Olfactory art — the creative use of scent to evoke emotion — rarely attracts the same level of media attention as music, theatre, film, or the visual arts, but its roots run deep. At the height of his career with the Ballets Russes in the 1920s, impresario Sergei Diaghilev is said to have had the stage curtains sprayed with his favourite fragrance, Guerlain’s Mitsouko, before each performance. In 1938, the poet Benjamin Péret infused the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme with the comforting aroma of roasting coffee. Since then, scent-based creations have grown ever more daring and flamboyant.
Few have explored the possibilities more extensively than the British perfumer Sarah McCartney, who, in addition to creating scents for individuals, has perfumed concerts, ballets, installations and multiple theatrical productions. Five years ago, she collaborated on recreating the aromas of 1880s Paris for an installation based on Édouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère at London’s Courtauld Gallery. In 2024, she created a potion for Aqua Tofana, an opera inspired by a 17th‑century Italian alchemist whose poison empowered women to rid themselves of abusive or unwanted husbands. And only last weekend, she scented From Ash to Promise, a triple bill of contemporary ballets with a focus on Jewish narratives, which took place at London’s Jewish Community Centre.
I spoke to her two years ago about her life in perfumery - one that began in childhood, when she sincerely believed that she “actually was a witch.” For her, creating scents was a kind of spell casting – conjuring places and reaching people’s feelings through the most direct of channels.
Fortunately, much of our conversation made it into the final piece. One section I left out, however, was her reflection on the connection between scent and time travel — a theme embodied in the way she used fragrance to evoke and reconnect with her father’s memory. You can hear that passage in the recording above.
