After an uncomfortable pause, he looked straight into the eyes of the woman he'd loved for years. As he moved in for the kiss, he caught a whiff of her shoulder and immediately thought of his computer.
So much for passion.
While smelling like "digital" is the last thing most of us would consider a turn-on, real geeks might find the scent to be the ultimate aphrodisiac.
At least that's what the perfume company Coty is counting on for the holidays. With its latest unisex fragrance 001Coty, the company tries to "transcend digital and human."
"Because the olfactory is nothing tangible, it's like a digital experience," said Rick Kinsel, who helped develop the concept behind the scent. "We wanted to revisit the fundamentals of perfumery as an art form. We were thinking integrity rather than commerce."
But old school perfumers insist launching a brand such as 001 has everything to do with business.
"It's just a marketing idea," said Jean-Pierre Subrenat, chairman of the American Society of Perfumers. "But I don't think it will sell. Who wants to smell like a computer?"
Subrenat said it's all about selling the image and picking up on the trend of the day.
"Elizabeth Taylor has her own perfume," he said. "She's a very talented woman, but we know she isn't mixing her own fragrance."
001 will be produced in a limited edition of 5,000 bottles and sold only on the Internet. The proceeds of the scent will be donated to the Parsons School of Design in New York City.
"Let's face it, it's much cheaper to make a limited quantity," Subrenat said. "It's a nice experiment, but they're creating a new idea and trying to sell it."
Others believe launching a fringe brand such as 001 holds a great deal of artistic merit and can breathe life back into a company.
"If you have brands that deliver profit and critical mass appeal, a company can market something a little off the wall," said Laurie Palma, vice president of fragrance and internet marketing for Chanel. "They may not be great commercial successes but they're important for (the company's) image. Every marketer wants the opportunity to be creative."
Coty, which owns such products as Calgon bubble bath and Stetson cologne, hired Jim Krivda from Fragrance Resources to create the scent of 001.
Krivda and his team put a piece of polyester in a dryer and extracted the smell emitting from the static electricity caused by the interaction of the fabric and the heat. By using a tiny syringe-like device to gather the odor, they then inserted the scent into a machine that breaks it into its molecular components. Krivda combined the "digital" elements with the scents of almond, marigold, magnolia, licorice and praline to complete the fragrance.
Krivda also conducted the same procedure on the odor emitted from a freshly opened box of computer hardware.
"When I open up a box of Christmas lights, it reminds me of my childhood," Krivda said. "It brings me a certain element of comfort. We think younger people might feel the same way about opening a box that holds a computer. We call it keyboard comfort."
Coty was hoping to create a "fresh electrostatic accord" with 001. But will geeks clamor after it? After all, it costs $100 for a 1.4 ounce bottle.
"If it smells good, I might be interested," said Liza Schmalcel, a cartoonist for geekculture.com. "But if I wanted to attract a geek guy, I would wear something that smelled like coffee or pizza."
Bruce Evans, who also works for geekculture.com, said the fragrance is definitely something he would check out.
"Does it smell like burning wires?" he said. "If a woman had the smell of digital on, I would think she might want to upgrade. Maybe it would be a smart thing to wear if you went to a job interview at a tech company."
One self-proclaimed geek said he had no interest in 001.
"This tops the list of weird things that people have done to associate themselves with geekdom," said Tim McEachern, organizer of the Geek Pride Festival. "And all you have to do is spend a little bit of time at Burning Man, and you'll see a lot of weird geek activity. But this is still stranger than that."
"Don't these people know there's a war going on?"
These Ideas Make a Lot of Senses
