Here they are, the finalists for the 2008 Prix Eau Faux, our contest to honor creative fragrance writing or "faux ad copy" (you can read about the contest here). Thank you again to everyone who took the time to enter! We had 55 entries, and the judges (me, Angela, Kevin, Erin and Jessica from Now Smell This, Marina from Perfume Smellin' Things and Katie from Scentzilla) have whittled it down to 8 finalists.

In order to make this as fair as possible, I won't post the names of the entrants until after the winner is selected, and I respectfully ask that the entrants not "campaign" for votes here or elsewhere...just let the best entry win. Votes will be taken through the end of the day Wednesday, and I'll announce the winner on Friday.

Jezebel by House of Hades

Style, stilettos and strangers in the night.

House of Hades conjures up Jezebel – a perfume out of this Underworld.

A lusty interpretation of paradise lost, long lost...
The perfect scent for a good girl gone bad, and working it!

The smell of hell, the fragrance of fire – this true trident of scent rides on waves of moonriped blackberries, devilishly roasted almonds and coal black coffee in top. Among the middle notes roars fragments of flaming red chili and vicious vanilla with danger musk, Luciferian leather and thunderstorm helix ruling the olfactory bottom.

Jezebel. Not heaven scent – born to raise smell.

Leopard Blossom by Solid Brown

Once every century, in the year of the flaming blue yak, the nuns of the Tushi Lumpo monastery gather their herd of miniature Himalayan snow leopards to feed them candied lotus blossoms in ambergris. At dawn of the third day, the nuns gently waken the slumbering beasts, and quickly lifting their tails to heaven, pluck the aromatic jewels from the pink star nestled in the deliciously furred buttocks of the mountain cats. This sacred essence is distilled in rice brandy to make the legendary Skan-Kah-Eh elixir, reserved for the rejuvenation of ruined potentates, but for a limited time offerred in a carved amythest pendant shaped like a leopard tail.

Solid Brown is dedicated to the preservation of indigenous natural scent miracles! (Five percent of all sales are donated to treat injuries sustained by nuns during the harvest.)

Anomie by Manqué

The eyes, piercing… the jaw, chiseled… the countenance, commanding. But the ego? Unsatisfied. Yearning, condemned to the pursuit of an impossible goal. Throw down your mask, for this is your true face: Comedy… Tragedy… Comedy?... Anomie.

Casting away the top-heart-base progression of traditional perfumery, Anomie's development boldly issues forth in the shape of a Möbius strip: lemon, bergamot, and nutmeg slide into tobacco, patchouli, vetiver, leather, driftwood, morningwood, synthetic tears, and an ozonic emptiness accord, completing the loop—now cunningly reversed—with nutmeg, bergamot, and lemon. The effect is a haunting revival and re-revival of essences, the olfactory equivalent of listening to Piaf's Non, je ne regrette rien on the old Crosley, feeling the soul stabbed anew with each repetition, the depths of the heart plumbed: Is there a bottom to this pit? Non.

Available as 50ml EDT, alcohol-free deodorant, ultra soothing shave balm, soap-on-a-rope, and super-foamy shimmering shower gel.

IF by Parfums Verité

Announcing The Olfactory Future

Welcome to the New World of Parfums Verité, and a new era in fine fragrances, signaling the end of Modern perfumery and the launching of the Postmodern ethos and aesthetic. No familiar points of reference will be found in our exclusive line of unisex, abstract “emo-scents” that propel the imagination into the future.

May we present our vanguard offering, IF…, an homage to avant-garde British cinema inspired by the boundary-breaking film characters of Malcolm McDowell. Synthetic molecular compositions and natural animalic extracts dovetail symmetrically in an atmospheric evocation of the feelings of fear, anxiety and alienation so prevalent in this iconic actor’s early body of work. If you desire others to be drawn irresistibly by your personal magnetism and then strangely repelled when they become too close, this is your ideal signature fragrance. $325 for 50 ml Eau de Parfum, $125 for the body crème, $95 for the scented candle, specially formulated to burn with a steel-blue flame.

