We are now accepting entries for the 2016 Prix Eau Faux, our not-annual contest to reward excellence in "creative fragrance writing", e.g., fake ad copy.

We have assembled a distinguished panel of judges for this year's contest, including several of us from Now Smell This (me, Angela, Erin, Jessica and Kevin), plus this year's guest host, Kafka from Kafkaesque.

The judges will select a group of semi-finalists, and then the readers will vote on a grand prize winner.

What's the point?

We love reading gloriously over-the-top fragrance ad copy. The ad copy that originally inspired our first contest back in 2008 was from By Kilian — in three short sentences, they managed to work in Faust, Rimbaud, Macbeth, 50 Cent, Snoop Dogg, Pharell Williams and Baudelaire, and then they opened a fragrance description with the wonderful phrase "Beneath the pseudoinnocence displayed by Bergamot from Calabria...". In the spirit of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (aka "The dark and stormy night" contest), we wanted to know if our readers could do even better. In 2008, they did pretty well (take a look at the finalists and the winner) so we did the whole thing again in 2010 (here are the finalists and the winner), 2012 (finalists and winner) and 2014 (finalists and winner).

What to do:

Think of a name for your new perfume house and your first perfume. Write a SHORT paragraph introducing your new perfume house to the world, and then a SHORT paragraph introducing your debut fragrance.

Try to stick to 5-6 sentences total. Entries that are more than 8 sentences or 175 words will be automatically disqualified.

The best entries will be funny and pretentious and at least vaguely plausible.

The prize:

The winner gets a $200 gift certificate from our friends at Arielle Shoshana.

The winner will be informed by email.

The rules:

You may enter as many times as you like.

Entries are to be sent via email to robin at nstperfume dot com (replace "at" with "@", dot with ".", and remove any spaces). It would help if you would put "Prix Eau Faux" in your subject line.

Include your entry in the body of the email (we won't open attachments).

Also include your name, and if you like, whatever pseudonym you'd like us to use should we post your entry online.

Entries must be original. We already know there is lots of funny ad copy out there, but please, write your own. Entries are to be text only: no images.

If you would like to change or add to your original entry, even just to add a name or pseudonym, please send the whole thing again in a new email! I cannot be counted on to correctly edit your original entry.

If you don't want me to post your entry in the event that you DON'T win, tell me so, otherwise we'll post your entry for everyone's enjoyment after the contest is over.

We will be accepting entries through April 10, 2016. The semi-finalists will be selected in mid-April.

Questions? Post them in the comments.