I don’t know if it’s just my TikTok “For You” page, or what, but I’ve been going deep on scenttok, (or parfumtok, or smelltok). It goes by a lot of names, but basically, it’s the side of TikTok where influencers share their favorite perfumes, colognes, and mix and match them to achieve certain bespoke fragrances. I came across one perfume in particular that’s making a bit of a splash. It’s called Inexcusable Evil and by all accounts it smells so bad it will give you nightmares — on purpose.
Sounds appetizing, doesn’t it? The kind of thing you throw on before a relaxing night of staring out the window while you are slowly crushed by the weight of human sorrow playing out in so many places on the globe at this very moment. It’s dark as hell, and that’s the point.
Toskovat is a perfumer in the indie or ultra-niche perfume space, the kind of place where blood-inspired scents are not at all uncommon. What is uncommon is how hard Toskovat went with this perfume. It doesn’t just have some metallic notes over pleasant smells like cedar, whiskey, and leather. This thing is itself an Inexcusable Evil by all accounts. The first thing TikTok user @notJeanGrey says about the perfume, after turning away from the camera to dry heave, is that it smells like blood.
“It smells like the air around me is bloody,” she says.
Toskovat isn’t shy about the inspiration for this fragrance. The website states clearly that it contains top notes of ozone and gunpowder, along with heart notes of blood, bandages, iodine, and base notes of fallen concrete, rain and sandalwood. In case it’s not immediately clear, the perfumer continues, describing the fragrance as a distillation of “fallen buildings on the news, crying babies, burnt flowers.”
Perfume isn’t a medium I would’ve considered as a place to express the human cost of war, but smell is one of the most intimate senses. A single smell can evoke memory in ways that few other senses can, so it makes sense that the combined stink of human blood and burnt rubble would disturb us on an animal level. It’s incredible work on Toskovat’s part, and I hope I never smell it.
The post This Viral TikTok Fragrance Will Make You Smell Like a War Crime appeared first on VICE.
The post This Viral TikTok Fragrance Will Make You Smell Like a War Crime appeared first on VICE.
