Public Space and Private Perfume Preferences: Is There a Problem?

I have often been surprised at the fervor with which some people denounce the use of perfume in certain spaces, most often the workplace, where the perfume naysayers appear generally speaking to hold sway. As a perfume lover, I am inclined to bristle at the effective olfactory tyranny of some in response to the complaints of a few, usually people who claim to suffer from severe allergies, and some of whom probably do. I doubt, frankly, that all of them do, just as I doubt that all of the people these days who request gluten-free substitutions in restaurants are in fact afflicted with Celiac disease (wheat gluten intolerance), as its incidence in the general population is rather low (~1%).

One reason why I doubt that very many people suffer from allergies bad enough to make even a whiff of someone's fragrance a cause for undue strife or major illness is that many parts of the world in which we live, and especially cities, are chock-full of scents. I often poke fun at New York City, in particular, but if such hypersensitive persons were truly so severely allergic, then it would be miraculous that they should be able to survive in most any city, in the midst of so many smells, many of which are quite a bit more offensive and obnoxious, if not noxious, than even Christian Dior Poison or Thierry Mugler Angel, to name but two of the more notoriously over-applied perfumes still in rotation among perfume wearers today. 

Despite my skepticism about and consternation at the anti-perfume backlash, however, I must confess that a couple of cases cause me to pause before dousing myself with loud perfume and proceeding to waltz out the door to a library or other public venue.

The Case of the Stinky Homeless Man

When I first moved to Boston, I used to attend free movie night at Boston Public Library on Boylston Street, conveniently located a few blocks from the Prudential Center and Copley Square and accessible by the T (our subway system). The films screened were usually classics, and so it was basically like going to a theater without paying but also being afforded the opportunity to see something which was actually worth watching. Overall, it was a nice way in which to indulge my passion for classic films without spending any money, which was especially good in my case as I had moved to this city without first finding a job and was living only on savings at that time.

The lure of attending free movies in a public space was considerably greater back then, before I had acquired a large flat screen television to forever obviate the need and squelch what motivation I once had for leaving my humble abode in order to see worthwhile films. I hardly ever go to watch movies in public anymore, and I suspect that I am not alone, although some theaters are managing to survive, even in a world where DVD releases succeed new movie premieres in some cases by a matter of only weeks. Since acquiring an HDTV, I find it very difficult to muster up the motivation to make my way to public movie screenings, although art film events such as the Boston French Film festival at the Museum of Fine Arts occasionally coax me away from the comfort of my couch.

One of the most unforgettable aspects of watching movies on Wednesday nights at Boston Public Library was the spectre of the local homeless men, one of whom in particular would often come to the movie screening and bring with him his weeks—months? years?—of accumulated stench. On the occasions where he sat within a few rows or seats from me, it was necessary to relocate to another part of the room because the smell was simply unbearable. One night I was so nauseated that I actually left without seeing the film.

The failure to bathe sufficiently or frequently enough is certainly not the province only of homeless people, but it is probably true that transients, having neglected hygiene in some cases literally for years, tend to be the worst olfactory offenders in this regard. They do not appear to recognize the type or extent of the scent which follows them around, leaving permanent memory traces in some people's minds, including mine. There are other varieties of unpleasant human-generated scent, but in thinking about public spaces and the question of perfume, I find myself drawn over and over again to the analogy which unwashed persons represent.

On the one hand, no one has the right to force someone else to bathe more frequently than he chooses to. On the other hand, it seems antisocial and rude to foist the scent of one's unwashed body upon other persons in public places. The case of the homeless person who reeks unbearably of filth, sweat, dirt, and general body odor all mingled together to produce a noxious “perfume” of sorts is especially interesting to me because of the apparent lack of intention on the part of the person to offend. Instead, stinkiness is a natural consequence of a lifestyle which may or may not have been chosen by the offender himself.

I imagine that most homeless people have not freely and willfully chosen that lifestyle, although a small proportion of them may have. For the most part, they are down on their luck, in some cases unable to land or keep a job because of psychological and emotional troubles. Having spent whatever resources they once had, they now lead a day-to-day, animal-like existence, living hand to mouth at the mercy of sympathetic passersby.

Perfumed people who stink because of their choice of fragrance or because they have overapplied it have definitely made a conscious decision to scent themselves, the consequence of which is to offend some of those in their environs. But I do not believe that very many such people intentionally overapply their fragrance in order to offend other people. Instead, they seem closer to the homeless man who, as a result of having not showered in weeks, months, or even years, verily stinks.

I was first made aware of the reality of olfactory fatigue on a day when a former colleague did not complain about but complimented me on my perfume, Marc Jacobs, which I was entirely unable to detect on myself so late in the day. In fact, when she asked me what I was wearing, I had to think back to what I had applied that morning in order to be able to answer the question!

