Olfactory Unpoliteness. A History of Smell, Etiquette, and Perfume

Abstract

Etiquette manuals from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries reveal how smell was progressively turned into a device of social discipline. Odours and perfumes appear not as mere sensory phenomena, but as moral and social signs: olfactory bad manners – bodily odours, excessive fragrance, inappropriate use of scent – function as regulatory categories distinguishing legitimate from stigmatized bodies. The analysis of more than two hundred texts uncovers a double movement: on the one hand, modern hygienism, which established daily deodorization as a requirement of civilization; on the other, the codification of perfume as a gendered language, allowed to women as an instrument of seduction but regarded as suspicious or effeminate for men. Under Fascism, olfactory regulation intersected with the construction of Italian national identity and a wider project of virilization, while in the post-war decades the normative emphasis shifted towards discretion and moderation. This genealogy extends into the present, where scent free policies demonstrate how odour remains subject to regulation and conflict, oscillating between health rights, social distinction, and civic coexistence. In this perspective, perfume emerges not simply as an accessory but as a social and symbolic language, translating moral order into sensory experience.