My response to a post called Who Will Save us from the Vulgarity over at The Perfume Chronicles, one of my favorite blogs. Who Will Save Us talks about perfume advertising and marketing which uses sex as its, um, central thrust. The most recent example of this, taking it, supposedly, to the level of high art, is the project Petit Mort, a collaboration between a perfumer (Bertrand Duchafour) and several others, under the auspices of Kilian Hennessey. Petit Mort is meant to evoke or provoke--whichever comes first (puns are inevitable discussing such things)--that apparently salty and pseudo-revolting moment of sexual orgasm:"Yeah, the Petite Mort ["project"] is…well, I mean, what next, petite merde? Thankfully it hasn’t permeated the perfume enthusiast’s consciousness much yet. I posted what was intended as a satire of the Petite project last week, thinking everyone would immediately apprehend the references, and it dawned on me that not everyone has heard of the project, as eminently laughable as it is. The Petite Mort website is truly like a Saturday Night Live commercial parody, back when they were worth watching. I lifted most of my ad copy for Petite Fart directly from their site, verbatim. What I’ll give Marc Jacobs, though I generally class him with Tom Ford, is a sense of humor (self serious Ford lacks one).