In a recent comment on Perfumes of Geography: What's in a Place Name? here at the salon, Pitbull Friend observed that Serge Lutens Muscs Koublai Khan could be accurately renamed “Eau de Homeless Person”! Many people of course like and choose to wear this perfume, so Pitbull Friend's pointed barb underscores the general problem of divergent reception of perfumes, caused by our different tastes, backgrounds, and sensitivities, and is one reason why the question of perfume and public space seems to me to be quite complex.

What is interesting in the cases of the overperfumed and the homeless person (or the person who wears a detectable application of Muscs Koublai Khan in the presence of Pitbull Friend!) is the paramount importance of the subjective experience of the various parties in question. The overperfumed person does not believe that she stinks any more than does the homeless man. In each of these cases, the unwitting culprit, if you will, has become habituated, inured to his or her scent. The perfumed person has been wearing her perfume faithfully, let us say, for some time and has developed a tolerance for it, leading her to apply more and more so that she herself can smell her own perfume. The effect for others may be not at all unlike the homeless man who decides to sit close to you at the movie theater, making it impossible to concentrate on what is happening on the screen—or even to breath.

At the same time, and as Pitbull Friend suggested in christening Muscs Koublai Khan with her own colorful moniker, one perfumista's treasure is another's trash, and one person's heaven sent scent is another's hell-engendered olfactory torture implement. The question, then, for perfumistas becomes: when we wear perfume in public spaces in the presence of persons for whom perfume is a source of unpleasantness on a par with what we find to be highly offensive body odor, are we conducting ourselves in the manner of the transient who pays no heed to the negative effects of his scent upon the noses of others? Having consciously chosen to perfume ourselves, are we not, however, culpable in a way in which the homeless man cannot really be said to be, at least if it is true that he did not freely choose his current deplorable living conditions—city streets and alleys—and his resultant state of filth?

The Anti-smoking Revolution

Second-hand smoke offers a second tinted lens through which to view the perfume and public space issue. Not so long ago, smokers ruled the day. Nonsmokers had to grin and bear it in restaurants and bars because the smokers, having purchased their cigarettes and pipes and cigars, had simultaneously purchased the power to use them where they wished. The powerful tobacco lobby acted to promote and perpetuate the sale of tobacco far and wide, creating nicotine addicts in such abundance that they were able to bind together in solidarity to effectively repel the complaints of the nonsmokers.

The power of the smoker bloc shrouded the weakness of its individual members—they could not live without the stuff—but they were supported in a capitalist system where whoever has the gold makes the rules, and tobacco growers and cigarette manufacturers managed to suppress legislative efforts to curb tobacco use. Second-hand smoke was an annoyance which nonsmokers simply had to tolerate.

There has been a complete about-face on the second-hand smoke issue as more and more people have been made acutely aware in recent years of the serious health hazards of smoking, and the number of smokers continues to dwindle. The medical costs of dealing with the health problems caused directly by smoking eventually became more of a motive force than even the profits enjoyed by tobacco growers and cancer-stick manufacturers.

Massive marketing campaigns and legislation requiring the visible printing of health advisories on all ads and packaging for tobacco products eventually gave rise to an increased consciousness among people about the scientifically documented dangers of smoking. As a result, the number and proportion of smokers in the general population has plummeted in recent times. 

A big part of this downward trend in the percentage of smokers, and the concomitant turning of the tables to accommodate nonsmokers, leaving smokers out in the cold—figuratively but also literally, as anyone living in a city with frost on the ground in wintertime can attest—can be credited to the levying by governments of taxes on tobacco products so steep that it has become prohibitively difficult even to become a smoker, requiring as it does a significant amount of cash on hand to do so.

I actually marvel at the fact that any poor people are smoking at all these days, given the prohibitive cost of doing so, and I'm not sure what explains the persistence of this habit beyond the ongoing perception of a sort of “coolness” still associated with this practice in some sectors of society. 

At the other end of the spectrum, the very people who really can still afford to smoke tend to be well-educated and aware of the dangers of developing an addiction to nicotine. Taken together, these forces—the generally improved information disseminated to potential smokers and the prohibitive cost of purchasing tobacco-laden implements of premature self-inflicted death—persuades many would-have-been smokers (in earlier decades) never to begin.

Perfume haters who lobby for the prohibition of perfume in public space are concerned that many of the chemicals used in fragrances today have been demonstrated to cause health hazards on a par with exposure to second-hand smoke. Their argument is that they should not be in the position of endangering their own health because of someone else's willful decision to don a substance which will pervade the air of any space in which she travels.

