for the scent they wear to transport them somewhere new, inspired by places such as New York neighbourhoods, books like On the Road by Jack Kerouac, or historical events such as the Battle of Trafalgar.
"So, the more traditional perfumes don't really cut it anymore," Catterall says.
"We're willing to be more adventurous with the scents we wear. We literally want to be transported."
Some of these perfumes might still be a bit out there for the average consumer, but the winds of change are blowing.
"The effect is trickling down to the mainstream, and even the most accessible high street perfumes are becoming much more weird and wonderful," Catterall says.
