Fragrance Quote
Andy Warhol described forcing himself to give up a perfume after three months so that it would always remind him of those three months.
In His Own Words
“If I’ve been wearing one perfume for three months, I force myself to give it up even if I still feel like wearing it, so whenever I smell it again it will always remind me of those three months.”
— Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again) (1975)
Essential Details
Andy Warhol’s Three-Month Perfume Rule at a Glance
- Speaker: Andy Warhol (1928–1987)
- Source: The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, 1975
- Status: Short quotation for commentary
- Note: Chapter not confirmed; the quote is also cited in scholarly writing on his perfume collection
Why the Quote Resonates
Warhol turned perfume into a dated record. Wearing one scent for a fixed period and then retiring it means that scent will later point to that period and nothing else. It is the reverse of a signature scent.
A Practical Version
The approach is easy to copy: choose a fragrance for a season, and keep a bottle. Compare the opposite habit in Dickinson’s poem about a drop kept in a drawer. See Warhol on smell and the past for his statement of the idea, and the Fragrance Library to find a scent to start with.
Why it matters
Warhol’s rule is a simple way to make a scent a marker of time.
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