Searching for the smell of sex

I’m not sure if this outs me as a perv but, in my mind, perfume equals sex. I don’t explicitly mean the act itself, but more that fragrance and the olfactory intimacy it elicits seems intertwined with things of a sexual, sensual nature. If music be the food of love, scent is the foreplay. There are very few interactions as sexy to me as someone leaning in to smell a perfume on your neck, or the delight and immediate rapport that comes from recognising a familiar scent when you hug a stranger.

Scent is arguably the most animalistic of the senses. There is something about it that bypasses the respectability of good taste, airs or graces. Though it has come to be seen as a prestigious high art form, there still remains an element of the ancient and primitive – it transcends our full knowledge. Apparently this is because olfactory information does not need to be integrated in the thalamus prior to processing in the cortex, meaning scent quite literally surpasses conscious mental processing, permeating parts of ourselves beyond our full control. This is one of the reasons smells can be hard to describe in words but can evoke memories we didn’t even know we had. Anyone who has caught a whiff of a long lost lover on a passing stranger in the street can attest to that.

I find myself increasingly fascinated by perfume, and what I want to smell like is sex. I’m not the first to desire this. French perfumer Jacques Guerlain once said that perfumes should smell of “the underside of my mistress”. The original formulas of the scents Guerlain created – such as Jicky (1889) and Shalimar (1925) – are the stuff of legend and were tinged with vaginal and anal smells. When creating Black Orchid, Tom Ford apparently told Estée Lauder perfume executives that he wanted it to smell like “a man’s crotch”.

Not only is Scout my enduring through-the-screen crush, but she is also an expert in niche perfumes, giving recommendations for perfumes that evoke everything from depression spirals and deadbeat dads to sweet decay. So when Scout described the perfumes of Marlou as “so skanky, so lascivious, so salacious” and being inspired by human flesh and intimacy, I knew I was on the right track.

At first I wasn’t convinced entirely by Marlou, but as I experimented with wearing each of the four scents I became completely obsessed with them. Each of the brand’s perfumes has its own distinct personality but sits on top of a base note that I can only describe as coital. Coital, animalic and somewhat gross. I became so addicted to the psychologically bewitching smells that I’ve taken carrying around the tester bottle of whatever one I’m wearing in my bag and reapplying it, tentatively raising my wrist to my nose throughout my day or night to sneak another sniff. I haven’t taken off Corpalium for the past week; the soil-like woody iris evokes a ferality that makes me think of digging nails into a forest floor. Carnicure creates a saliva quality with powdery violet, orange, whipped cream and musk, and Poudrextase evokes a saccharine intimacy with girly rose and sweet animatic notes – apt for a word meaning “powdered ecstasy.”

After all this, did I find the smell of sex? I wanted something unbridled, heady and completely intoxicating; the most beautiful and disgustingly delicious combination of lust, passion and danger. I finally arrived at Ambilux, the last of the Marlou perfumes. Scout described it as “a ballerina’s dirty tights”. Fragrantica reviews of the smell range from “the pink tiled bathroom of my Nana” to “dirty panties, sex, and piss”. To me, it smells like honey poured over burnt toast, rotting rubbish in summer and the feeling of being so infatuated with someone that you don’t even think about their morning breath before you pick up where you left off the night before. Ambilux is my answer to the smell of sex. I can’t stop wearing it. It’s definitely not for the faint of heart, but neither am I. Marlou, if you’re reading this, please send me more because I’ve already run out.