For a growing number of fragrance fans, selling singular is more important than smelling good.
“Do you know any perfumes that smell like dead trees, water-stained motels, peeling wallpaper, dusty wooden floorboards and an abandoned church?” is the kind of hyper-specific request that Annabelle La Chimia, 31, says she regularly receives from followers of her popular TikTok account, @ismellunusual. (Her recommendation in that particular case is Memory Motel by the French perfume house Une Nuit Nomade.) She is just one of many creators on #Perfumetok, a hashtag with 6.7 billion views, that cater to an increasing demand for bizarre, outlandish and even intentionally off-putting notes. La Chimia recommends perfumes such as Bucharest-based brand Toskovat’s Anarchist A_, which is advertised as having notes of dirty dollars, old confession room and snow, or Eau de Space’s eponymous fragrance, which features notes of latex, gunpowder and biscuits. (One user on Fragrantica suggested its scent might be comparable to that of a nuclear reactor.) “People no longer feel they need to smell good to be loved or accepted,” says La Chimia, whose followers are mostly between 18 and 20 years old.”
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