Did anyone catch the "sniffing" segment on TODAY around 8:45 A.M. or so with Chandler Burr trying to pick fragrances for Meredith & Matt.

The comments were hilarious!!!

Miss Dior was "too flowery," according to Matt, but he really liked Clinique Happy for Men.

Mugler Cologne was like a "skin bracer" smell you put on your face, Matt said. And Meredith admited to getting her favorite, Jean Nate, at CVS.

There was an Hermes fragrance that Matt found, "okay," as well, and then Meredith said, "this smells like your armpit!"

Matt said, "How would you know," to which Meredith replied, "Because I site next to you each day." hahahaha!

Matt also made reference to getting the smell of Old Spice out of a sweater!

The funny thing about this entire segment was when Matt said the Hermes was nice after Chandler bombed on all the others he suggested for Matt, Chandler immediately said, "I thought this would be your favorite!"

Matt then said... "You are so full of it... because if it was you would have given it to me first."

hahaha!!!

In the end, Matt actually wound up saying something like, "I'm not smelling anymore... I'm about ready to throw up or pass out."

The whole segment was rather haphazard, and Chandler really didn't make an impression that I think he planned on or that the show WANTED.

Did anyone else catch this???

Oh I wish I had! Sounds like it would have been a kick to see.

Oh, drat! I'm at work and I missed it too. Maybe YouTube will have it? It sounds like great good fun.

Yes, I saw it his morning. Meredith kept harping thatJean Nate from CVS drug store was what she liked best.

This could have been a much better segment for Chandler as neither Matt or Meredith like whatever they sampled.

I'm sorry I missed this. It almost sounds like a Mad TV skit.

Wonder if it will help boost Jean Nate sales?

Oh, that's hilarious.



Matt & Meredith had to preserve their "Everyman" status by not appearing to be "precious" or "aesthetes".... so they made "dumb brute" remarks on purpose.



Yet you just know both M&M have to have some really expensive, fine-smelling stuff at home on their respective dressing-tables!

The frags presented were:

For men, Thierry Mugler Cologne, TDC Sel De Vetiver, Hermes Un Jardin En Mediterrannee, and Happy men's.
For women: Miss Dior, Joy, Paris, Ambre De Venezia, Ford's Black Orchid, and Lipstick Rose.

(thanks to MUA).


Now you know what NOT to wear if you want to garner compliments from plebeians, LOL (tongue in cheek, don't know them)
Notice that they are all niche(or bordeline wannabe ones) or classics
(except for Happy men and Mugler Cologne)

I didn't see it but I have a hard time believing Jean Nate is her absolutely favorite. I like it, too, but ...

I'll be looking for it on YouTube.

Jean Nate is indeed pretty good stuff. Seems unlikely that she would settle with that with so many options but then...why would she harp about it so much?

The other thing I noticed, was that Chandler Burr's speach is a bit "mumbled." He talked as if he had marbles in his mouth at some points.

The segment was rather haphazard as I said. I was quite shocked to hear Matt even say, "throw up" or "pass out."

I would gather, though, that under the very warm conditions of the TODAY show set, that it might get a bit "much" with all those scents filling the air.

Also, Miss Dior was described by Chandler as, "animalic," which I sort of agree with, but there are many other fragrances out there that fit the bill more than Miss Dior. Miss Dior, to me, is a VERY beautiful fragrance.

What I like about Miss Dior is that I find it can be a very "lux" fragrance, but also very Bohemian.

Miss Dior is a naughty debutante. That depiction is not mine, originally, but I do completely agree with it.

Exactly, rasputin! I don't believe the Jean Naté thing for a minute!

Just now caught the segment on the west coast. What caught my eye was the body language of Matt & Meredith. They both kept backing away from the table where the bottles stood. Sometimes they backed up so far the cameramen had to move the cameras to follow them. Then they would step back into range for another sniff go-round. Then another back-up.

Meredith all but held her nose most of the time, and the face she made each time she took a sniff sent the message, "You're not going to get me to say I like any of these!"

Chandler did mumble; I had to turn up the volume to hear him.

