Forget common fragrance notes like rose, vanilla and patchouli. Isabel B. Slone explores a growing trend in the world of perfumery: scents that are, well, kind of gross.
Courtney Rafuse loves the smell of rot. The Toronto-based perfumer has been mixing up spicy, skunky potions for her brand, Universal Flowering, since 2016. Rafuse is known for creating challenging scents that contain notes of blood (cleverly described as “copper wire accord”) and sweat. Reviewers have described her fragrances as smelling like “Barbie in the microwave.” Yet despite their prominent elements of filth and decay, Universal Flowering perfumes are considered anything but fetid. Rafuse once received an Instagram DM from a customer recounting how a new lover was so smitten by her scent that he proceeded to lick every inch of her body.
Universal Flowering is part of a new and growing guard of perfume brands that have begun to incorporate unconventional notes into their wares. But the world of fragrance is no stranger to ingredients of unsavoury provenance. Take, for instance, ambergris — harvested from the intestines of a whale — which has been used in perfume since the 10th century. Or civet oil, a secretion derived from the perineal gland of a civet cat that features a mind-controlling parasite called Toxoplasma gondii, which has been used in perfume for hundreds of years. (It was one of the main notes in Chanel No. 5 until the brand switched to a synthetic version in 1998.) But common notes like vanilla, amber and rose are increasingly being replaced by uncanny bouquets of semen, ashes, cocaine, plastic and flesh.
Historically, perfume is based on the premise of covering up unpleasant bodily smells and replacing them with something sweet and seductive. But in recent years, perfume itself has begun to get down and dirty and embrace the downright abject. While Thierry Mugler’s Mugler Cologne, which contains an “S” note widely rumoured to be…
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