Last year, I wore a latex top to a club in Berlin. I’d been going often, but that night, something shifted. The moment I walked in, it felt like I’d been initiated into a secret society. Strangers approached to talk about their latex fetishes. I felt sexy and powerful in the material, finding a strength in the transgressive act of "kink signaling." I had tapped into something deeper, something that had been simmering just beneath the surface.
Kink [noun]: a sexual desire or practice regarded as unusual or unconventional. Ever since the 2011 release of Fifty Shades of Grey, kink has slowly made its way into the mainstream (even if the film wasn't exactly the most realistic portrayal of a BDSM relationship). Since then, the Internet has enabled far easier access to previously underground sexual spaces, from sex workers on social media to fetish-friendly dating apps like Feeld. And now, even fragrance is starting to explore its kinky side.
Sex and scent are inextricably interlinked, but to think kink and fetish is just about sex would be reductive. “You use kinks to achieve psychological headspaces,” dominatrix Eva Oh explains. “Let’s say, bondage: you’re putting people in a vulnerable position when they normally have such freedom. They get to experience a sense of extreme vulnerability, but in a space of caring. Essentially you’re moving somebody’s mind and heart.” Kink is also very much about tapping into our hidden and (often socially taboo) desires that simmer under the surface, often stemming from deeply buried memories—just like our proclivity for certain perfumes. So, it makes sense that in an age of increasing uncertainty, loneliness and alienation from oneself, our appetites for intimacy, control and sexually-charged scents would be growing. And what better way to access a different headspace than to spritz a kinky-smelling scent?
Alex Leese
Take, for instance, the smell of latex. This smell—plasticky, synthetic, man-made—was the inspiration behind fragrance brand Vyrao’s two latest launches, Ludeaux and Ludatrix. One day, when founder Yasmin Sewell was putting on a custom latex trench from industry legend Atsuko Latex, she suddenly heard her intuition urging her to create a scent featuring the note. “I really believe that the connection to one's sexual self is incredibly important,” Sewell says. “I’ve always loved latex; I find it damn fun to wear and play with. There's a feeling of sexiness, but also strength.”
When Sewell told her longtime collaborator and IFF Master Perfumer Meabh Mc Curtain her vision, it clicked immediately. “When Yasmin told me about her project of a sex-positive fragrance duo, I immediately had this image of bare skin accessorized with latex and lipstick, all in pink tones that are a little off-kilter from the dark, vampy side they are often associated with ,” Mc Curtain says. She had been working on a latex accord since university, her interest (and nose) piqued by a friend studying fashion. “The scent of latex is incredibly intriguing because it’s dual in nature," she says. "It's both alluring, as it embodies a bold form of sensuality, and addictive, due to its milky facets, yet also repellent because of its plasticky aspect. It’s this push-pull dynamic of attraction and repulsion that I find perfectly suited to evoke sexuality.”
“I can see why it would be hot as a perfume,” says artist and dominatrix Miss Ozziline. “Liquid latex shine is gooey and glossy, and there’s something really sensual to rubbing that onto the latex covering your body, or getting my submissive to rub it. They are so close to me, yet so far away. It’s a tease.” Dominatrix and activist Pamela Love agrees: "I think of latex as a synthetic skin, my own sweat creating its own scent with it...[smelling it], I can be transported back to a shinier, kinkier moment."
Mia Khalifa, who collaborated with Sewell as the face of Ludatrix, says it's about "giving up control in a controlled way. I love the way it wears, almost like a flashback to a moment of pleasure. As the day goes and you catch whiffs of it, it’s much warmer and cozier."
Toskavot
But the smell of kink is more than just latex. JOUISSANCE makes provocative perfumes inspired by romantic, sensual books, and the aching desire and the intimacy of surrender found in them. Inspired by the feminist erotic literature of Anaïs Nin, Anne Desclos and Catherine Millet, the brand's first three fragrances contain notes of fresh cut lilies, castoreum, rain and steel chains. “I’ve always looked at certain artworks and read books and thought, I wish I could know how they smell,” founder Cherry Cheng tells me. “Rediscovering scents and my own sense of smell really helped me to balance the cerebral and the sensuous, which is why I think it’s inseparable from the erotics.” What does Cherry think the smell of kink is? “Dirty and unsettling… upsetting even," she says. "Like you’ve just been punched in the gut but you want to smell it again.”
Latex, cherry, Red Bull, sex toys… These are all notes from Toskovat’s Born Screaming. When I first smelled it, I recoiled at the smoky, plasticky fruitiness (the scent proclaims notes of cherry and blackberry, but also "energy drink, DVD case, popped balloon, latex and adult toys"). Then, I became addicted. As my ultimate Unhinged Partygirl Perfume, I’ve been told both that I smell like the sexiest thing ever and a urinal cake while wearing this. “I think forbidden hobbies or creations have always been appealing,” founder and nose David-Lev Jipa-Silvinschi explains. “Born Screaming is supposed to be sexy, human, difficult to understand intellectually, yet easy to feel intuitively. It is about people moving the focus from their daily issue and calibrating it on their shared experience and pleasure… communion, ritual, and a shared experience. The certain part of human history that has always been with us in one form or another.”
Kinks come in countless forms, as do the perfumes to scent them. “I have a leather boot fetish, and the scent is absolutely part of that," Miss Ozziline says. On that note, D.S. & Durga’s Leatherize is a smoky, unapologetically animalic scent that quite literally smells like a new leather belt. Animalic notes are undoubtedly the secret ingredient of any kinky scent, and the star of show for feral brands like Marlou and Eris Parfums. The latter’s Ma Bête—translating to The Beast—is a subversively glamorous play on perfumed fur that smells like a sexy older woman, and is built around nose Antoine Lee’s own animalic cocktail. Another of Lee’s creations is the infamous Sécrétions Magnifiques, which has notes of blood, sweat, sperm and saliva; it is Cherry’s kinkiest scent. “Each time I revisit it, I find it more disturbingly pleasurable,” she says.
“I suppose there’s something kinky to me about the tension between what you expect and what you get," fragrance influencer and "maven of sensory delights" Camryn says. And she's right: a kinky scent is less about the literal notes, and more about what's left unsaid between them. "I like fragrances that create that little peek into the unknown," she adds. Oh, and in case you are wondering: this is my kink.
