Pleasure Garden # 03

Issue # 03 celebrates the rose - a flower perhaps more fetishised and deeply entwined in the mythology of our culture than any other. From a misogynist symbol to a feminist icon, Catherine Wagley looks at the rose’s long and thorny journey in Fetish of the Rose with photographs by Benjamin Fredrikson. The Empress Joséphine has long been talked of as a rose icon. However, Jennifer Potter unpicks this assumption and others in Myth of the Rose. Maciek Pozoga and Samuel Bradley take a journey across Paris in Pilgrimage of the Rose. Charles Quest-Ritson guides us through the horticultural history of the rose. We talk to four contemporary rose devotees on their relationship to this flower. The rose in perfumery is explored both culturally and historically by Elisabeth de Feydeau in Scent of a Rose. Anthony Blasko visits Portland’s annual civic extravaganza in The Portland Rose Festival with words by Zach Dundas. Also not to be missed are conversations with Simone Goochand Madison Cox, plus a visit to the rose-tinted world of Disneyland and Marrakesh—the rose among the palms!

This is Pleasure Garden’s first volume devoted to one theme - but remember, we never promised you a rose garden…