Il Mondo Halloween Special: Fearsome Fragrancing

 

An old post. But topical. 

Etat Libre d'Orange: Like This

A perfectly timed fall release, it hard to find something more seasonally appropriate than this; it even lists pumpkin it its notes.

To my nose it's like a dense, moist gingerbread held together with a non-sweet molasses and vetiver, and washed down with a glass of spicy ginger beer. It couldn't be more right for this day.

SCARINESS FACTOR: ( Harmless and child-friendly. )






Bvlgari: Black

Black is certainly one of the oddest fragrances to enter the mainstream - an accord of tar and truck tires over powdery, incensey vanilla. But for all that, Black is more seductive than weird - a pretty, fairly normal girl who just happens to be in a kinky outfit.

SCARINESS FACTOR: ( More charming than alarming. )






Comme des Garcons: Guerilla 1

It's hard to know just what the target audience is for this one. Mechanics who love flower arranging? Who knows, but its combination of champaca flower with something strange, synthetic, metallic, and ever so slightly like garbage gives this an unsettling weirdness. The robot may be picking flowers right now, but it still plans on murdering you.

SCARINESS FACTOR: ( One to watch out for. )







Etat Libre d'Orange: Charogne

With Charogne we leave cute behind and start to enter the territory of things that make people squirm and twitch. Intended to recreate the delightful odor of decomposing corpses, what Charogne ends up being is a massive, massive dose of indole overtop a super-sweet accord that reminds me of custard. Some have described this as halitosis and bubble gum, but I find it both strangely compelling and just a little repulsive.

SCARINESS FACTOR: ( It's getting its freak on with your nose. )





Ajmal: Musk Gazelle

From something named after carrion to something that smells like it, Ajmal's Musk Gazelle truly smells like corpses, with a little hint of rootbeer. If nothing's sexier to you than a half-decomposed raccoon corpse, then this is the scent for you - otherwise, please leave this one for the zombies.

SCARINESS FACTOR: ( Night of the reeking dead - run and hide, folks. )







Etat Libre d'Orange: Secretions Magnifigue

It had to come to this, hadn't it? I still haven't found a fragrance as consistently repulsive as ELDO's crowning glory. Even with Musk Gazelle, I can associate the smell with something in tune with the circle of life, but Secretions Magnifique is as weirdly bodily and alarmingly unnatural as a taste-and-see exploration through a bag of medical waste.

Don't wear this - please. Those who find it a benign floral are a minority, and the rest of us will remember you and your smell long after Halloween is dead and buried for another year.

SCARINESS FACTOR: ( You'd rather be the caboose on The Human Centipede than smell like this, trust me. )