Exhibitions

Living Perfume

In early 2009, Living Perfume: The Natural Alchemy of Mandy Aftel, debuted at the Fifth Avenue store, Henri Bendel. The exhibit, which focused on education and the history of perfumery was located in a sleek, sustainable pop-up space. It showcased Aftel's natural perfumes as well as her extraordinary, never-before-seen collection of perfume memorabilia.

Among the buried treasure on display: turn-of-the-century perfume bottles and old-fashioned pocket watches filled with solid scents, heavy Lalique fragrance plaques, delightfully illustrated rare books, antique perfume maps, and vintage postcards from Grasse. Guests browsed peekaboo drawers filled with Aftel's raw materials-from fresh ginger and jasmine buds to rare ambergris and finest-grade frankincense.

Visitors experienced the deconstruction of Parfum de Maroc, one of Mandy's signature scents, and caught a rare glimpse of her creative process. In the spirit of a true cross-medium collaboration, a song by the sixties pop-music phenomenon Donovan, which he personally paired with the final fragrance composition, played on a silver iPod attached to the display.

[click here to download the Living Perfume exhibit catalog]

The event was commemorated in a catalog, which can be viewed here. The Living Perfume catalog contains an essay on perfumery by Mandy Aftel, as well as pictures and descriptions of many of the items on display.

Other Exhibitions

As the curator for an exhibition on the history of natural perfume -- The Foul and the Fragrant: Creating Natural Perfume at the Doheny Memorial Library, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA -- Mandy displayed turn-of-the-century perfume books and vintage memorabilia from her private collection. Her artistry with natural perfumery was the subject of the exhibit, Constructing Perfume: Scent, Space, Color at 3A Gallery in San Francisco, CA, which included architectural renderings of her fragrances, and an interactive experience of viewers matching color chips to scents.