Should we or Shouldn't we Say "You Stink!"?

"Why can we never seem to smell ourselves? This has to be one of the greatest mysteries known to man. Back in the day, long before progress jammed us all into metal boxes on tracks and wheels and ferried us to work to spend our days in air-conditioned cubicles, the smell of fresh sweat, the perfume of cowboys and construction workers, was regarded as a signature of hard work and manly labour. Back then, when perfumes and colognes were saved for state occasions and holidays, we took the time to check. We were masters at masking a quick sniff of the armpit; experts at exhaling into a cupped hand; and adept when it came to frustrating our own flatulence." "More than a hundred years ago, American author Elbert Hubbard defined perfume as any smell used to drown a worse one. How little things have changed. Spraying deodorant or perfume or cologne on an unwashed body is about as effective as trying to collect water in a colander. It simply doesn’t work. If, as I firmly believe, we cannot smell ourselves, then we need to rely on our friends and family or even complete strangers to set us straight. But we think it rude to point out the obvious and instead suffer in silence, distancing ourselves from them, cutting conversation short. And so we become complicit in the great unwashed. [...] To tell or not to tell... that is really the question."

Thus concedes Mary Murphy on The Budapest Times. Which brings us of course full circle on many issues pertaining to personal hygiene, the perception of that hygiene based on fragrances/products used and whether there is a sound reason of letting anyone know their personal smell is foul or whether it is an absolute social no-no. Perfume, after all, was since the height of the Versailles used to mask unpleasant odours when no other solution would do in exterminating them. We have progressed from the times when George Orwell famously quipped that the social distinction in the West can be summarized in "four frightful words...the lower classes smell" (in The Road to Wigan Pier, 1937, chapter 8). He nuanced it by saying that "here, curiously enough, the Socialist and the sentimental democratic Catholic of the type of Chesterton [ed.note: seeing dirtiness as self-mortification] join hands; both will tell you that dirtiness is healthy and 'natural' and cleanliness is a mere fad or at best a uxury". Even Murphy insists "As I was growing up, the neighbouring farmer, even starched to within an inch of his life in his Sunday best, always smelled of cow manure and boiled bacon. "

Of course such social stigmata today in developed countries at least are taken to be the absolute peak of racism and bias towards specific groups and no doubt they are. After all, there is no one more insistent in deodorising the stench of manual labour by using heaps of soap or in bringing their shoes to an impeccable shine than the laborer, eager to shed the "image". The rise of "clean" fragrances (so on trend since the 1990s) could be also interpreted in the social climb-up-the-ladder in the last three decades, at least in affluent parts of the Western world, of people who would otherwise face a life on a rural environment that would involve the smellscapes they are now eschewing in favour of the exhaust, the rained upon concrete and the cubicle farm. The American urban landscape (excluding specific exceptions) in particular is not only more egalitarian, but -perhaps in accordance- more sanitized in what concerns olfactory miasmata as well. It's probably no coincidence that some of the sexiest ads on TV concern deodorants!

But is it only social attributes which present their own challenges smell-wise? In Popular Music From Vittula by Swedish author Mikael Niemi, the narrator, Matti, reminiscences about his Arctic-circle upbringing offering vignettes from his youth, for instance when he and a friend sneak into an old gym in which middle-aged women are exercising doing aerobics: "Bum sweat cascaded over blubbery backs, the air was alive with a whiff of pussy. … Women fell like two-ton bombs, lay slithering in the pools of sweat on the varnished floorboards before scrambling up on their feet again, indomitable. The room stank of marshy swamps and menopause." I can just see the sour face you're making right now, oh dear menopaused reader! And why should something so natural, so unavoidable, so -darn it!- feminine, like menopause, be linked to olfactory impressions that are of a less than pleasant or appealing nature? you ask. It shouldn't. But there you have it.

