How To Bitch About Perfume {The 5th Sense in the News}

Monthly Archives from March 2006

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A funny, almost sensible article by columnist Kate Muir in which she spits fire at fashion derelict ways this season and at perfume-wearing in general. Wait till you hear what Karl Lagerfeld says and does to control his smell-environment...isn't his nickname Kaiser Karl? OK, I just can't resist a bitchy statement by Karl Lagerfeld because he always tries to wrap it up in gentle forewarning words as if what he was going to say next is absolutely a breakdown of his usual niceness and rules of polite conduct, but he has to burst. You have to love and appreciate the style of the master,

"I have no problem with journalists - many are friends," he once said. "Only not if they are really stupid, or if they've got bad breath, or if they smell. Yesterday [at a Chanel show] I had a problem. I said, 'I'm sorry, you've got to tell this woman that she needs to be taken away. Her smell is not possible.'" ...

Kate Muir advises perfume economy and even abstinence,

"I have two (2) handbags: the big one and the little one, both the same make, both bought in airports when zips burst. I am more Calvinist than Calvin Klein about handbags. And here's my other economy: say no to scent. I know this is bordering on the weird, and some people feel naked without perfume, and at any fine party I will find I am the only person wearing White Supermarket Soap, but just think of the billions wasted, wafted into the air."

My dislike of perfume stems from an early teenage trauma when I found that everyone else at the church hall disco was also wearing Charlie by Revlon, and also from our recent useful discovery that if you put six children in a tent and they spray themselves liberally with Lynx Africa, it keeps off the midges. Certain fragrances bring on a Pavlovian reaction - a man may think he is merely wearing Aramis, when in fact to me that is the choking stench of Evil Ex-Boyfriend from Manchester."