There are a lot of wacky perfume names out there, but Sycophant strikes me as one of the most hilarious. So when a friend of Duncan’s, ordering some vinyl from an independent US record and book shop, kindly asked if I would like to get some fumes – all tied up with actual book releases
how could I possibly resist ?
Choosing the above unhesitatingly just because it made me laugh ( only 13 dollars for the ‘pure perfume’), other possibilities from the Kick Books range include
and
which I also went for for the boring and simple reason that I have always wanted to go there
In fact, curious packaging aside, the Maldives perfume makes absolutely zero impression on me. I was hankering after something tropical but instead it smells just like a pale and nondescript mouldy rose. Rubbish ( it will look good in the house though).
Its sycophantic stablemate is not much better in olfactory sensibility or intelligence ( are people, myself included, going actually for the smell , or just the novelty value?) Whatis happening here, clearly, is that people’s sense of irony, visual and intellectual selectivity – all very Grindhouse Tarantino / Rodriguez 50’s kitsch – are being appealed to when the smells themselves, sidelined, are at the brain stem level of sophistication ; this sounds snobby and arrogant I know, but you sometimes forget that the vast majority of people are simply not scent literate. It’s the amusing or even titillating label on the bottle
that brings in the chortling and inquisitive punters.
Funnily enough though, despite saying this, I might actually wear Sycophant to work. It’s actually really rather pleasant : a sort of muguet meets Body Shop Oceanus meets modern Chloe by way of turn of the century cleaner than thou floral :the kind of scent that is still very popular in Japan, – particularly for men, believe it or not – shampoo fresh and unaggressive – and though I don’t have an obsequious bone in my body, a touch of this grime-eroding fragrance on the wrists under my work uniform, as I bow and acquiesce to the best of my ability each day will, I think, work kind of perfectly
( why does this perfume come with black and red dice ?)
The Black Narcissus 
Ironically, the way you describe Sycophant as a mix of the most banal and pedestrian of fragrances strikes me as something a sycophantic person would wear.
Definitely : I meant to somehow weave that in – in that sense the perfume is conceptually successful – and perhaps I do actually goma goma – suck up to my ‘superiors’, more than I actively admit
Do you think the picture used for this perfume is racially sensitive? It hadn’t occurred to me at all at first as it just reminded me of the vile grinning sadists in The Act Of Killing – the brilliant documentary about the massacres in Indonesia and the slimeballs who committed the atrocities ( I don’t really know what the blurb is about)- but I suppose that the picture might even be seen as offensive just by itself. Mmm. I wonder
I really can’t make out what race or ethnicity that crowned and grinning head is – the first things that came to my mind were a Greek tragedy mask and then Idi Amin?
Interesting – yes, it could be either.
And yet the perfume is like Lauren Romance or something – such a contrast
They may smell mediocre, but I know a few idiosyncratic friends whose bathroom counters would be enhanced by a strategically placed bottle or two . . . and matching books in the reading stand beside the loo.
That photo of you is magnificent. I want one, signed and framed!!! You’ve never looked better.
Me last Friday night vastly relieved to have got home !
Slightly debauched and so debonair. Overnight fame and success can do that.
Of which I have neither.
But thank you anyway.