Sometimes despite our best efforts and despite every possible stigma or lack thereof, we are oblivious to the scents emanating from our own body. Both our physical smells and our added-upon scents which are largely relying on tastes, odour preferences and accumulated empirical data received through positive and negative associations from our entourage. Sometimes, we just plainly stink for whatever reason. Objectively or subjectively, assuming we're not dealing with a drama queen being irritated by our very own presence, rather than smell.... The question is: Do you tell? In polite or covert ways? And would you want to be told? In polite or covert ways? Or anything in between?

The podium is up to you!

Painting Haunting by Brian Despain.

Dior Hypnotic Poison Eau Sensuelle: fragrance review

Doing the Lutenesque visuals for Hypnotic Poison Eau Sensuelle is not enough. Although purple hues and mysteriously shut eyelids with a sophisticated maquillage on them (by Tyen, no less) have a way of drawing a perfumista's attention, the juice has to be really original in a galaxy of flankers adorning Sephora shelves to equally capture devotion. And it's not circulating on American perfumery countertops, you say?


The original Hypnotic Poison by Annick Menardo, with its trippy bitter almond and caraway opening, managed to jolt sniffers into a "love or hate" mnemonic sense (much like all her other perfumes do too, like for instance Black by Bulgari or Lolita Lempicka by Lolita Lempicka). There's simply no way to be indifferent to it! Of course even within the same fragrance spectrum there are the ultraviolet and the infrared ends: The Eau de Parfum concentration of the original Hypnotic Poison is the former; intensely bitter and fluorescent at the beginning like underground dance clubs with "black lights" over you and with a pythonesque grip on its audience. While the Eau de Toilette shares the latter's nightime vision ability, permeating a place and its wearer in a warm incadescence; almost a homing device.
To take the light analogy on spot, Hypnotic Poison Eau Sensuelle seems like long-wave infrared or "thermal imaging": a completely passive picture of the objects in question based on their own thermal emissions only, rather than any external light or thermal source. Basically, if you got it, it will not oppose it, but it can't "work for you" otherwise.

The latest Christian Dior flanker in the Poison series, Hypnotic Poison Eau Sensuelle, is essentially a vanilla orchid floral fantasy composed by François Demachy, a more floral variation on the best-selling 1998 Hypnotic Poison minus the frightful originality.
Hypnotic Poison Eau Sensuelle opens with the slightly medicinal facets of dominant ylang ylang, soon mollified by rosa Damascena with its feminine, velvet character, almost cancelling out the medicinal. Although tuberose is listed in the notes, the effect is nowhere near the strange, cubist renditions of tuberose soliflores of niche perfumery, instead boosting a faceless rendition rather than the sex beast on steroids. The vanillic-ambery facets (plus a hint of cumin) are played in favour of the previous woody notes which conspired to make the 1998 Hypnotic Poison the non-sweet, powdery gourmand it is. Eau Sensuelle feels more floral and more "acceptable" standard vanillic, the same way that No.5 Eau Premiere is a lighter, more vanillic but less musky version of the original Chanel No.5. Only Dior's does not have as silky an effect as the Chanel's.

Still, those who didn't really like Hypnotic Poison or just couldn't "tame the beast" (it's no coincidence it's advertised with a python encircling Bellucci's voluptuous body menacingly!), will find this essentially watered down version to their liking. And this probably explains the reasoning behind its concept by LVMH in the first place. Is it a bad fragrance, then? No, but it won't make it into the next 50 years like the original Hypnotic Poison will, most probably.

The bottle reprises the shape of Hypnotic Poison’s in deep-red, subtly translucent glass, topped with a cabochon cap that looks purple, red or mauve, depending on the light. Really great work. Be aware that the outer box is VERY similar to the original Hypnotic Poison with only the Eau Sensuelle in small typeface below the name: therefore attention is required when buying so as not to confuse the two!
Available from major department stores in Europe in 50ml/1.7oz, 100ml/3.4oz and 100ml/3.4oz spray deodorant.

