Elon Musk’s perfume is now sold out. I’m Amy E. Feldman.
What’s surprising about the fact that Elon Musk manufactured perfume is not that he sold out of the 30,000 bottles of the scent he called “Burnt Hair”, or even that he missed a golden comedic opportunity to call it Musky Musk. It’s that people are buying the cologne he described as “the essence of repugnant desire” (ew) on eBay for up to a thousand dollars even though it’s not trademarked.
That’s because it can’t be. By law, the only scents that can be trademarked are those that serve a non-functional purpose, so Play-Doh was able to trademark its scent because it’s the ooey-gooeyness of the clay that makes it fun and impossible to get out of a carpet, not how it smells, but any three year old whose ever inhaled it knows the smell of Play-Doh, so manufacturers protected it from copycats. But since a perfume’s sole function is to smell, the law will not allow it to be trademarked. So you can make Burnt Hair yourself. Put away your money and pick up your curling iron.
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