In addition to his artistic eye, Warhol was a connoisseur of smells. He changed perfumes every three months and amassed a huge collection of scents in what he called a “Permanent Smell Collection,” according to Mental Floss. At The Andy Warhol Museum in his hometown of Pittsburgh, this collection lives on in the museum’s archives. There are also at least seven different perfume scents named after Warhol, per Smithsonian Magazine.
But that’s not the only place where Warhol’s affinity for scents lives on. During Warhol’s funeral, his friend Paige Powell came bearing gifts that Warhol would literally take with him to his grave. And no, it wasn’t a can of Campbell’s soup that she tossed into his grave at the funeral, but an issue of Interview magazine and a bottle of Estée Lauder’s “Beautiful” perfume. In an interview with The New Yorker just a year before he died, Warhol said he was “really into girls’ scents,” and that he hadn’t had the chance to try Lauder’s “Beautiful,” but loved the idea of it. Thanks to Powell, Warhol would end up keeping this scent with him forever.