Notes for Dior Hypnotic Poison Eau Sensuelle:
Top: ylang ylang, rose, orange blossom
Heart: orchid, tuberose, green notes
Base: sandalwood, vanilla, woods, musk.

Related reading on Perfume Shrine: The differences between all the Dior Poison fragrances (the original 80s Poison, Tendre, Hypnotic, Pure, Midnight and their Elixir versions)

photos via sunshinereiki.ca, blog.hola.com, brusselsisburning

A Monster Perfume for Lady Gaga

These days a couple of years of fame are enough to be on the radar for a celebrity scent, aka a perfume launched on the sheer power of the "of the moment" bouncing effect of a well-known name. Lady Gaga is THE name of the last couple of years, obviously (Has it been as long? You could have fooled me) and therefore the perfume deal couldn't be too far behind.
TMZ reports: “the fragrance company behind Gaga’s upcoming scent has filed trademark paperwork for the name ‘Monster’ — with a specific use of ‘perfumery.’” Is this what you had expected from a woman infamous for wearing raw meat? Apparently, raw meat will not feature as a note in the new fragrance by Coty Inc which will debut in spring 2012 (Will mince-meat pie filling do? I wonder...). But we could be hopeful: after all this would be something to really get us out of the zonked-out boredom range of most celebrity perfumes. If Gaga can't do it, no one can.

Martin Margiela Untitled wins Grand Prix Strategies Design 2010

Maison Martin Margiela (MMM) won Le Grand Prix Stratégies du design 2010 on the 6th of October thanks to his new perfume release, Untitled (more info on the fragrance on our previous article). The prize includes accolades for both his dossier de press (press-kit) and the Wed design for the homonymous site. Apparently, Untitled is not to remain Unsung; that is for sure.

Mapping Scentscapes: How to Do it

"Perhaps the earliest attempt to make an urban smell map dates back to Paris in the 1790s, when new ideas about both political equality and hygiene combined to send physician Jean-Noël Hallé on a six-mile odor-recording expedition along the banks of the Seine. His map-making technology consisted of nothing more than a notebook and pencil -- and, of course, his nose."

Sissel Tolaas of course doesn't merely rely on antiquated methods. In her quest to olfactorily map urban landscapes (has already mapped Paris, New York City and Mexico City and is currently working on Kansas City). Tolaas however uses Living Flower Technology in situ: Dr. Braja Mookherjee, a scientist at IFF, one of the world's largest fragrance and flavor companies. Mookherjee was obsessed with capturing the exact odor you experience when you put your nose up to, say, a living jasmine flower, rather than relying on an extract, or "absolute," as it's called in the perfumery business. In a paper (pdf) published in 1990 -- the same year IFF trademarked Mookherjee's discovery as "IFF Living Flower Technology" -- Mookherjee described his dissatisfaction with natural oils and extracts"

Writer Nicola Twilley writes in an extensive (and informative) article in the Atlantic: "My scratch-and-sniff maps show how New Yorkers' smell, rather than what. To make them, I extrapolated data from the as-yet-unpublished results of an extensive study that tested the responses of four hundred New Yorkers to sixty-six different smells over a two-year period from March 2005. The experiment was conducted by Andreas Keller and Leslie B. Vosshall at the Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior, The Rockefeller University. "Our main goal was to try to find the difference between different variants in the DNA and different ways that people rank the smells on a seven-point scale from extremely unpleasant to extremely pleasant," Keller said. "We collected our subjects' demographic information just to control for those types of influences."
Nonetheless, that demographic information revealed some fascinating and significant differences in smell perception between men and women, young and old, and different ethnicities. For my map, I chose twelve of Vosshall and Keller's most interesting test smells, from complex natural extracts such as nutmeg and vanilla to single-note synthetic molecules such as octyl acetate, which is the basis for many artificial orange flavors as well as a key ingredient in Chanel No.5."

Read more on how to map a city scent-wise following the link above.