This fancy French perfume is supposed to smell like losing a baby tooth

Some of us can still recall the first time we lost a tooth. Or at least the feelings we had when we realized our dear pearly whites were going to pop out. It wasn’t exactly joyful from beginning to end. In fact, some better words to describe that moment in time might be confusion, fear, sudden elation (tooth fairy time!), and more confusion. Now, perfumer and makeup artist Serge Lutens has translated that feeling into a perfume.  He calls it Dent de Lait. Which means “baby teeth” in French.

So, does it really smell like baby teeth?

According to writer Kathleen Hou at The Cut, the tooth-losing description is a figurative approach to the scent, rather than a literal one. In actuality, the perfume smells like:

“...a warm, powdery, milky hard candy you might have received as a child from a grandma or great-aunt… And then at the very tail end of the fragrance, you get a metallic tinge, not unlike the sharpness you might feel in your mouth if the dental hygienist poked too intensely at a tender spot…

If you want to get a better idea of what we mean when we say a “figurative approach to scent,” just watch the commercial for Dent de Lait.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydV5L-T59Wk?feature=oembed

Huh. This has to be one of the weirdest commercials we’ve ever seen. The serious narration, coupled with the slow-moving, black and white photos of kids with strings attached to their teeth, makes our stomachs churn a little. And what about that narration?

The commercial features lines like, “...a young wolf is anxious to move on from milk to blood… gagged by many years of the unspeakable… alarmed by fear and provoked by the violence I saw in others…

It’s a head-scratcher. Once the video concludes, we’re left with a sad tickle in our hearts. Could this be what Serge Lutens was going for, though?  A sickly nostalgia for a complicated moment in our youth?

Powder. Milk. Hard Candy. Metal. M’kay. What happened to the good ol’ days of jasmine, gardenias, freesias and sandalwood perfume? Well, don’t worry. They aren’t going anywhere. But if you’re craving something new, this baby tooth scent is certainly memorable!