Testing The Lobster, Celery And Rye Bread Perfumes So You Don’t Have To

Food Republic spent an afternoon in Seoul, Korea, in the New York–based Demeter's Gangnam boutique checking out everything from clean, damp earthworm and briny, fresh Play-Doh to tropical plantain and grassy-sweet tomato guts: 

Lobster: Call me crazy, but I’ve been enjoying Demeter’s lobster scent every summer for years. That’s right, summer. This smells beyond weird on human skin in the winter — I think it needs a little sweat to get it going. There are strong top notes of sunscreen and clarified butter to start, seawater, sweet steamed lobster meat and lemon in the middle and just the tiniest bit of rubber band at the end. Do not wear around cats. Do wear around significant others with origins in coastal New England. Not that they have anything in common.

Celery: I’m going to puke. The intern is going to puke. Everyone in the office hates me right now. How the hell was celery the dud, after they nailed lobster, of all the scented creatures on this earth? Rotting fennel, a little pee, a smidge of permanent marker and a whole mountain of rock-hard Good ‘n Plentys, just the way your doctor prescribed them. Pass.

Clean skin: Ahhh, much better. Ivory soap, sandalwood, milk, honeysuckle, amber and the scent of unscented body lotion, which is in fact a scent. This would have been very useful during my college “French shower” phase. What? I practically lived in a commune. There were mushrooms growing in the bathtub! And not the nice ones I described above!

Mr. Nag passes out when he eats lobster. I wonder if the lobster scent would make him swoon.

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