I am sympathetic to the concern on the part of some people to avoid some of the substances included in perfumes today. Many of the chemicals do have pretty ugly health profiles, and I eschew them in my own personal perfume use. The question, then, is: should someone who avoids BHT, for example, be subjected to exposure to the substance simply in order to indulge another person's aesthetic caprice?

One possible solution to this problem, from the wearer's end, is to refuse to wear poisonous perfumes. This way one can prevent poisoning not only one's self but also others. The problem remains: which fragrances are the toxic soups, and which are innocuous liquids? Nearly anyone has horror stories of encounters with perfumes which induce vague feelings of malaise or even acute neurological distress.  But are those the poisonous perfumes? 

Once again, in considering personal perfume reception, it appears that one person's poison is another's panacea! I myself literally shudder at the thought of applying Estée Lauder Intuition or Isabella Rossellini Manifesto to my skin. I actually think that I would prefer to have my toe nails forcibly removed than wear Intuition again. Other people wear those perfumes comfortably and even reach for them in anticipation of the enhancement which it will bring to their day. A chacun son corps!

Some among the perfumes which I love, on the other hand, may well make some other people cringe. However much we may all love our own favorite perfumes, we are wired somewhat differently, and this manifests itself not only in our radically different evaluations of the quality of perfumes but also in our willingness to wear them. All of us quite naturally avoid the perfumes which induce in us undue strife, despite in some cases the praise of other people of the very same creations as great. It simply does not matter how much artistry has gone into a fragrance which makes us feel physically ill. That is the ultimate test of a bad perfume, it seems to me: its inability to be worn. While that may be an entirely subjective judgment, it is nonetheless authoritative—to us.

Ethics or Etiquette?

I am fortunate to have a large selection of perfumes ranging from intense mega-sillage elixirs which I myself cannot even don with the hope of getting anything done, to light, skin scent-like colognes whose presence I barely detect, if at all. I realize that some people who complain about perfume are simply complaining for the sake of complaining, because they want people to jump at their beck and call and to modify their habits at their behest.

Nonetheless, I approach the question of public space scent from the most charitable possible vista. I assume that there really are people whose ability to function well may be severely impeded by what to them is perfume-infused air no less polluted than a room full of second-hand smoke. For this reason, I reserve my intense, big projection perfumes for use at home, where I can be sure that no one will be bothered by the scent.

At the same time, when I encounter someone wearing the metaphorical equivalent to “Eau de Homeless Person,” I make a concerted effort to “put daylight” between us, to invoke a phrase unforgettably ascribed to U.S. President Barack Obama by presidential candidate and former governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney. I operate under the assumption that such people do not know any better when they behave in socially unacceptable ways.

I do not conduct myself thus only in order to avoid conflict. No, I have an ulterior motive as well. By exercising discretion in my choice of perfume in public spaces, I avoid giving the perfume haters more grist for their mill. Similarly, while assuming that over-perfumed persons do not know what they are doing, I do not voice my disapproval because I refuse to give the perfume police and anti-perfume activists more evidence for their view that all perfume should be banned from public spaces. Nothing of the sort is true, of course, so strategically speaking, this approach makes the most sense to me.

In saying all of this, I should clarify, by way of conclusion, that I do not believe this to be an ethical issue at all. I do not believe that other people's even poisonous perfume is inflicted on those around them in concentrations sufficient to cause them harm. At the same time, as I have remarked before and will no doubt again, it seems quite clear to me that there is no natural right to perfume. Perfume is a luxury, pure and simple, and we are fortunate to be among the small percentage of humanity capable of enjoying this luxury. It is a privilege, not a right to perfume one's self, and no one is wronged by being deprived of something which was never his right in the first place.

Because we are among the tiny, incredibly privileged portion of humanity to enjoy the opportunity to indulge in the perfuming of ourselves, we should do so with discretion in public spaces, ever aware that it is our honor to do so. We should hold ourselves to a higher standard than the homeless man at the library and comport ourselves with civility among our fellow human beings, whatever that may require, and even when their perceptions differ radically from our own. 

The Question of BHT: Should I wear as perfume what I would never eat?

"Cool Whip Original is made of water, hydrogenated vegetable oil (including coconut and palm oils), high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, skim milk, light cream and less than 2% sodium caseinate (a milk derivative), natural and artificial flavor, xanthan and guar gums, polysorbate 60, sorbitan monostearate and beta carotene (as a coloring). In some markets, such as Canada and the United States, Cool Whip is available in an aerosol can using nitrous oxide as a propellant." 
(from Wikipedia) 

It's easy to become disenchanted and slide into a sad cynicism when one observes what has happened to the corporatized perfume industry in recent years. There are ridiculously many flankers and trivial launches. Under the guise of IFRA health directives, companies are mangling former masterpieces left and right. At the same time, industry views about how perfumes should be made seem to be changing.

