We are now accepting entries for the 2008 Prix Eau Faux, our contest to reward excellence in "creative fragrance writing", e.g., faux ad copy.

We have assembled a distinguished panel of judges, including several of us from Now Smell This (me, Angela, Kevin, Erin and Jessica), Marina from Perfume Smellin' Things and Katie from Scentzilla.

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. My own personal favorite from 2007 was from the niche line By Kilian — in three short sentences, they manage to work in Faust, Rimbaud, Macbeth, 50 Cent, Snoop Dogg, Pharell Williams and Baudelaire, and then they open 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 want to know if our readers can do even better.

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 of 9 sentences or more will be automatically disqualified.

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

The prize:

The winner gets a $100 gift certificate from our friends at Luckyscent.

The winner will be informed (and the prize will be awarded) by email.

The rules:

You may enter as many times as you like.

Entries are to be sent via email to nowsmellthis at comcast dot net (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.

We will be accepting entries through the end of February 2008. Semi-finalists will be selected in early March.

Questions? Post them in the comments. You're also welcome to post your entry below as a comment if you want to share it, but comments will not constitute entries in the contest.