The strip club has always been a place of cultural intrigue, and the aesthetics of stripping is one of the key elements of our enduring fascination with it. Skimpy lingerie and dancewear are worn on strong, unapologetic bodies that are trained for physically strenuous performance. Stripper beauty is equally as important, if not more; if you’re going to be naked, you need your body to be part of your outfit. Hyper femininity is crossed with something akin to war paint – think of the recent Anora and Mikey Madison’s character Ani with her butterfly and diamante encrusted acrylics, winged eyeliner and glossy mane glimmering with hair tinsel.
The strip club is a stage where fantasy, performance and, often, constructions of femininity converge to create a heightened reality. In a physically, emotionally and sexually charged environment where primal urges are played out, what role does scent play in creating the fantasy?
“I don’t think of it as a persona. I think of it as the ‘enhanced’ me,” Leila tells me. Going by the stage name Cutie Whippingham, Leila is a queer pole artist from London and founder of Blackstage. Contrary to what I expected (influenced by stereotypical bias) to hear from a stripper – that they are performing as a ‘character’ – Leila says she feels ‘very, very’ herself onstage. “For me, it’s about tapping into my own sexuality more. It’s like my favourite version of myself, but it’s also my truest and most authentic version.”
Having grown up obsessed with the OG beauty YouTubers, make-up, bodycare and fragrance are now part of a deeply holistic form of self-expression for Leila, both on and off the stage. Her work scent is a particularly multi-layered affair. Moisturiser, hair mousse and deodorant are combined with either Hawaiian Tropics body mist for something coconutty and summery, or Prada Paradoxe for a sexy feel. The final layer is sucking on a ginger mint.
Use of classy designer perfumes that are canon classics is almost unanimous amongst the dancers I speak to. Nova Storm, a pole, cabaret dancer and stripper, who teaches at Akila Pole Studios alongside Cutie, and whose bio describes them as “powerful seductress”, wears Alien by Mugler, relying on the legendary sillage to attract compliments even in no contact clubs. “If I’m outside of the club, my perfume varies, and I can lean more masculine. When I‘m working it’s more like, how do I present in a way that is going to garner the most attraction? And it’s usually leaning into more feminine qualities.” Nova’s other favourites are Victoria’s Secret body mists and Zara’s Violet Blossom.
Cassie, a pole dancer, studio owner of The Pole Nook and stripper, who teaches at Akila Pole Studios alongside Cutie and Nova, wears Chance by Chanel. “I have two sides – either no make-up and hoodie, or full glam.” Chance, which she chose after a few stolen spritzes garnered compliments from customers, is the smell of the latter. “It’s quite fresh. Not too fruity, not too sweet. I have a dark, gothic style, so I think the perfume evens out and makes it palatable. At the club we want to have our own personalities, but you obviously want to appeal to the crowd of mainly men that come into the club.”
Like Cassie, Chiqui Love’s choice of scents are selected for the performance and the audience. With over 22 years of experience, the international cabaret artist, striptease and burlesque dancer says she used a lot of John Paul Gaultier and Mugler Angel in her younger years but now wears YSL Libre, which was a gift from a female strip club manager. “I perfume more heavily in burlesque,” she says. “I’m wearing an outfit worth hundreds of euros that embodies pure fantasy and I want to leave scent to match. Most of the burlesque crowd are queer people and other women, so if they get my perfume on them it’s not an issue, they aren’t going home to their wives. I also don’t want to use my expensive shit with men. They just want to have titties on their face.”
As she has got older, Chiqui says that the scent her clients expect from her has evolved. “Now I’m in my forties so I don’t really go for the young scents. The guys that like me are either older men who feel more comfortable with me than a younger girl, or the young guys who want the sexy auntie fantasy.” She names musk as a staple, and is also a rose devotee, claiming an element of superstition which often plays a role in scent choice. “A lot of girls will use a scent as part of attracting something, or they feel attached to a fragrance because they feel that when they wear it, it helps them make more money.”
“I don’t want to use my expensive shit with men. They just want to have titties on their face” – Chiqui Love
“I always had my work perfume and my home perfume,” says Buffy, a retired stripper of 20 years and co-host of Strippers In The Attic. “When I first started dancing, it would have definitely been Coco Mademoiselle Chanel kind of stuff, or Flowerbomb by Viktor&Rolf – really, really sweet smells that now would give me a stomach ache and a headache all together, but it went with the cutesy, sweet thing.”
Wearing perfume in the club has a range of practical uses, says Buffy; it covers body odour, helps to build a scent memory with a client, and cuts through the smell of the space. “When I first started working in strip clubs, you could smoke everywhere. Nothing really broke the cigarette barrier. Now everything just smells like musty beer and farts, which I feel maybe is a historical throwback to why perfume even existed – the hideous smells of disgusting human beings and the disgusting ways we lived our lives,” she says.
When it comes to price, Cassie says that most of the girls she works with all wear relatively expensive perfumes, which she attributes to a desire to look and feel your best. However, Buffy tells me that while expensive perfume may be useful to land a ‘whale’ (a wealthy customer who spends a lot consistently) usually people can’t differentiate. “Often looking and being expensive in a strip club don’t work. Sometimes, being cheap and fun and the girl with Victoria’s Secret body spray will make you a lot more money because you're more accessible.” As for application, body mists serve as a better option for the skin, whereas more expensive scents should be put on clothes and lingerie so they don’t get sweated off.
While every dancer seems to have a highly individualistic relationship to scent, the general clientele tend to be less imaginative. Mentions of Dior Sauvage, the widely heralded Fuck Boy Perfume, come up across the board, with Creed as another rumoured go-to. But just as scent choice is used by strippers as part of embodying a character, it seems that customer scent can be equally as insightful. “I had one customer and I recognised his scent immediately.” Chiqui professes. “It was Chanel Blue. And I know if a guy’s wearing that perfume, I’m gonna make money out of him.”