Scenting Sapphic Elegance and Queer Promises: Advertisements for Amaryllis du Japon (1891–94)

This essay examines the advertising campaign for Amaryllis du Japon, the signature fragrance of the perfumery Delettrez at the fin de siècle, as a case study of the homoerotic dynamics of visual culture for middle-class women of the period. I argue that the campaign’s central motif, the kimono-clad coquette, seduced female viewers and prospective consumers by evoking the intersecting discourses on Japanese femininity, floral scents, and olfactory arousal. The japonesque coquette promised exotic pleasures associated with the sapphic sensuality attributed to fashionable Parisiennes, both real and imagined. Using an analytical framework that ventures outside a heteronormative construction of female spectatorship demonstrates the advertisement campaign’s homoerotic appeal as well as a period concern for it.