EAU de BOOZE

Most people go to lengths to not smell like alcohol.
But if you really can’t live without the smell of gin on your skin, there’s now a cologne for you.  Commodity, a fledgling online fragrance company has launched a range of 2O scents including “whiskey” and “gin” cologne and “Pinot” perfume.  Founded by Yo Santosa and Owen Gee, Commodity aims to make consumers rethink their approach to scent by giving them the opportunity to try samples of scents matched to their personal tastes at home before they commit to buying a larger bottle.  The company’s philosophy is that perfumes and colognes should work with a person’s natural scent rather than overpowering it.  Commodity gets customers to fill in a scent profile and uses the answers to send five samples in the range best suited to their tastes.  Those customers then choose their favorite of the five, and a 1OOml bottle of eau de parfum or three pocket-sized 3Oml roller-ball bottles are mailed to them.  The 2O-strong range features 1O colognes for men and 1O perfumes for women.  Based on “comforting scents people associate with enjoyable moments in their daily lives”, the male fragrances include whiskey, gin, oak, book, and moss, while the female fragrances include Pinot, tea, paper, wool, and dew.  Commodity rounded up 74O backers who between them raised $56,6O2 to help get the start-up off the ground.  The company teamed up with a Parisian perfume house to develop the scents, which are made in US.  A 3Oml bottle of fragrance costs $5O.  “The biggest challenge is that you can’t smell what you see online,” Santosa admitted.  Perhaps the biggest challenge is actually convincing someone they want to smell like bourbon.