Forget vanilla: the buzziest new fragrances feature notes of sweat, leather, and hot, plasticky latex.
Source: Coveteur.com
GERMANY – BERLIN – 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.
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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?
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