I finally tried it. I’ve never actually worn it before, only sniffed and dismissed it as yet another old aldehydic menace like No. 5.

I applied a few drops to my wrists and neck, and nearly scrubbed it right off. Those nasty aldehydes almost drove me to my knees, but just as I was passing out with the image of a WWI gasmask-readiness poster as my last coherent thought, the chemical topnotes dissipated sufficiently for me to regain full conciousness…

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! — An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time…

“Dulce Et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen

After that, I had to leave for work.

While driving, the middle & base notes creeped forward, the warm vanilla note for which Shalimar is famous hummed up from a dim filament to radiant full glow. A different chemical-musk-greenish middle note also appeared with the vanilla; cheap shampoo filled the air, and until it dissipated I couldn’t shake the feeling I hadn’t rinsed my hair out completely. This is the note co-opted into copycat spinoffs and background scents for toiletries, much like No. 5 has been. Evidently, this is the cheapest component of the scent. One of those cheaper scents, such as B&BW Warm Vanilla Sugar, fly by these notes, zooming directly to the vanilla. But Shalimar is on a train, and is concerned with the journey itself, not the mere vulgarity of “getting there”.

I hate Chanel #5.

Yack all you want about its timelessness, its sparkling aldehydes complementing its heavy jasmine, its perfect representation of everything classy. I think it stinks.

Specifically, I think it stinks of a child’s inflatable vinyl pool toy that someone spilled cheap fake flowery perfume on and a little nail polish remover. These aldehydes do not “sparkle” as advertised, they smell like what they are, chemicals. The actual real flowery essences are suffocated in the haze of industrial waste that is your sillage. This perfume does not say “Marilyn Monroe”, or “New York”, or “high class” to me; it shouts the post-war slogan, “Better Living Through Chemistry!”

What’s worse, I can’t escape it. Knockoff scents appear in every toiletry known to (wo)mankind, usually the ones that are already unwholesomely chemical: Shampoo, soap, powder, air freshener, baby wipes, and any other consumable imaginable. A cheap knockoff of Chanel #5 is now the default scent of almost all baby shampoo. Next time you pop open a fresh bottle of Johnson & Johnson No More Tears, take a whiff from your bottle of #5 (due to its ubiquity, I’m sure you have some). Notice the similarities? Yes, the baby shampoo is weaker, more wholesome smelling with a bit of baby powder smell thrown in so you think “baby product”, but it’s still based upon ol’ #5!

This is not unique to #5. Other “high class” perfumes have their knockoffs in both perfumery and non-perfume consumer goods. Most of the other common high-class-but-now-slumming scents are from Guerlain. Shalimar‘s classic Oriental scent is background noise for everything that isn’t #5. I’ve smelled Champs-Élysées in women’s makeup base, soap, and dishwashing detergent. Mitsuoko is the default greeny-chypre scent for a myriad of knockoffs.

These may have started out meant as exclusive, rarified scents that were copied copied copied into cheapness, but now the current is going the opposite direction. There are ubiquitous, cheap scents that are now marketed and dressed up to be sold as high-class. Large chemical and flavoring companies have stockpiles of scent formulas ready to be dispensed for any new need: Washing powder, deodorant, lip gloss, aftershave. They tinker in their labs, figuring out the new scent spectrum for a production year based on the cheapest ingredients they can currently get (Did you notice this past year was “amber” scents? If I smell any more amber I’m gonna fossilize!)

Does a celebutante need another signature fragrance to market to her teenage fanbase? Present her with any 3 of this year’s signature scent inventions, tell her they were developed only for her needs to her specs (hold back the info that one was just used in a mid-market post-sunburn gel). Viola! Instant success! The buyer bought it because it reminded them of something… somewhere…?

THIS is what this column is about. I’m jeering at the Emperor’s new clothes, I’m pointing out that the knockoff Gucci handbag you bought on a streetcorner for $10 is not just a copy, but actually *identical* to the $400 one in the fancy store on the next corner. What you’re paying $70 for 50ml of you can get cheaper at the drugstore under another name -if it isn’t already in your shampoo. I give credit where it’s due, if a scent is nice I say so, if it isn’t and the marketing says it is, I’ll gut it. Claims of exclusivity are not believed. Recycling of older drugstore scents being dressed up as new rare finds will be excoriated. You (and you know who you are) have been warned.