chandler stinks

About

words used by the NYT's perfume critic, Chandler Burr in a recent article 'reviewing' three fragrances, or in my satirical response to Chandler's review.

satire

Let's fuel this list with another Chandler snippet or two:

Dirty is vastly underrated as a perfume aesthetic. There are, of course, several kinds of dirty. Exhibit A is Agent Provocateur, a lingerie concern that, like Victoria's Secret, professes to sell sex. But while Victoria's Secret is that great Middle American Walt Disney of sex, Agent is slightly grittier, dirtier. Or it professes to be; sex packaged by marketers tends to promise the real thing but is in fact so sterile you couldn't even catch the other person's cold. It's dirt without germs, an idea of intimacy without actually experiencing it. The surprise is that this turns out to be an excellent concept for a perfume. The brilliance of Agent Provocateur, the company's rather astonishing first perfume, is that it doesn't actually smell like unwashed panties. It's better than that: it just reminds you of them. It smells like crushed raspberries and black plums on hot skin. Expertly constructed by the perfumer Christian Provenzano, the juice lasts beautifully, diffuses perfectly and could raise the fertility rate in Manhattan without raising laundry bills. It's like a photo of a thong and cheeky ouverts. All image, no dirt.