Fragrantica and the unhinged poetry of perfume reviews

“To all those who would refer to [Schiaparelli’s] Shocking as a ‘grandma fragrance’ – your grandma is a whore. Please give me her number, I want her to be my wing woman.” 

This review, so poetically written by user ‘fanonlamb’, is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the weird, wonderful and bonkers assessments of fragrances that are available to us on Fragrantica. The website, described as an online perfume encyclopaedia, lets users post their own reviews of practically every perfume imaginable, from the mainstream celeb-promoted fare that you see in airports, to the avant-garde experimental scents worn by connoisseurs only. And the Fragrantica users don’t hold back – from happily sharing the most intimate details of their lives to condensing the essence of a fragrance down with brutal, if poetic, brevity: “It smells like sour stomach acid drunken vomit”.

Collecting all the best, and weirdest, hidden gems from Fragrantica is Instagram account @itsmellscrazyinhere. The premise is humble – every day or so the account simply shares screenshots of carefully selected perfume reviews to its loyal followers – but its appeal is universal, whether or not you’re a nose. Behind the account is founder Annelise Ogaard, a New York-based filmmaker and “dedicated lurker” of Fragrantica who spent years idly scrolling and saving her favourite reviews before finally collating them on @itsmellscrazyinhere.  

“It began with a huge fight in the comments of an article on a new release from Roja Dove, who creates some of the most expensive perfumes on the market, which in turn create some of the most heated flame wars on Fragrantica,” Ogaard tells Dazed on what sparked her love of the website. “This particular exchange was unique in that it escalated to the point where two posters actually arranged to fight each other in a public boxing match. They picked a venue and everything, but I don’t know if they ever got in the ring because, tragically, I failed to take screenshots before the comments got deleted. That’s sort of my white whale. If anyone out there documented this incident, please get in touch.”

It’s an anecdote that gives a good sense of just how intense, unhinged, hilarious and unpredictable Fragrantica reviews can be, and why @itsmellscrazyinhere is fast gaining followers regardless of how much they know about perfume. Even when they don’t devolve into threats of violence, the reviews posted on the account are exciting and fun due to just how personal, intimate and subjective a person’s response to a scent can be. “It smells like [a] sad drunk girl still hanging around a club at closing time, hoping someone will choose them before they do the stagger to McDonalds. What a depressing way to revive the iconic Opium,” writes one user about Yves Saint Laurent’s famous fragrance. 

Of Sycomore by Chanel, user ‘IamdrinkingBeer’ says, “The signature scent of someone who has never smiled in their entire life. This is the smell of bureaucracy.” Although professional jargon (musky, fresh, sweet) is sometimes present, more often than not reviewers are carried away into completely uncharted territory as they try to describe the almost indescribable, with tools you wouldn’t necessarily expect — and much more peeing and urine imagery than you might imagine. 

“You may sit down to write about a fragrance in the most clinical terms, but memory just sort of slips in, fantasy follows and the next thing you know, you’re talking about the digestive systems of whales and which flowers are associated with death in different parts of the world and a dream you had when you were seven years old,” Ogaard says. Unlike most things reviewed on the internet, a perfume cannot be conveyed online through images or sounds, forcing both average posters and experts to resort to words when sharing their experience of a scent. To anyone interested in words and expression, or simply fond of memes on the internet, @itsmellscrazyinhere is an absolute treasure trove of incredible writing. 

“This is for girls who are always in goblin mode,” begins one review of Lolita Lempicka by Lolita Lempicka, and we know exactly what that means before the reviewer even elaborates: “Picture a goth Winx Club OC stealing a cherry pie that’s cooling on a window sill in a Thomas Kinkade painting and then surrying [sic] (on all fours) back to her cave.” Without once referring to scent, the user paints an immediately recognisable and very funny picture. The fact that we Instagram followers most likely do not have the perfume at hand — that we are unable to experience for ourselves the object that originated this phenomenal text — only makes the review more impressive, and the experience of reading it more delightful. Here something that is extremely personal is suddenly made intelligible to another person. The individual made universal by how specific it is.

Or not: on the other hand, certain reviews are beautiful precisely because of how far they stray from anything that could be evocative to someone else. Very vivid and often quite detailed recollections from the reviewer’s own life, they show the touching way a smell can become intimately entwined with personal experience. “There is something sweet and synthetic in the heart of this scent that instantly reminds me of my narcissistic mother” goes one touching review of Chergui by Serge Lutens. “I absolutely hate it. This was the frag my ex-husband’s mistress wore…” goes another, about Femme by Hugo. Negative reviews tend to be the most fun, but some of the most beautiful are very positive. “One of my all-time favourite finds is this post, which is nominally a review of Angel by Mugler, but is really a portrait of a professor the writer idolised as a teenager,” Ogaard tells me. “It’s interesting that over the years she’s forgotten this woman’s name, but not the fragrance she wore.”  

At a time when so much cultural and artistic engagement seems concerned with consensus, and our tastes and choices are increasingly measured and dictated by algorithms, @itsmellscrazyinhere reminds us of what truly makes reviewing interesting in the first place: not a thumb up or down, not a rating or classification, not even whether the reader agrees with the writer or not. What counts the most is the personal expression of someone who has been affected by an experience, and who communicates to others the ways in which it has inspired and moved them. “If anything, I’m more drawn to a review that completely contradicts my own experience, as long as it has a point of view, or a compelling turn of phrase, or if it makes me laugh,” Ogaard adds.

@itsmellscrazyinhere’s entertaining collection of opinions on something as superfluous and “useless” as perfume is a good laugh that offers a breath of creativity, but also of confidence. As Ogaard puts it, perfume “inspires poetry from people who might not even consider themselves writers,” and it’s hard not to find that enthusiasm intoxicating. Film critic Caspar Salmon, who follows the account, says he knows little about perfume but that while he has “no understanding of the thing being criticised”, the posts inspire him: “Some of the writing is very punchy and evocative, and as a critic myself I sometimes wish we could make space for a more gutsy, subjective, unorthodox way of reviewing.” 

Like all the best online accounts, however, @itsmellscrazyinhere is also quite simply funny as hell, straddling the border between the absurd and the profound. “It’s not blowing up the internet or anything, but a surprising number of people have told me it’s the first thing they check on their phones in the morning,” Ogaard says. “I feel like that’s the highest honour you can bestow upon a poster.”

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