Then by Marron, E.

Legendary war correspondent-turned-iconoclast "Nose" for many Parisian perfume houses, Eleni Marron, announced today that she is launching her own perfumery, Marron, E., with a new fragrance called Then. Marron describes Then as "the essence of a poet's nostalgia, the homesickness for a home to which one cannot return, a home which no longer exists, or perhaps never existed..."

Then, an original fragrance by Marron, E., recreates the multileveled exploration of a long-abandoned sunken garden "somewhere in Europe". Notes of freshly ironed linen, wood hyacinth, lichen-covered stone, and birch bark give way to the lushness of wild thyme, fraises de bois, and shadowed ferns, "all bound by the thinnest bracelet of vetiver". Eleni Marron, the creator of this heartbreakingly lovely perfume, invites you to descend the ancient stone staircase, into Then.

Heaven sings to the dandelion by Droplets of Ecstacy

Droplets of Ecstacy

At 16 years, Gerhardt Entshuldigung – a prodigy of exquisite taste - escaped the noisy call of the great perfume mansions of Paris to voyage alone through The Orient. Drowning himself in the eternal truths of isolated ceremonies, he - alone among occidentals - uncovered the secret of composting scent that inebriates the being and explodes the soul. DoE bring Gerhardt’s doings to you.

Introducing our first scent:

Heaven sings to the dandelion

Stung to madness by the light of stars, roses tremble, aching to be seduced. Husked Amber caresses with honey-dipped fingers, but it is Sandalwood, striding into the Garden in all his bronzed perfection, who calms the petals and entices them to the depths. Be still, he murmurs. J’arrive.

Tant Pis Eau Légère Eté 2008 avec Mango Version 6 by Le House of Pain Blanc et Mal de Tête Biolabs

Produced in limited numbers and barely available to a privileged few, Le House of Pain Blanc et Mal de Tête Biolabs is proud to present a new line of perfumes, starting with the enchanting Tant Pis Eau Légère Eté 2008 avec Mango Version 6. Our search for world peace and personal prosperity led to the creation of this perfume for the woman of today who is audacious enough to know exactly what gender she is, and yet sober enough to remember she forgot her skirt. To be permitted to adopt our perfume have your lawyers contact us with a chart of your ancestry showing all inherited titles and your place in the Peerage, along with a certified cheque.

Glittering shreds of platinum credit cards swirl like spiritual enlightenment on the path to rehab through our debutant perfume, Tant Pis Eau Légère Eté III avec Mango Version 6. The elite top notes feature a special blend of unscented hothouse flowers with a faux English accent of tender baby mango along with some other fruits that no one ever actually eats. Le bourgeoisie tone of the middle notes is created from our patented molecules of SUV gasoline fumes, plastic patio furniture, and plug-in room deodorants, all resting solidly on a musk base of sweat meticulously collected from real working members of le proletariat. Wear it and feel...affected!

Cauli's Flower by Green Goddess

Designer Bella Ruse, recently discharged by Dulco-Luxe International, has coupled with perfumer Cole Stanislaw and mustered a collection under the Green Goddess label: Cabbage Rose, Cabbage Patchouli, and their premiere fragrance, Cauli's Flower.

Cauli's Flower

From the mists of pestilent Greece erupts the legend of Cruciferous, a god bedeviled by the aromas socialized in the folds and pleats of vestal Cauli's gossamer gown. Wanting only to drink in the vapors issuing from the maiden's alabaster raiment, Cruciferous dispossesses himself of his other sensory faculties. Now you can relive this crippling milieu with the man in your life as you baste in Cauli's buttery veil. Within minutes its clarified piety succumbs to the spicy stippling of hoary pepper and the percolating delinquency of rosacea paprika as the spices insinuate themselves and gambol to the crux of Cauli's lily-white floret. A facsimile of Cruciferous and his virgin, showing the god's gasping, eyeless face, traumatized by estrus and listing against Cauli's rumpled skirt, festoons the opaque, hobnail, milk glass bottle, which is arrested within a fiercely convoluted Carrara marble base.

Your pick?