NOSE-APPEAL

Evening Star, Issue 22228, 4 January 1936, Page 2

NOSE-APPEAL

[Written by Panache, for the ‘Evening Star.’] According to a business journal quoted in the ■■■• Reader’s Digest,’ several companies are adding nose-appeal to. their products. Perfumed hosiery and paints have been on the market for some time; newer arrivals include scented inks in a variety of delicate shades. Sure this is a swell idea for big business,'but it will make individual shopping much more hazardous. Take hosiery. , Think of the trouble you had a fortnight ago to remember, when you were, choosing Christmas presents, whether your cousin’s favourite shade was sun tan or gunmetal, and whether it was a pointed or a half-heel that she simply .could not wear. Now you will have to keep in mind as well her distinctive perfume,: and next Christmas Eve you will wake in a cold sweat, fearful lest, you, gave, lavender-per-fumed hose to a sporting girl and Joy of the Harem to your aunt. Whatever you select, it will be impossible for the perfumed stockings of your choice to avoid-a clash with the-bath salts given ’ by a rival. What with the end of the depression' and girls getting so many presents, it will be increasingly difficult for them to avoid being promiscuous ih : ' perfumes. The majority will give up being discriminating and become pot-pourri girls, with the same N.A. for all. Or else they will adopt the extreme measures taken by a girl in a magazine story. All her suitors wanted to eat her, literally; to him whom she accepted she entrusted -her secret—she used vanilla as a perfume. Whether the paints to which the 'American companies are adding noseappeal are for the face, for the canvas of artists, or for houses is hot stated. If for the face, I mourn for the spirited Jezelbe, who, but for the tardiness of this device, would not continue to stink in the nostrils of decent people, Solomon was more fortunate. If big business and its latest stunts had been known in his day, artificial flowers would have had nose-appeal, and so the bees which" he admitted into his palace could not have assisted him to distinguish the natural blooms from the imitation. If it is house paint with nose-appeal that is on the market a new interest is added to real estate. will have to splash a fresh coat of paint for, each new , tenant. Prospective owners will choose their dwellings from the gate, their noses saving them from the fatigue of climbing steep paths. Shall we buy this house!’ Ask your nose. 'And so the bachelor will be attracted by paint that smells of dogs and a pipe; but from the paint that was scented with orange juice and baby powder, the childless parents will turn disconsolate away. We have all heard of bungalows redolent of comfort; .now, with the introduction of nose-appeal, houses will actually smell of home, when paint can bo perfumed with toast and the unforgettable odour of rubber hot water bottles. The newest forms of nose-appeal include scented inks, in a variety of delicate shades. The most exciting possibilities here are those appeals that can be made to tlie noses of examiners. The candidate who is aware that his algebra paper is being marked by an enthusiastic golfer will scent his ink with so subtle a perfume of springy turf and Harris tweed that the professor will be mesmerised into believing that a low score makes a winner. An essay on Burns written in heatherscented purple ink could not miss the prize; and to a question on old French dialects, written with Provencal perfumed ink, the most desiccated professor, shrouded in Avignon’s own rosy mists, could not hut award maximum marks. But alas! Scented inks offer too many chances to the unscrupulous. If they could be used solely for the good of deserving examination candidates, there would, be no objections to nose-

appeal; but the imagination halts at the thought of how they might be exploited by " ose misanthropists who sond out biTfgy' Sensitive nostrils twitch when the postman extends a deodorised bill; if bills were made out in scented inks there would be an increase'in mortality among debtors. The trouble about nose-appeal is that it makes people nose-conscious, a -onsummation that many have striven long to avoid. Men and women over vhose 1 lives their noses have cast a shadow, who have embraced many enthusiasms in an effort to forget about their noses, are in despair at the new insistence which advertisement brings. Then, the nose-conscious are the prey of all those who have ideas about nosecomfort, so that savings are squandered on douches and chilblain cures and ruinously-priced apparatus for moulding the cartileges. And there are endless discussions on the difference between an adenoid and a polypus. And the itch for forming new nose compounds grows worse, so that the oldfashioned blowing becomes nose-service. To scented stockings, sweet-smelling inks, and perfumed paints, the fastidious nose will remain unresponsive, and as cold as that of any terrier in good health. “ Appealing ” was once a wistful adjective, suggesting shy woodland glades and pastoral draperies and pensive tunes. Now, it has been changed so that things that appeal call up a blaring market-place with blatant colours and striejent noise. As “ appeal ” has changed, so, if nose-appeal is persisted in, will the discriminating nose alter, too. Averted from the products of big business, it will turn up in disdain (and the effect on the nose of the artistic non-Aryan will present an interesting study for the anthropologist a few centuries hence). Determined to resist all insidious nose-appeal, though oppressed by the thought of how patchy my face would look with a tip-tilted nose; already Winded by the eye-appeal of striped blazers; deafened by the ear-appeal of New Year crackers; I went outside to pick sweet peas. Sunsoaked and warmly coloured and gently rustling, they soothed outraged senses. Drawing the nose down, they dared big business to do its worst.