Calling your partner “stinky” suddenly has a whole new meaning.
In 2016, Arabelle Sicardi wrote a story for RACKED on Smell.Dating, the world’s first mail-in, smell-based dating service. The bare bones of the service were this: the company sends you a T-shirt, you wear that T-shirt around town, get it nice and stinky, then mail it back to them. They will then send you a handful of other, pre-stinked shirts sent in by potential love matches. You sniff the shirts, rank your favorites, and then Smell.Dating connects you with partners who also noted that your B.O. was especially primo.
A genius idea, right? Our pheromones dictating whether or not two people will be compatible mates has been a prevailing theory for decades. Now, while there is some controversy on exactly how much our natural musk affects our dating batting average, there’s certainly some degree of olfactory communication going on between lovers.
Why else would “stink” and “stinky” be such common pet names for those who are sweet on each other? The scent of your partner’s body has long been a tentpole for expressing one’s own attraction and devotion. Does Napoleon’s “Home in three days, don’t wash” letter to his darling Joséphine ring any bells?
My own husband enacts a time-honored practice he calls “whiff dosing” (read: shoving my face into his smelly armpits while he laughs with glee) and I will admit (privately, to you, my dear HALOSCOPE reader — and not to him) that despite my pleas for mercy, I do secretly love this little routine of ours. There’s something comforting about the way your partner stinks — it’s alluring and familiar and one of the things I miss most when he’s out of town.
In popular media, bodily scent has been featured a few times as the catalyst for sexual obsession and violent crime. The 1985 Patrick Süskind novel and subsequent 2006 motion picture Perfume: The Story of a Murderer follows a man who becomes so obsessed with recreating the scent of a woman’s body that he goes mad. A Season 6 episode of Criminal Minds features a killer who distills the bodies of his female victims into scented candles — all the better to smell you with, my dear? So it’s safe to say, that while we cannot definitively prove in a scientific sense that smell is directly linked to romantic or sexual attraction…. there’s certainly something in the air.
All that being said, it’s no wonder Smell.Dating wanted to capitalize on this virtual hotbed of stinky attraction in the name of online matchmaking. But here’s the question on everybody’s lips: Did it work?
I went straight to the source and asked. Arabelle Sicardi has written extensively on scent and its relationship to seduction, power, and identity politics (I would highly recommend their essay on “Perfume, Power and God”), so I figured, aside from their direct involvement in testing out the Smell.Dating platform, who better to reach out to about a sexy smelly story than the Fashion Pirate themselves?
KAITLIN OWENS: I know it was way back in 2016, but do you remember how any of your Smell.Dating dates went? Was it a love connection or just another dating gimmick?
ARABELLE SICARDI: I do remember going on a few dates — honestly it was fun and a great method of "blind dating" because it brought me into a situation I wouldn't necessarily have chosen for myself. I ended up going on two — two? — dates with a firefighter who smelled marvelous. But I am, in the end, gay as hell, and I didn't want to date a man, regardless of how cute, capable, and delicious he might have smelled. For the record, I would stand by the fact a gimmick can still be a marvelous adventure. App dating is horrific — I would not say smell-based dating was any worse than any other kind of date I've been on.
KAITLIN OWENS: There’s an entire industry centered around pheromone perfumes which amplify or alter your natural scent in order to attract a partner. What is your opinion on these products? Do they work?
ARABELLE SICARDI: I've used and have written about pheromone perfumes before, early in my journey of smell culture and desirability politics. They're a fun concept, sure, but just that alone — totally marketing. I'm not mad about it — all of beauty is storytelling. But it's a lie, you know? The science isn't there. And there are simply better perfumes.
KAITLIN OWENS: So what makes smell sexy? Is there a particular perfume you wear to attract a mate?
ARABELLE SICARDI: Sexy is completely individual. I don't really pick perfumes based on seduction the way it's typically marketed — which, currently, means an edible gourmand. Seduction, to me, requires open-hearted intimacy and familiarity — choosing to be who you are with the person you choose, and the ability to ask for exactly what you want without apology. I don't wear fragrance to seduce. Fragrance is a public garment to me. Knowing what I actually smell like is a gift few people get to open!
I’m inclined to agree! Personally, for me, I use scent as a tool for “sexiness” — but not so much for “attraction” or “seduction.” I’m aiming to be beautiful and alluring but I don’t necessarily want to catch any spiders in my web — the same way you’d wear a low-cut dress or a pair of uncomfortably high shoes. It feels cliche to say “I wear it for me!” but I really do. It doesn’t really matter much to me if my husband likes my perfume or not — he’s not the one wearing it!
Now, for the part we’ve all been waiting for: consumerism! Here’s my list of Go-To Sexy Perfumes:
Fat Electrician by Etat Libre d’Orange
Babycat by YSL
Odile by Marissa Zappas
Sì by Giorgio Armani
AMBER by Marc Jacobs
Kaitlin Owens is HALOSOPE's Archival Fashion Editor and the Editor-in-Chief of Dilettante Magazine. For a closer look at her work, please visit kaitlindotcom.com.