Apparently the smells made the museum very nervous! They didn’t want anyone to feel assaulted by having to endure the scent of human hair from a hat, and so on. Personally, I very much enjoyed the pat-’n-sniff wall in the “Specter of the Rose” gallery, which allows a visitor to release the smells that have been lifted from a Paul Poiret dress and pair of House of Drecoll gowns and embedded in the paint.
— The New York Times reviews The Costume Institute’s spring 2024 exhibition, Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion (for which Sissel Tolaas did the interactive fragrances). Read more in At the Met, Sleeping Beauty Wakes Up in the Chemistry Lab.