I've noticed of late that many perfume houses which did not formerly list BHT among the ingredients in their perfumes now do. Does this mean that they are only now acknowledging that BHT is an ingredient but it was in fact there before? Or is the ingredient now being added when before it was absent? My suspicion is the latter, as entire houses' line-ups have changed as they have come under the yoke of LVMH and Coty, to offer two examples where I have observed a preponderance of labels boasting BHT among the ingredients of perfumes formerly produced independently.

Let us take the case of the house of Marc Jacobs. Perfumes launched by this house before its takeover by Coty did not list BHT as an ingredient. In the last few years, all of the labels of this house, whether the cocktail splash series, Curacao, Cranberry, and Ginger; earlier splashes such as Fig or Gardenia (also produced in the post-takeover period); or recent launches such as Lola and Bang, have listed BHT among the ingredients. In contrast, there is no BHT listed for pre-takeover perfumes such as the original (eponymous) Marc Jacobs or Essence or Blush, all of which I own and which were produced in connection with Givenchy, according to the boxes.

Another in some ways even more disturbing example is Guerlain. Pre-takeover perfumes, such as the early Aqua Allegoria fragrances, or earlier versions of Shalimar, Samsara, Mitsouko, L'Heure Bleue, among others, did not list BHT among the ingredients. In recent years, all of the Guerlain perfumes (all of the ones I've seen, at any rate), including Eau de Cologne Impériale—which is said to be the original formula from the time of Napoléon—have come to list BHT as an ingredient.

Clearly the head chemists at LVMH and Coty think that adding BHT to perfumes is a good idea. Why else would it be found in virtually all (if not all) of the perfumes now being put out by those companies, while it continues to be absent from the perfumes of most independent and niche houses and all traditional houses I've looked at, which suggests that perfumers were not using BHT before.

I'll offer one further example, the house of Fresh. Pre-takeover Fresh perfumes such as Sugar and Sugar Lemon appear not to have contained BHT. All of the following Fresh perfumes now list BHT among the ingredients: Cannabis Rose, Cannabis Santal, and Hesperides, along with what appear now to be discontinued perfumes such as Strawberry Flowers, Sake, and Pink Jasmine. I do not understand this. The whole image of the Fresh company is that of being, well, fresh and natural. Image and reality appear to be diverging...

It is obviously possible to produce fine perfumes without adding BHT. None of my Hermès boxes (and I have several) lists BHT among the ingredients. Not a single one. (Thank goodness that house held its ground!)

I should perhaps make clear that I am not making a global claim here about the safety of BHT, although I am not at all convinced that it is safe. I realize that its use is currently legal. (Is there a need to list here all of the morally repugnant practices which used to be legal and even a part of longstanding tradition?) Despite the legality of BHT, I certainly avoid it in foodstuffs—as readily as I avoid sucralose, which, although also currently legal, completely and utterly repulses me. The question for me (and anyone relevantly similar) is: given that I do not eat BHT, should I wear it in my perfume?

Now, I am aware that there are probably millions of people who are not troubled in the least by the fact that only one variety of Cheerios does not list BHT among its ingredients, and there are obviously millions of people drinking nonnatural diet sodas, laced variously with sucralose or aspartame (nutrasweet), one of the breakdown products of which is … drumroll … formaldehyde! Obviously, companies want to use whatever they can to maximize profits in their products, and that's fine with me, but I do not have to buy and consume them. Given my general avoidance of BHT in food products—whether justified or not—I am currently toying with the idea of boycotting all BHT-laced perfumes in the future.

I already appear to be leaning that way, as I've noticed in a few cases that purchases which I was on the verge of making I changed my mind about after reading the label and seeing those ugly three letters yet again. I do not think that I am being overly cautious here. The problem has been exacerbated for me as I've been noticing that the quality of these BHT-laden perfumes is degenerating in direct proportion to what I believe to be their potential toxicity.

A case in point: I purchased a tester bottle of La Perla J'aime from an online emporium. This is not an old perfume, having been launched in 2007. Upon arrival, the liquid in the previously unsprayed clear glass bottle was pink. In the ensuing weeks, although the bottle was stored under controlled climate conditions and away from light (in a closed armoire), the liquid turned brown. To be honest, I did not like the perfume from the very beginning: the first time I wore it, I woke up in the middle of the night wanting to wash it off. I had made the purchase scent unsniffed based upon my love of the original La Perla, which appears since its launch to have undergone serial reformulation and now no longer appeals to me nearly as much—evernia prunastri has been replaced by evernia furfuracea, among no doubt other changes.

La Perla gets a makeover--or will it be a lobotomy?

