I had an interesting sensory experience with this.
I was at a New Year’s party, in a fantastic Barbican flat with great view over the London midnight fireworks.
The hosts had cooked a wonderful roast venison, and the air was replete with the warm, woozy smells of the Christmas period and the first few guests intermingling over wine.
And then the host’s daughter walked in and sucked the life from the room.
At first, I didn’t notice the slow changes taking place as the fragrance spread, but then I realized that I was starting to feel depressed and that, like the aluminium flakes used to soak up raincloads, something was happening to the atmosphere: a dessicating, chemical dry-out that sapped all the colours and moods and replaced them with something…horrible, artificial, almost….deadly.
I felt like I had been transported to an airtight departure gate with grey plastic chairs.
Or was it a car showroom?
I could taste it in my mouth: thin, harsh, lemonic metal; my serotonin dipping, my good mood draining from my pores…
And then I realized it was the the scent this girl was wearing; so I asked her, and she told me:
‘Oh, it’s Happy, For Men.’
The Black Narcissus 
the graphics are so appropos to your description!
Curious, how does it compare to the original happy for women? Once worked with someone who wore happy religiously and it smelled quite lovely on her.
This is the irony. Even though I am actually allergic to Happy and it is guaranteed to give me migraines, I think the women’s one is genius, if poisonous. I wrote something about it in my Jekyll and Hyde post. You wouldn’t believe how many compliments I got from Japanese people when I wore it…
Happy For Men just tried to use the same shiny template but failed miserably. I mean I can imagine it being ok on someone in a different context, but on that evening everything smelled so organic and warm and cosy, and A PERFUME HAS NEVER BEEN MORE INAPPROPRIATE!
Absolutely brilliant! This is one of the best perfume blogs on the net. Your writing is vivid, the artwork you choose is always relevant, and there is usually something new to read every couple of days. Thank you for taking the time to do this, you have talent.
Thank you so much for saying so. I worried this one was a bit much, but I came back from a tiring day at work and had to VENT. And this perfume is, or at least on that day, was EVIL.
And really, it is very kind of you to be so generous with what you say here. It gives me quite a boost to keep going with it!
Hysterical! It was if the gloom of Mordor descended upon the happy party.
(so sorry for the nerd reference! Just saw the Hobbit!)
But some of these non-human perfumes, so annihilatingly cheerful and metallic, can really be joy-suckers, don’t you think?
Sometimes. I also find horrible scrubbers full of sweet artificial fruit equally soul-sucking.
That, or you just had an encounter with a Dementor 🙂
A bit over the top, I confess, and I apologize for the horror of the imagery. But it really did just EAT THE ATMOSPHERE AWAY
Now you’re making me kind of want to go out and smell it 🙂 Just so I can see what Mordor smells like too 🙂
If you do you will just smell a not totally unpleasant metallic citrus (which I hate, but…) at that MOMENT it was sheer hell. As of itself, I am sure there are many worse things on the market and the effect could have been replicated with them as well!
Just like with food, the circumstances surrounding the experience can have great effect on how we perceive fragrance! And I’m positive that there are worse on the market . . . like anything with the word “sport” in it in the men’s fragrance section 🙂
Ha ha the irony of the name!LOL
I know!
Wow, hilarious post! The stuff must’ve been truly heinous! >.<
To me, yes. Do you have an equivalent horror?
Thank you for the laugh.
de nada!
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Reblogged this on The Black Narcissus and commented:
It’s a Wednesday after all.
Such a funny post. Thank you for sharing!
Thanks for reading. I felt it was an experience I had to share.
how do you feel about Calandre?
I adore it. And yourself?
I’ve never been a huge fan of metallic (Happy) or mineral (Terre d’Hermes) fragrances. They just don’t seem indulgent enough. No womb, if you see what I mean. Calandre has the citrus opening and then goes deeper; more secretive. makes me feel like doing it in the backseat of vintage cadillac sedans.
A gorgeous way of putting it, though its shadowy aldehydes will be too old fashioned for some. For me it is more a pensive than a horn scent, a perfume to drift off with.
Dearest Ginza
Oh my goodness, you are so right, this is a Dementor of a scent (if you will forgive the invocation of Rowling’s greatest imaginative invention).
I have it and yet don;t know where it came from or why, and yet I find myself recommending it, like a tick, to people who say they want ‘fresh’ or ‘don’t really like perfume’.
Oh dear, I fear I may just have discovered something rather dark and dislikeable about myself !!
As for the Barbican flat… might it have been the one at the end of The Hunger I wonder.
Bagsy I be Catherine… you can be David or Susan if you like (hardly a bad offer).
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy
I am definitely Susan.
Dearest Ginza
Your saying that makes me think of Ms Sarandon’s cameo interview in *The Celluloid Closet*…
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy
I don’t think that makes you dark or dislikable at all, Dandy. After all, they asked for a specific kind of scent and you gave it to them. If somebody said to you “I’d like a scent that is metallic in a weird way, thin yet somehow nauseating, with a strong undertone of placenta” and you recommended Secretions Magnifique,that does not make you dark and mean. It just means that you listened to them.
Thank you Feral… I feel better now.
Perhaps sometimes it is okay to recommend I perfume one doesn’t personally like as long as it fits the purchasers preferences.
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy
Thanks for an amusing post with great graphics. Now I have to go out and smell this stuff. I feel sort of the same about ‘Dot’ by Marc Jacobs, that awful little bottle with its awful little perfume. Well, I’m exaggerating, but it is pretty boring.
I am exaggerating as well, in the sense that if you smell it you will just think it is boring, quite pleasant even, and nothing to get horrified about.
And yet in that context, I am not exaggerating at all. She honestly totally destroyed the atmosphere (for me, anyway).
I always used to study post in news papers but now as I am a user of web therefore from now I am using net
for articles, thanks to web.
Non capisco perche hai scritto questo qui.
Howdy jjust wanted to give you a quick heads up.
The words in your post seem to be running ooff the screen in Firefox.
I’m not sure if this is a format issue or something to do with internet browser compatibility but I thought
I’d post to let you know. The design and style look great though!
Hope you geet the issue resolved soon. Cheers
Thankyou. I am the least technical person in the world, though, so would have no idea whatsoever what to do about it!