07.25.07
Posted in 1980s, Hermès, Uncategorized, bad
at 11:59 am
By Hermès, 1986
Bel Ami by Hermès is a black hole cologne, you try to escape from its pull, but ultimately succumb to the stygian Pine-Sol Musk depths, its bug spray-like sillage is the electromagnetic transmission signalling a fresh victim.
This is from the ’80s, but smells as harsh as a cheap cologne from the ’70s (an old, very cheap one called Archie, whose bottle was a miniature plastic hard hat, comes to mind). When I tried it on my fiancé it reacted as the creators probably intended, his skin swallowed up the scent almost immediately, and curiously, released the faintest whiff of clove. In an hour the piney-bug spray scent appeared, but much weaker and less noxious, it was almost nonexistant in a few hours and disappeared before the end of the day.
Earlier “cologne” was a unisex scent, usually heavy on the citrus, maybe a little something piney but not much. No. 4711 being one of the originals Read the rest of this entry »
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07.20.07
Posted in 1970s, Jean Patou, bad
at 3:21 pm
By Jean Patou, 1972
Patou 1000 is the sibling of “the world’s most expensive perfume”, Joy, which I like to call the Emperor-Has-No-Clothes perfume as I’ve never been able to smell it. Oh, I can perch my nose at the edge of the bottle at the department store, and like a sound beyond the range of human hearing, you know it’s there, but you can’t hear it, just a fluttering of your eardrums. That’s what Joy does to my nose. Something quivers, my body is aware of the presence of something, but I only detect the faintest whiff of something floral, like a sound from a great distance. Perhaps the ingredients are so costly, Patou only uses the tiniest amounts? Is Joy the grand perfumer’s response to homeopathy? Is it a colossal corporate ripoff? Most likely. But this is a review of Patou 1000, not Patou Joy.
I put on 3 dabs of this stuff and almost fell over. Strong, musky, very Read the rest of this entry »
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07.17.07
Posted in 1920s, Chanel, bad
at 11:46 pm
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 Read the rest of this entry »
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