I definitely will not be purchasing a bottle of the latest version of La Perla, which was recently announced, but I will say that at least the house is being decent enough to repackage the perfume so that consumers will have a clue that the perfume inside is actually new. To return to the case at hand, the new perfume which I purchased from the house of La Perla, J'aime, struck me as off from the very beginning, so the change in color merely confirmed my suspicions. It seems obvious to me that there is something seriously wrong with a perfume which goes bad in such a short time, and BHT clearly did not help matters. So why, exactly, is the BHT there?

I eat well, and whenever possible choose natural and organic foods over “stuff” containing long lists of nonsense and the ultimate mystery ingredient, “artificial flavor”. Think about it: it could contain literally anything. All bets are off when you buy a food which lists among its ingredients “artificial flavor”. Why, then, should I be any less exacting when it comes to my perfume, which I apply directly to my skin and breath in as well? I may not be able to find out what all is contained in the mysterious, carefully guarded secret parfum ingredient of a perfume which I purchase, but if the blaring letters BHT are staring back at me as I glance at the box before checking out, I have the option of just saying “No.”

In some ways, it's quite odd that as modern people become more health conscious when it comes to food, perfumes seem to be becoming far less appealing aesthetically, with restrictions placed on many of the key natural ingredients of the masterpieces of the past, and the scents of household products such as dryer sheets and laundry detergent, along with shampoo and conditioner, all now being bottled and sold as perfumes. At the same time, these less aesthetically appealing perfumes may actually be more toxic. In my manifesto on this topic, PEOPLE WITH ALLERGIES DO NOT WEAR PERFUME, I attempted to navigate all of these seeming contradictions.

At the end of the day, given the natural historical trajectory of capitalism and its effects upon profit-driven corporations and those who run them, what has been transpiring in the perfume industry is not really all that surprising to me. In some ways, none of this should be surprising at all. Many of the big players in the perfume industry are also big players in the fashion world, and everyone knows (don't they?) that fashion is much more about business than it is about art.

Our tastes are molded by the fashion companies and magazines, which is the only possible explanation for how ultra-low-rider jeans are nearly the only ones available, with the result that sightings of plumber's cracks and muffin tops have become virtually ubiquitous, not to mention—though I will—the increased display of mid-back tattoos and thongs. So fashion is supposed to be about aesthetics, true believers continue to claim? (I have a very nice plot of land for you near Alligator Alley...)

The clothing designers all begin, of course, as artists, but many at some point along the path to success become much more involved in the management and augmentation of businesses than in the direct creative production of their line and the many objects which come eventually to bear their name. I recently watched Valentino: The Last Emperor (2008), directed by Matt Tyrnauer, which relays the story leading up to Valentino Garavani's retirement. The overall picture painted in the film of this fashion icon is pretty much that of a diva. He gives his teams of dress designing seamstresses a few vague ideas, and they get immediately to work attempting to realize the capricious deliverances of his will in cloth. Meanwhile, Valentino himself (at least as depicted in the film...) seems far more occupied with his various residences and keeping up the appearances of the diva which he has become.

So what is the point? The point is that when design houses are in cahoots with companies such as Sephora, devising schemes by which to persuade people to part with their perfume wallet share there, not somewhere else, then the tastes of those people will indeed be molded so as to reflect what is currently available—which is dictated by the taste makers. An abundance of sweet patchouli perfumes were launched in the post-Angel period, and in the twenty-first century, shampoo and conditioner and sweet laundry scents seem to be holding sway.

What to do? Should we throw our hands up in dismay and spend the best hours of our day placing bids on e-bay for vintage perfumes which may or may not smell the same as they did decades ago? I am happy to be able to say that there is a better way. It may seem that perfumery is a dying art, given all of the developments outlined above, but what we need to do is to recognize that designer-based perfumery is merging with the fashion industry and thereby moving farther and farther away from the original vocation of the perfumer as an olfactory artist. True perfumers do still exist, but they are often working in their own ateliers, not under the yoke of corporate conglomerates.

The solution to the changes in the perfume industry is not to give up hope but to, in a phrase: follow the perfumers. Where have all the perfumers gone? some may ask. Have they all become hacks? The answers to these questions may not be obvious because of our long-engrained habits of believing that the designers are an excellent source of fine perfume. No, my fragrant friends, just as those hoping to imbibe fine wine exhibiting the traditional virtues need to seek out smaller producers, we perfumistas, too, have a much better chance of finding perfume worthy of its name by patronizing the indie and natural perfume houses.

Should we really be supporting the perfume industry's equivalent

of plumber's cracks and muffin tops?

Follow the Perfumers, my Fragrant Friends!