You would think he would have found out ahead of time what fragrances they already wear and bring ones that were at least in the ball park. Did he mention that you have to wait for the drydown with the ones he brought ? If it were me, I would have brought fragrances that are wonderful in the top notes for such a session.

He should've brought something citrus. Some people truly don't like the smell of "perfume" (I think it can be an acquired taste), but if she does like Jean Nate, she might've liked something lemony.

Otherwise, I wonder why she was so dead set against all of them? Or maybe it was Chandler who drove her nuts. I have no idea what he's like now, but years ago he was a very hyper, in-your-face kind of guy.

I think if Burr bombed, it's fitting. He it trying too hard to be some sort of mainstream perfume expert and it really seems like a bit of a sellout to me.

I saw it and was amazed that they just blew him off. They ignored him and seemed to be in their own little world! I felt sorry for him. AND WHY WOULD HE HAVE THEM TEST LIPSTICK ROSE????

The segment was a complete waste I thought!



Jeffery, They had no idea of waht he meant when he said "animalic", did you notice?

It was a complete waste, I totally agree. In fact, it would make people NOT want to try fragrance based on the reactions of Meredith and Matt.

Plus, the whole segment started out with celebrity fragrances, and then moved into Chandler and his "ideas."

The only GOOD thing about this segment is they didn't bring out a bottle of Unforgivable!

That would have made me cut the cord from the television!

Another thing that surprised me is that Matt ACTUALLY liked Clinique Happy. Most men find it to be a bowl of sour fruit. I happen to really, really like it. And Matt, admitting to not wearing fragrance, surprised me with the Happy thing.

Although, I can see what Chandler was trying to do with the Mugler Cologne thing... the "anti-cologne" for both men and women.

Nonetheless, the entire segment really was a wash, and for the industry as a whole, that's not good!

I watched this show in Australia this morning and I actually thought Chandler Burr was very patient with two people who are not normally interested in perfumes at all.

He was very gracious with 2 people wanting to obviously race through the segment because they weren't interested, and were more interested in talking to each other.

As for Chandler's voice being muffled? He was RUSHED. Finally a subject of my interest on the show and the 2 people being interviewed are not normally perfume lovers.

I thought Matt and Meredith bombed with their 'indifference' attitude from the start, not Chandler. I found it quite disrespectful.

Hope to be able to see it, based on your description.

Having had some experience doing perfume segments on our morning show with a female host who doesn't give a flip about perfume, I can imagine it was hard for him to keep the two of them on track - especially if neither of them cares about scent.

Hosts seem to feel the need to say "clever" things and always seem to get things garbled (you can tell them over and over what you're gonna do, and then once it's live, all the planning gets tossed out the window). As the guest, you have to decide how much "correcting" of the host you want to do, and how much information you want to convey to viewers. It can be hard. And he's a print guy, not an electronic media guy. Maybe they should've had him practice at a local station first, though... based on your description.

Living in France, I don't even know who these M&M people are, but the story makes me cringe. Television can be, and often is, a very disrespectful media...

I don't know Chandler Burr, though I've read and enjoyed his Emperor of Scent, but as a journalist who's occasionally been on TV, I know how stressful and unbalancing it can be to be faced with presenters who don't care much about your subject and just want to play to the public. It takes some amount of experience and savvy to come across well in such a situation.

Perhaps it wasn't the ideal setting for someone like Burr who probably isn't a very mainstream person, but the least M&M could've done is to be gracious hosts -- after all, they *did* invite him.

Few of us would be able to give so many fragrances (10?) a fair evaluation in so short a time.

Let's hope Jean Nate is a "gateway" fragrance.

I agree with most of what you say, Jeffrey, especially the last sentence. Really turned out to mock and disparage perfume, which wasn't CB's intent at all, I'm sure. Does the NYT have a tie-in with the Today show? That's the only place he appears.

A "gateway" fragrance... I love that, INFP! I think I'll enter that into the URBAN DICTIONARY, online... familiar with it? They accept new words and phrases which have been coined, or have become significant, with modern, branché folks.





Signed, DAVE (also an INFP)

Not so branche that I didn't have to look it up in the French slang dictionary.

