What does Violet Cashmere, a new diffused fragrance developed for Lincoln’s Nautilus and Navigator SUVs smell like? I could describe it, or I could simply let you take it in for yourself. However, that’s not always the easy answer.
Fragrance, which elicits some of the most intense and meaningful emotions and memories, is the one of the senses that can’t transcend the ether. It’s visceral and personal; it evokes feelings and reactions and when shared with others becomes a common experience.
But it can be incredibly hard to share a fragrance’s full effect simply with words or pictures.
So Lincoln, with curator Tamara Warren of Le Car, engaged artist Shinique Smith to interpret Violet Cashmere as a visual journey at a recent event in New York City.
Breaking Through the Fourth Wall of Art: Diffused Fragrance
Artist Shinique Smith, a native of Baltimore, was engaged to help interpret Violet Cashmere through a visual play of colors and textures as well as fragrance. For Shinique, art is about “being in touch with everything around you, that awakens something about yourself,” and reducing the boundaries to that experience.
In her journey as an artist she’s been inspired to use light, reflection, shadow and the entirety of a space. And, to use fragrance.
Diffused Fragrance As a Communicator of Art
She first did this in 2015. “I used a room scent by Demeter called snow. It felt cold, it smelled cold,” she said. Recent installations included breathing room performances, essential oils and focused on wellness and breathing within the installations.
Now, she uses fragrance, as well as sound, texture and anything else that inspires her in her art.
Bridging the Sculpted Steel of a Car With Softer Sensibilities
Blending the idea of a heavy, metal-skinned object like a car with the softer, more human ideas of textured, tactile surfaces is one of the ideas that Shinique explored in her exhibit, Gateway. In four fabric panels she blended colors, textures and graphics to reflect the emotion and feeling that Violet Cashmere exudes, and the feelings that flow when in the cabin of a Lincoln Navigator or Nautilus with the fragrance diffused.
Read: 9 Car Design Trends That are Dominating Luxury Right Now
“Torque” Relates the First Black-Only Racing Series From the 1920’s
Gateway wasn’t Shinique’s first automotive-focused work; she currently has an exhibit at the Indianapolis Museum of Art called Torque, a collection of fabric banners paired with shapes and sound.
The exhibit is inspired by “car racing and patterning from the historic Gold and Glory Sweepstakes,” an all Black race series that was held in the 1920’s and ‘30s. It was created as a response to segregation in racing, which is what inspired Shinique, who also has current exhibits in St. Louis and Sarasota, Fla.
Capturing the Evolution of Car Culture
Adding diffused fragrance to our cars is a modern way to continue to create our own sanctuaries, to define our space as our own, to close the door on the outside world. And it’s an idea that’s at the heart of what cars have always done for us, an idea that Shinique feels close to.
“I moved to LA and I’m in my car all the time,” she said. Her car is “a safe space within the chaos of the world. I listen to my audio books and I have my scents.” She finds these desires to be very human, not just about transportation or safety, but of an environment of beauty and serenity. And of delight in colors, shapes, textures and of course, fragrance.