PEOPLE WITH ALLERGIES DO NOT WEAR PERFUME: An Open Letter to the IFRA

Esteemed members of the International Fragrance Association, I come to you today with an urgent matter requiring your immediate attention, if the death of perfumery is to be averted before it is too late. I shall detail the crimes being committed by certain parties who have been insidiously laboring heretofore undetected in your midst, in an ever-more zealous effort to hasten the demise of perfumery, but first I need to provide you with a bit of context. Please indulge me briefly as I relay a recent anecdote from my life which bears on the question at hand:

I called my mother last Sunday to wish her well on the holiday, and one of the topics which came up was this blog. She said, “I've enjoyed reading your pieces, but I can't wear perfume because of allergies.”

What? Allergies? What allergies? She is allergic to what, precisely, in perfume? Could it be geraniol, limonene, linalool, cinnamal, citral, citronellol, hexyl cinnamal, farnesol, coumarin, benzyl alcohol, benzyl benzoate, eugenol, geraniol, isoeugenol, benzophenone, benzyl salicylate, ethylhexyl methoxycinnamate, ethylhexyl salicylate, methyl paraben, propylene glycol, methylpropional, alpha-isomethyl ionone, amyl cinnamal, cinnamyl alcohol, butylphenyl methylpropional, hydroxycitronellal, butyl methoxydibenzoylmethane, alpha-isomethyl ionone? Or is it, perhaps, the dreaded and feared evernia prunastri, better known as oak moss?

I rather doubt that it is the latter, given that it has figured in relatively few perfumes—and fewer still today, thanks to restrictions imposed by the IFRA. Who knows what precisely in “perfume”—not this perfume or that perfume, but Perfume in general—my mother cannot tolerate, but it is obviously in enough different perfumes, or at least every perfume she ever tried, which is why she claims today to be allergic to “perfume” and therefore does not wear it at all.

What an eye-opener that was! For years I have wondered—but never asked—why there was next to no perfume in my house while I was growing up. I recall vaguely that there was a bottle of Revlon Charlie (not coincidentally my father's name) on my mother's dresser, and a bottle of Old Spice sitting on the back of the toilet in my parents' bathroom. Apparently it was used on occasion for air freshening purposes. Both of these bottles, my mother informed me this past Mother's Day, were gifts from my grandmother (my dad's mom). Were it not for those gifts, our house would have been entirely perfume-free.

How, then, to explain me? I'm sure that my parents have often scratched their heads, puzzling over precisely how far fruit really can fall from the tree, but my current perfume obsession does seem extreme in the light of such historical revelations. Or does it? Perhaps I am but a rebellious child who never grew up, fighting to resist the values of my parents at every turn.

It is true, I openly aver, that I nearly never practiced the piano until the lessons provided for me by my parents came to an end. (My teachers somehow never noticed...) Only later, free at last to choose to tickle the ivories did I discover the profound pleasure of playing music.

Nonetheless, I do not believe that my mildly obstinate and contrarian nature suffice to explain my current perfume craze, because I left home long, long ago, and get along quite well with both of my parents today. No, I do not think that it is mere perversity which draws me both to perfume and to music, while neither of my parents finds these things to be nearly so important and even less do they find them to be necessary components of a happy life.

Both are remarried to spouses who, too, wear no perfume, at least as far as I am aware. One thing is clear: perfume is not a part of these people's culture. Nor that of most of the people whom I have ever met. Nor that of most of the people in the world. Only in our virtual fragrance communities have I discovered the likes of me: people who love and cherish perfumes as dear friends. People who delight in discovering new elixirs and may even cry upon learning that a beloved friend has died (been discontinued or, what is often worse, lobotomized). Meanwhile, most of the people in the world, and most of the people I know, including my parents and siblings, and my colleagues past and present, live in universes not structured by perfume.

It's not just that perfume is the last thing that they think about spending their hard-earned money on. No, perfume is not even on the list. I, in contrast, spend more money on perfume than on anything else, and if the truth be told, on occasion I find myself shuddering at the thought of the explosion that would ensue should an errant spark somehow be generated in my humble abode, setting the entire place ablaze in a conflagration of perfume flames beyond the means of even the keenest team of fire fighters to contain. But I digress...

Avid perfumistas may lament that for so many years I should have been so very deprived, but I did not mind. The truth, my friends, is that I did not notice at all. I was like a  colorblind child, with no access to color but entirely unaware of what I missed. My world contained no red or green, and so, to me, it simply did not exist. To this day, I have not the slightest idea what either Old Spice or Revlon Charlie smells like.

I retain, in fact, only two other memories of perfume from that period of my life. One is of a girlfriend of mine who had a big, bright yellow plastic bottle of Jean Naté, which seemed to me to be somehow too racy for her age—as though she was a teenage pregnancy waiting to happen. I also thought at the time, believe it or not, that her very use of such a product evidenced a type of dirtiness needing to be masked. I never even brought myself to sniff the stuff, that's how little interest I had in that big yellow plastic bottle filled with juice sourced from a vat.

