There’s nothing I love more than a well-researched and well-executed fragrance/art/fashion collaboration…and there’s nothing that annoys me more than a collaboration that, well, isn’t very well-researched.

Case in point: a duo of fragrances produced by MCMC Fragrances in collaboration with “the design and branding agency FUZZCO.” The promotional copy for  these two scents, E.d’E. Black and E.d’E. Blue, reads:

“Subtle variations on a theme, this unisex perfume oil duo is inspired by the duality of light and dark depicted in Vermeer’s still life paintings of fruit.”

I happen to like several of MCMC’s perfumes very much, and I know nothing about FUZZCO so I have no preconceptions about it/them.

However, I do know this: Vermeer did not paint any still lifes of fruit.

Is someone thinking about the arrangements of fruit that appear as details in several interior scenes by Vermeer?

Or are they thinking of still life paintings by another seventeenth-century Netherlandish master?

Or are they thinking of some other Baroque painter, like the Spanish artist Francisco de Zurbarán?

I don’t understand what’s going on here. In any case, this misfire has made me lose any possible interest in trying the fragrances themselves.