Glad to meet a fellow INFP.

Signed,
Margi (AKA INFP)

Ah. yes, it may be hard to believe, but Meredith had mentioned one day when she was still on "The View" that Jean Nate is her favorite fragrance, and also said it was easy to find at any drugstore. I have never heard Matt Lauer mention any favorite fragrance, but I recall Al Roker one day mentioning men's Fahrenheit for himself. Let's face it, neither Meredith or Matt is "a nose". Fragrance is not one of either's burning concerns. Too bad someone wasn't available who could have brought out the best in a Chandler Burr segment. I can see how, if Meredith's favorite is "Jean Nate" that she may not have liked any of Burr's recommendations, as their notes don't resemble the lemony Nate at all. Maybe Matt really doesn't like fragrance--there are those who don't.

I have seen segments on other shows ruined when the hosts made light of them. If nothing else, this illustrates how much of what we see on tv may be slanted when hosts present it with a heavy dose of their own personal opinions or their indifference--maybe it doesn't matter too much if the segment is on fragrance, but it may matter a great deal on other subjects!!!

I'm sorry I missed the segment, but I would've probably felt very frustrated if Burr wasn't appropriately presented.

Fragrance is not important to some, some may consider it "frivolous" and it is not a "necessity"--however it can add some brightness to one's life (with apologies to those of us who do consider it a necessity!!!). It is an "accessory", and I happen to believe, whether high-end or low-end in price, it can add some fun to life.

A P.S. to my post--I do like Jean Nate and have worn it in the past!

I have the big splash bottle of Jean Nate, and the lotion, and the powder. Love the stuff, and sometimes nothing else will do. But I've been wearing it since I was 12 and it was all I was allowed to wear. "Gateway" is right; you could also say "unevolved."

I haven't seen the segment but it seems a real shame that Chandler Burr was disrespected. Hard to believe he mumbled, too, because when I've heard him speak, he had absolutely perfect diction.

Pearls before swine, I say.

Didn't see it but what can you expect from no-nothings like M&M.....plus I agree with Rasputin, they probably have some good stuff at home on there vanities that they probably wouldn't dare say they own. Excuse me, it's not like they are poor folks w/no cash to burn holes in their pockets. Paleeeeeeeeeeeeeze!

I'm glad I missed it.

Sometimes when people are ignorant about a subject they don't want to be shown up and, in order to save face, they mock the subject to show they're superior to it. It sounds from what those who saw the show are saying that this could have been the case. I hate to see perfume get a bad rap. Thanks for trying, Chandler!

I don't think he tried hard enough, though.

Perhaps his "medium" isn't television, and is best fit for print.

As mentioned before, why would he use the term "animalic," to a buch of "common folk," like Matt and Meredith?

We have to take into consideration that if Matt and Meredith are playing it up to sound like a "common person," then Chandler should have tried to explain things better in the time given, which was very short.

As fragrance devotees, it's so easy for us to get wrapped up in our terminology... animalic, sillage, top/base notes, unisex, etc.

Let's face it, when people hear all those terms quickly, they INSTANTLY get turned off. I believe he referred to Mugler Cologne as a "unisex" fragrance. He should have simply said, "Here's one that was made to appeal to both the ladies and the gents, and it's nice... it's light, fresh, soapy."

He should have used terms that sales associates use to lure in customers at the counters, because that was his audience this morning, not fragrance hounds like us.

And there's no one here who would deny that we need MORE people who are interested in fragrance to support the industry if we, as devotees, want these companies to keep providing us with new and interesting things.

There's always room for a new fragrance guru to join our little world of passion, but after the segment today, I think it did more harm than good, and all three of them were equally to blame.

Wisely said, Fiveoaks!

Jeffery, I agree that more could have been accomplished with more common terminology. Sometimes it is hard for experts in a field to explain their subject in a manner which those not familiar with their specialty can understand--then you just "lose" people.

Yes, I can remember my friend Eugenia and I trying to teach our 9th-grade gym class the csardas... LOL

Ditto, ditto...but don't you think almost everyone at least knows what the word unisex means?