My other childhood fragrance memories are of two blonde sisters who, precociously, were members of a make-up club which sometimes sent them small glass bottles of brown stinky perfume. It was really nothing that I had any desire to meddle in, and so for years, not only did I not feel deprived, but I seem to have been quite happy to be perfume-free.

My own personal history of perfume did not begin until my freshman year in college, when suddenly my sight was restored. But that's another story...

Let us now, with this background in mind, return to the matter at hand: the existence of people with allergies. These people are bothered by perfume, which is why they do not wear it. They do not seek out perfumes devoid of eugenol or coumarin or one of the hundreds, even thousands, of other possible ingredients which may appear on the box of a randomly selected perfume or be contained within the mystery ingredient parfum. They do not, let us be precise, go out of their way to evade evernia prunastri.

No, they avoid perfume tout court, en bloc, because, far from deriving pleasure from wearing it, they find it a source of distress. And I understand and agree that a perfume with which one is physiologically incompatible—the kind that makes me feel like Alex in Stanley Kubrick's 1971 film A Clockwork Orange as Beethoven's Ninth symphony is pumped into his flat, an experience I have on occasion felt upon donning a perfume produced in a giant vat—is simply unbearable to wear. Better to avoid even risking the chance of feeling that extraordinarily unpleasant sensation than to make the mistake of donning it again.

My question for you—and eventually where this is all leading will become clear—O Illustrious Members of the International Fragrance Association, is this: Whom, exactly, do you purport to be helping by imposing restrictions on the use of certain ingredients in perfumes? And are you in fact helping more people than you hurt?

It should be clear from the case of my mother, and the many other people in existence like her, that people with allergies to components of perfume severe enough to make perfume an unpleasant experience in general, choose, reasonably enough, not to wear perfume. Furthermore, they tend to marry and live with people who also do not wear perfume.

I wonder, then, what all of these new restrictions are really about? I wonder, first, because so many people in the world wear no perfume at all. But I also wonder as I have begun to notice the proliferation of these three tiny letters on the boxes of more and more perfumes in recent times:

BHT

BHT stands for butylated hydroxytoluene, and it contains, logically enough, toluene, which features, for those who never experienced the joy of organic chemistry, the benzene ring:

Benzene is a known carcinogen, and toluene was identified in 1993 as a toxic air contaminant. This is part of the reason why the use of BHT as a preservative is fraught with such controversy. Not only is BHT used in foodstuffs, and in the lining of food packaging, it is also used as a preservative in cosmetic and skin products, including, with greater and greater frequency, perfume.

Now, we all know that Guerlain perfumes have been reformulated. Both of my bottles of mangled Mitsouko (produced in the twenty-first century) contain not evernia prunastri but evernia furfuracea, and who knows what other substitutions were also made along the way. The only thing that noses know for sure is that Mitsouko is no longer the same. But perfumes have not only been reformulated to remove restricted ingredients such as oakmoss. They appear to contain new ingredients as well.

As far as I can tell, based on the bottles in my collection, Guerlain perfumes did not, in the twentieth century, contain BHT. Over the past few years, every single Guerlain box I've bought has borne those letters, even formulas claimed to be unchanged, as in the case of Eau de Cologne Impériale, created by Pierre François Pascal Guerlain in 1853 for Empress Eugénie, the wife of Napoléon III. The ingredients listed on my box are these:

Alcohol, parfum (fragrance), limonene, aqua (water), linalool, citral, geraniol, farnesol, BHT, citronellol

It cannot be the case that the bottle of this cologne which I purchased recently contains the same cologne that was worn by Empress Eugénie. Why? Because BHT is listed among the ingredients on my box, and BHT was first used as a preservative in 1954. QED

BHT, a preservative the safety of which is wildly disputed far beyond the perimeters of the world of perfume proper, made the cut, but oakmoss did not? There's something very fishy going on, and I'm not talking only about Thierry Mugler Womanity, which, incidentally, happens also to contain BHT. What can all of this mean? you may well be wondering, as I myself have been pondering for quite some time. I ask now for your patience and indulgence once again while I sketch out what has emerged as the best explanation of the phenomena before us and, therefore, one may reasonably infer, is also the truth.

Some perfumistas have speculated—consistent with the reigning paradigm according to which multi-conglomerate corporations are gobbling up smaller houses and laying waste to former masterpieces left and right—that all of this is being done in a crass effort to improve their bottom line. Procter & Gamble, having acquired the house of Rochas, subsequently opted to end it for all time. That's right, it's not just that the perfumes of the house of Rochas have undergone in some cases criminal reformulation. No, they are to be entirely removed from the face of the planet, having failed to pull their weight under the yoke of their multi-conglomerate corporate master.

