Smellmaxxing

What's new?

29 sprays …

“I don’t know if that’s enough…”

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Smellmaxxing is big with teenage boys.

But the girls will not be outdone.

Sitting on a bench opposite Nose boutique, three teenage girls appeared in a cloud of perfume that was enough to stun an elephant.

Sure enough they made a beeline for the entrance, and when inside started sampling the wares on offer – but how they smelled anything above their own sillage is a mystery.

And now that the girls are in on the act, smellmaxxing must be a thing — officially.

But what is smellmaxxing? Is it a fancy new way to wear perfume, or is it just a fancy label for a trend that’s been going for years?

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Fancy phrases have always been a neat way to label phenomena, but their simplicity often makes them cheerleaders for what they describe. Smellmaxxing -with its cool double exxing- affords a glamour to the over-consumption of scents.

And when the demand is to smell me, as well as to hear me and look at me, smellmaxxing starts to seem like an olfactory form of narcissism, a thing that appears to be rife in some quarters.

Like narcissism, scents built for nuclear projection are a sign of the times.

But overdosing is nothing new.