Demeter Fragrance Library is known for their long list of wacky (and occasionally appealing) scents like Holy Water and Gin and Tonic, but we were pretty shocked to see a bottle of First Response -- Boston show up at Boston.com. As the name suggests, the "pick-me-up" scent was created in honor of the Boston Marathon bombing tragedies, with 75 percent of sales going toward the Boston First Responders fund.
Sounds all well and good, right?
Sure. But what does it smell like?
According to the fragrance brand's site: "At Demeter, we want to do our part, too. So we created First Response - Boston, a combination of spices and flowers, overlaid with white smoke and rubber."
We gave it a whiff, and smoke dominates the fragrance profile, strong and overpowering of any floral or spice notes. But that could just be us.
Our real question is: Is this in bad taste? Should a fragrance brand (or any brand for that matter) -- regardless of their good intentions -- create a product that is so literally tied to a tragedy?
As for Demeter, their scent library is rather literal. As in, Paper Back smells like musty aged paper and Dirt smells like... well a very artistic expression of dirt, so we suppose it makes sense that these notes would appear in a fragrance tied to the bombings.
To quote Seth Myers: Really? Really?!?
What do you think of Demeter's First Response fragrance? Is it an inappropriate gesture or just a consistency for their brand? Would you buy a bottle?