And maybe he was hoping they would ask what it meant, so he could have a chance to talk about it.

Fulltilt, I like Jean Nate. I didn't mean to offend anyone with my remarks about it.

It's a model of not-too-sweet citrus, carrying on a long tradition of lemony bath splashes, Turkish or otherwise.

I gave my sister some last month, and would use it myself if I owned more hesperidics. I just would get really depressed if it were the only fragrance I owned.

The video clip can be seen on the msnbc website which I will try to reference here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032633/?ta=y

It's listed under the section for the Today show, entitled "Smell sweet this holiday season"

Thanks for the clip! Poor Chandler was hard to understand...

Regarding terminology, I think words like 'unisex' 'heart notes' and 'animalic' are the kind of thing that sucks you in! It's interesting rather than being pablum, advertisement fare.

The one thing that has sucked me into new interests is listening to an expert and enthusiast talk about it in their own language. It makes me realise there is a whole world I could dip into.

Okay I just watched it.. and there is NO WAY I would ever smell that many things, especially that many powerhouse scents in such a short time. Yuck!! He was shoving one under their nose every 10 seconds!

At that time of the morning, probably powered up on adrenaline and coffee, well.. I wouldn't want to smell all those either.

Thanks for the link. Chandler came across quite charming, I thought, and handled himself well. Even oldsters like Meredith and Matt (both older than me, haha) have bought into the whole "It's light--I like it" thing. We're all alone in the world here, folks.....

I don't usually watch the show, so I don't know what Meredith is usually like, but I thought she was downright rude in this clip. She might not like the scents, and perhaps Burr didn't choose the best ones for such an abbreviated sniffing, but she didn't even try to size them up, she just made that face every time and declared "No." She wasn't even exploring it as an idea or something her viewers might be interested in but instead seemed only interested in discrediting Burr.

I haven't seen the clip, but from the selections that Burr brought along with him...I do agree that he could have done better. In other words: it's TV, Chandler....hello....do your homework and bring at least one fragrance that you think they might like based on what you can gather about their tastes. M&M should have been more open-minded, and Burr could have loosened he attachment to making non-perfumistas appreciate complex scents. In the end, Burr loses since he's the one that needed to be "a hit".

I agree, altodiva, I thought Chandler was charming, and patient. I'm glad he didn't come across as a pushy sales person.

Apparently, those two are not perfume connoisseurs like us. Chandler seemed to handled himself quite well, professionally, but he kept spraying a lot of perfumes all at once and I guess all the scents got mixed together. That is why they kept saying, "no. don't like it." I am sure that the area where they were standing smelled very heady with the hot lights on, cameras and other hot electrical equipments that might be there.

Thanks so much 3eme, for the clip! The time was too short to cover all those diverse perfumes so he started out at a disadvantage and the interview structure (standing up, on top of it!) was totally inappropriate for testing perfume.

However, the worst thing IMHO is by smelling the strips immediately they would be getting mostly a big blast of alcohol. No wonder they didn't like anything! You really need to wait a while before smelling a scent strip. I think Chandler did as well as he could and yes, he was gracious and patient in what must have been a highly frustrating situation.

Jeffery, I really wouldn't blame Chandler for what went wrong in that segment. They made fun of him and did not provide the proper venue for such a feature.

Maybe if he had brought scent strips that had been previously sprayed with the scents so they were already in the drydown stage they would have garnered a better response....

This is so true, scentual. If we sprayed all those perfumes at once in a store and smelled them immediately with everything in the air, just think of the clash!

Sounds like a good plan, Beatrice. I hope he is reading this so he can be prepared for adversity the next time.

I agree that Matt and Meredith were quite rude and ready to make sport of Chandler and actually seemed like 'fume-haters from the get-go. Did anyone catch Chandler's expression as he was being introduced? Not happy ... I think he knew what he was up against, poor guy. What a setup.

Meredith is a tomboy and not into glamour. Chandler needs to go to Good Morning America where girly girl Diane Sawyer would have loved everything! Chris Cuomo probably wears fragrance, too, being Italian. Every Italian man I've ever met wears fragrance.