Perfume / Cologne

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2015/04/21/modern-life-smells-so-good-its-killing-the-cheap-perfume-industry/?hpid=z1

imo it's not that modern life smells good, it's that everything has a scent already

Big companies have helped deflate the scents industry by piling on with their own special smells.

After reading that Burr book LL mentioned upthread this seems incorrect -- there are two tiers to the perfume industry, the creation of "pure" scents and the people combining those ingredients as perfumers. While some perfumers work creating products to be spritzed on the body, that ignores all of the scents used in everything from dish soap to dryer sheets to air fresheners.

I wonder if the industry is actually booming, it's just that stuff spritzed on human beings is in flux.

Seems a fairly arbitrary distinction between cheap and expensive scents if things like Katy Perry's fragrance (£11 for 30ml of EDP) falls into the latter category. The decline in "drug store" scents could easily be because drug stores have started stocking celebrity fragrances.

The slow prevalence of chain stores like Victoria's Secret marketing scented lotions replacing entry-level perfumes with other scented products has to be part of it. Same with scented shower gel soaps.

Who needs a Le Jardin gift set when you've got Bath and Body Works?

I was trying hard not to type B&BW

was it the 90s when they came to power, or was that just for my locale?

Why did you not want to invoke B&BW? Are they like the Scientology of single note smells?

I don't think I really noticed them until the 00s? But I could be misremembering.

when they first opened up in my area every high school girl was slathered in their lotions, especially the fruit-scented ones

I'm getting kind of hungry for apricots just thinking about it

there's a link on their wikipedia page to an article titled "Bath & Body Works: 'The McDonald's of Toiletries'"

I was a fan of their Warm Vanilla Sugar smell, and I liked some lime coconut offering of theirs as well.

But I had McDonald's for breakfast.

i figured this is why a glade candle and cheap shampoo can smell similar -they both use the same cheap smell factory scents

In the mid-90s or so, my roommate took me to some mall store in the Delaware Valley area where you could mix your own fragrances. I remember there were glass containers of fragrance with glass swizzle sticks in them that you could pull out and smell.

Does anybody remember anything like that?

Body Shop!

Was it???? I'll be damned.

Yup I did it too and my scent was groooooss

Totally forgot about that!!

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/art-and-olfaction-awards-what-did-qaddafi-death-smell-like

why

add to list of "links I will never click"

No no it's actually really interesting!

It's about an art exhibit of smells.

The Art and Olfaction awards. The award winner that created a smell narrative of celebrity deaths is only a part of the article.

just got in another shipment of scents from my friend joseph

excited :D

Got CdG Amazingreen for xmas, reviews of it are so middling but I am telling you it smells so fucking incredible, a bit masculine but definitely not assertively so, very foresty and green with hints of like gunpowder and spice, it is like everything I have ever wanted in a fragrance. I might like it even more than Margiela's "untitled". Cannot recommend enough.

stop assaulting my disposable income!!

get a tester of it, all these ppl whine and moan abt how very BLUE it is and how very PEDESTRIAN and MASS-MARKET it is, and i agree that it's much more approachable and less challenging than many other CdG frags but it does NOT read pedestrian or mass-market to me, it seems v unique and interesting, and also i'm not really getting the blue, it seems so green to me

I mean I know you are v into CdG Black and also wearing black clothes and Amazingreen is much softer so idk

I am wearing a $3.50 Acqua di Gio knockoff. The scent is dead on but fades quickly.

nah, I had a tester it's nice

It pains me to say it, but I don't think I've ever heard a better Badn

was just looking for Stevie's recommendation and have to say amazingreen is really nice

It's great but its longevity is poor and it stays very close. I couldn't spent £80 on something that disappears after an hour. It is a really beautiful scent for 30 minutes though. One of my favourites but doesn't have staying power.

yaasssss

rn I am into a bunch of these things I got at some boutique perfumirie in Berlin:

https://www.frau-tonis-parfum.com/en/

I just bought four Demeter frags for super cheap! Dirt, Grass, Tomato, and Greenhoue (the first 3 were $25 ea and came in a set for $30 total, which was great bcz I was specifically looking to buy Dirt and Grass).

Have not tried them on yet but am super stoked

(also Greenhouse was a free gift for ordering the $30 set, idk what they are doing over there but I'm not complaining)

I'm realizing that I've gone from "dabbling in frags w/ a slight curiosity" to, like, being in possession of 20 diff frags now (most of them v small testers but still)

slippery slope

been wearing a mix i made of black poplar, douglas fir, rosewood, hinoki and orange lately

can we just take a minute to appreciate what a great name for a perfume 'Fracas' is

Better than http://oldschoolmemories.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/tramp.jpg?

but not as good as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPKigfGYwKE

the demeter stuff is p cool, whether in the context of it being used in theatre, or as a cologne, or just for general amusement. dirt is really good as a cologne tho.

the earl grey one is nice. there are so many. there's one called funeral home that is good if you want to wear a strange scent as a joke.

in theatre??

i think my new frag is gon b 1 spritz each of dirt and grass

my boyf and i saw funeral home on the web page and were horrified

there's an immersive theatre company called punchdrunk and they use the scents a lot in their shows. like you walk into a room and it is a forest and smells of dirt. their only running show is in nyc at the moment, sleep no more - i think that uses some demeter stuff too, most of their shows do. i've noticed other companies copying this a bit.

people still do this?

rather than put an air freshener in my car I used a half dozen sprays of a nice neutral scent on a paper towel and threw it in the back seat

smells way good in there

Which chemicals?

ethanol mostly but that evaporates real quick