Vetiver text
I went to an art fair this past weekend and brought a fragrance nerd, and the entire time she validated what I had always suspected: the high-end art world smells like vetiver. This is because high-end boutiques smell like vetiver. Buying rich-people stuff from independent makers smells like vetiver. This is broadly true enough to write some text about.
Yes, there are exceptions. High-end furniture stores do not smell like vetiver. High-end beauty stores usually do not smell like vetiver; they smell like their own thing. But everything else, everywhere, smells like vetiver. In Tokyo it smells like vetiver. London and Bangkok, too. Chicago even has a few vetiver places now.
Vetiver is such an uncommon thing in the rest of the world that I’ve had to research it. It has distant genetic relations to lemongrass, but you don’t eat it. It’s used in 90% of contemporary fragrances, so it’s probably acting as something of a background note when you walk into a boutique.
Vetiver perks you up, reminding you that you’re in an unusual space. Vetiver softens you, feeling familiar enough but showing a little rarity at the same time. One does not usually default to vetiver in their own home. You go out to experience vetiver. It says: you got here. It says: this is a third place where you can feel safe.
This has consistently existed for over a decade, stretching back when there were zero interest rates and less fear about apocalypse. In apocalypse now, we still have vetiver. We have it across continents, with no regard to locality. Walk in somewhere off the street from Lisbon and you are now in Vetiver Land, everywhere and nowhere.
Even though vetiver grows freely in the tropics, the essential oil has to be distilled from a lot of it, which is labor intensive. So even though it’s ubiquitous, vetiver still feels expensive.
It is also reasonably agender. Vetiver can tilt masculine or feminine depending on the context. Rose oil would not do the same job as vetiver. Neither would sandalwood.
There might be some sort of room spray or scented candle that everybody uses which causes this, but I think the real explanation is simpler: vetiver is just the background noise of rich-person consumerism. Now that you know this, try to clock it the next time you’re out.