Calvin Klein Women
Eau de Toilette, Calvin Klein (2019)

I just can't figure out why anyone would want to smell like a big bowl of peppery fruit juice, but that unfortunately seems to be the state of today's scented landscape. As long as the general perfume-counter-surfing public is presented with these endless iterations of fresh/fruity/musky—which, most importantly, smell nothing like what their grandmothers would wear—as the de facto definition of perfume, the pink juice will reign supreme.

I might be out of line calling this a failing of intelligence, imagination, and taste on both sides of the consumer relationship, but then again, look at the cultural landscape overall, which seems designed to be scrubbed clean of anything deeply thoughtful or potentially offensive, while at the same time it is encouraged to titillate. But titillation is not the same as stimulation, so what we have surrounding us is basically just a lot of noise.

So why rail against these juices? Because it needs to be said over and over and over again: when it comes to making art of all kinds, we need to BE BETTER.