Many people are now aware that Coty has absorbed many formerly independent houses, including Calvin Klein, Cerruti, Marc Jacobs, Jil Sander, Roberto Cavalli, Guess, Balenciaga, Chôpard, Davidoff, Philosophy, Chloé, Lancaster, Karl Lagerfeld, Vera Wang, Stetson, Vivienne Westwood, and others.

LVMH (Moët Hennessy - Louis Vuitton), for its part, has taken over not only Christian Dior but also the once-illustrious house of Guerlain, among many other less notable but still important acquisitions, including Givenchy, Kenzo, Acqua di Parma, Fresh, Fendi, and Emilio Pucci.

The Estée Lauder Group now controls not only Estée Lauder but also Clinique, Tommy Hilfiger, Donna Karan, Jo Malone, Michael Kors, Missoni, Tom Ford, and Coach, among many other houses.

Procter & Gamble, too, continues to swallow up new houses—Gucci, Anna Sui, Dolce & Gabbana, Hugo Boss, et al.—even as they have forsaken some of their former “protégées”.

 Let us now pause for a moment of silence to mourn the death of the house of Rochas.

  

I do not deny that the “evil mega-corporation hypothesis” holds much appeal and is indeed quite plausible in this particular case. It explains an awful lot, no doubt, and it may seem that we can blame the corporations, too, for pretending to reformulate in accordance with the IFRA rules, using that as their pretext, when in fact they are implementing much more drastic changes in order to make their wares more profitable.

The problem with this hypothesis, I am afraid, is that it does not explain all of the data at hand. If the reason why people wear perfume is because it is beautiful and does not cause them physiological distress, then adding highly controversial ingredients such as BHT is likely to decrease the number of sales, and especially as public awareness grows over the use of such substances in perfumes, which are applied directly to the skin, the largest organ of the human body. So what is really going on here?

My friends at the IFRA, I regret to inform you that my considered view on this matter is that your ranks have been infiltrated by members of the Anti-Perfume Crusade currently attempting to call a halt to the use of all perfume. You are no doubt aware that there are people alive today writing on the world wide web in vivid, emotional, and even litigious terms, demanding that the use of perfume be outlawed in all public places and open spaces. They compare perfume to second-hand smoke and decry the discomfort, health hazard, and even pain which they are forced to endure at the hands of egocentric perfume wearers who pay no heed to the consequences of their actions for other human beings.

These anti-perfume activists exist, and their numbers appear to be on the rise. Why, then, are perfumes being dumbed down, emasculated, rendered muzak versions of what once were masterful classics? The answer, I think, is plain: the more IFRA restrictions are imposed upon perfumers, the less appealing perfumes will become. At the limit, there will be only vat-produced synthetic juice which no one wants to wear. And that, my friends, is the ultimate objective of the Anti-Perfume Crusade (APC): to so compromise the ability of perfumers to produce true masterpieces, that all of the genuine artists flee to another realm, leaving behind only hacks and industrial chemists who take and obey orders from accountants who spend the best hours of their days poring over ledger lines.

At the end of this ugly process, perfume will have been pommeled down to a product of personal hygiene alone. People will reach for it only out of necessity, to cover bad smells, and most of the people on the planet will arrive at the view shared by my parents and perfume haters everywhere, that clean people do not need perfume.

Perfume will cease to be viewed as an art form by anyone. Everyone, former perfumers and perfumistas alike, will move on to other means of achieving aesthetic satisfaction. If this insidious scheme is not thwarted soon, the Anti-Perfume Crusade (APC) will have won, and the world will be much less than it once was, having begun to chart the path to the elevation of perfume as an art but then stopped in its tracks by perfume haters currently masquerading as benevolent environmental health advocates and working in your offices at the present time under assumed names.

I humbly entreat you, therefore, dear members of the IFRA, immediately to cease and desist from imposing restrictions on the world of perfumery having at last seen through this clever ruse. All restrictions over the use of ingredients which were worn for centuries in perfumes by people who lived normal, healthy life spans enriched by transcendent olfactory experiences should be lifted posthaste.

Yes, these tricksters have attempted with some success to convince you that the restrictions are helping the general public. In reality, however, as the cases of my mother and father and their spouses reveal, people with allergies do not wear perfume, and nothing could be clearer than that your restrictions are being used as a pretext and an excuse to reformulate classic perfumes with devastating effect to perfume lovers, all in an underhanded effort to render  perfume banal to the point where no one wants to wear it anymore. 

Speaking on behalf of perfumistas, perfumers, and true perfume lovers everywhere, I thank you in advance for your swift attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

sherapop