My scent, representing East/Northeast L.A., was supposed to smell like Mexican food and orange blossom. Goeltzenleuchter made it with cumin and neroli oil. Another participant told me that a lot of people think cumin smells like body odor. Perhaps this explained the gagging.
— Columnist Meghan Daum of the Los Angeles Times attends the one-day installation "Sillage" at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. Read more at Smells like ... a Westsider: All wet lawn and the sweat of a trophy wife.
Am definitely in the camp thinking that cumin = B.O.
In heavy concentrations, definitely. Not sure I’d attend an installation where I had to be sprayed with a scent I might hate…love the story of the guard who washed it off!
‘The clean sweat of a trophy wife.’ If Tom Ford ever made a fragrance called Bel-Air, he’d say that phrase in a husky voice during an interview.
I love massive doses of cumin in Mexican food, and use it myself when I make tortilla soup. My husband puts it in his hummus recipe. For some reason in fragrances it always offends as the most pungent and intimate smells. There are a rare few fragrances I can stand it in, most notably Le Labo Rose 31. I think it’s only because the rose is so rich that it really stands up to the cumin and affects a more foody aspect of the aroma. The other is Penhaglions Amaranthine (worn in microscopic doses). Theo Fennel A Scent, and the current version of Rochas Femme make me want to gag.