When Perfume Becomes a Learning Experience
- Wordbuzzing
- Nov 3
- 3 min read
A visit to Francis Kurkdjian’s “Parfum, sculpture de l’invisible” at the Palais de Tokyo, and why it matters for digital learning, brand culture and community engagement.
A Museum Made of Scent: The Event Experience
I spend my days designing digital learning experiences — but yesterday, I walked into the most powerful “training module” I’ve ever seen: an exhibition made of scent.
The Palais de Tokyo is currently hosting “Parfum, sculpture de l’invisible”, a retrospective celebrating 30 years of creation by master perfumer Francis Kurkdjian. But this is not an exhibition where you look at perfume. It’s one where you experience it.
You don’t just see artworks: you smell them, walk through them, and sometimes taste them.
Formulas are framed like paintings: proving that a perfume recipe can have the same narrative power as a canvas.
600 scented candles recreate the court of Louis XIV (Le Roi Danse, 2008), an olfactory theatre where violet and iris become stage lighting.
A corridor of white roses references the portraitist Vigée Le Brun and Marie-Antoinette, scent as historical storytelling.
L’Or Bleu, a “drinkable perfume”, invites visitors to taste fragrance, dissolving the boundary between ingestion, ritual and art.
L’Odeur de l’Argent builds a perfume around the smell of used dollar bills, linen paper, rice steam, ink, metal, human touch. Attraction and repulsion in one breath.
Nothing is passive. Nothing is frontal. You enter the work.
The learner, or in this case, the visitor, is not a spectator. They are a participant.
What This Exhibition Teaches Us About Learning Design
We often speak about “immersive learning” in corporate L&D, but what we really mean most of the time is content with better visuals. This exhibition is a reminder that:
- Learning is multisensory, not just cognitive
- Memory is emotional, not only informational
- Exploration works better than instruction
- Meaning is created through experience, not explanation
Every room in this exhibition follows the same learning logic:
Stimulate → Surprise → Invite action → Create a trace
No slides. No bullet points. No “next module” button.
Just stimulus, emotion, curiosity, and a reason to remember.
What if digital learning did the same?
What if a product training let learners smell the formula through synesthetic cues, instead of listing top / heart / base notes?
What if brand history was told through objects, voices, senses, not timelines?
What if onboarding wasn’t a checklist, but a narrative you walk through?
The exhibition is a masterclass in embodied pedagogy.
How a Brand Can Use an Event Like This to Engage Its Learning Community
A. INFORMING: Turn the exhibition into a knowledge bridge
Create a story-based newsletter: “What a perfume exhibition taught us about the invisible power of scent.”
Inside the LMS, publish a short learning capsule with “5 things perfume teaches about memory, emotion and identity.”
Add an interview clip, voice-note or mini-podcast: “What does a perfumer smell when no one else does?”
This transforms a cultural event into brand value.
B. CREATING AN ONLINE GAME: Turn the formulas into a learning puzzle
Example:
🕵️♀️ “Guess the Accord” — players match ingredients from the exhibition formulas to famous fragrances
🎮 Add gamified stories: “Decode the scent of money”, “Rebuild the rose accord,” “Find the missing note in Le Roi Danse.”
🏆 Reward with badges, exclusive content, priority access to training
Games unlock curiosity + repetition + mastery — the holy trio of retention.
C. ENGAGING THROUGH A COMPETITION - Turn learners into creators
Ask the community to invent the formula of an imaginary perfume based on 3 prompts (emotion, place, color, persona).
Let them name it, describe it, pitch it.
The best concept wins a 1to1 session with a perfumer / brand trainer / creative director.
Bonus: winners get featured on the LMS home page or in internal comms → status reward = engagement fuel.
Competitions activate 3 levers:
📌 Personal expression
📌 Recognition
📌 Collective learning through each other’s ideas
That is how a museum visit becomes a community engine.
Perfume is invisible, but this exhibition proves that the invisible can shape memory more powerfully than any PowerPoint ever will.
If we want learning to stick, we have to stop designing for the eyes and start designing for the senses, the story, and the self.
The future of learning is not information
The future of learning is emotion + experience + community.
And that is true whether you’re training beauty advisors, luxury retail teams, new hires, or future brand storytellers.
If this sparks ideas on how sensory design and learning strategy can converge, I’m always open to a sharp conversation. Insight starts with dialogue, reach out.
