30

In the context of a rapid extension of the use of perfumery products to new social categories, the question of the olfactory elegance of Parisian urban elites in the XIXth century raised both the problem of its social diffusion and of the rules of olfactory delicacy. As a factor in the social construction of the self, perfume denoted social rank and conveyed intimacy. But how to reconcile the demand for ostentation with the fact that perfume was increasingly put within everyone’s reach? And how did this affect intimate uses of perfume? This article discusses the ways in which the rules of olfactive elegance and the diffusion of fashion tended to confine the expression of perfume to the sphere of intimacy and contributed in many respects to the construction of feminity.