No matter where I’ve traveled outside the United States, I’ve heard fellow Americans, also on vacation or on business trips, ridicule the hygienic habits of the locals — “these people” don’t: bathe or shampoo enough, use enough (or any) deodorant, or wash their clothes correctly to remove every particle of dirt and scent…on and on. It’s no surprise that Americans, even many perfume lovers, don’t like perfumes that smell “dirty;” perfumes that contain civet, musk and castoreum come under fire, as do perfumes with a hefty dose of coriander, cedar, cumin, labdanum, costus roots or any other ingredient or mix of ingredients that produces a smell of “body odor.” One of the ‘chestnuts’ of perfume description is “It smells like a cab driver!” (Poor cab drivers, always used as examples of the unwashed.) Recently, someone said the Eau d’Hermès I was wearing smelled like a “bum” — it took just a few seconds to figure out the person was not talking about a street person but a body part: the arse.

Yves Saint Laurent’s Kouros (1981), created by Pierre Bourdon, has been hit hard with the “unclean” rap…

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