Pheromone parties are absolutely of new-age

Love Can Be Blind, But May It Smell? Pheromone Party-goers Choose Dates Based On The Smell Of Their Old T-Shirts

The search for love in 2014 is more interesting than ever before. Gone are that days of meeting dates through a friend. Today we have Match.com, speed dating, and of course, the newest of the trend dating expenditures: pheromone parties. This is likely what you might gather: an event where singles are invited to find match based on how much they like their scent.

How can it work?

“It’s like a tiny bit of perfume and sweat, or just, like clean,” 23-year-old Steven Lucas explained while attending the pheromone party in London. Pheromone party has been around since 2010 year, with the first taking place in Brooklyn N.Y., but now it can be found wherever in the world. The latest location in the English capital had more than 140 guests surprisingly, with plenty more on the waiting list, reported the NY Daily News .

With its hip Camden market, home of all things shocking and underground, London isn’t new to trends of new age, which is very good, because pheromone parties are absolutely of new-age. Before the party, attendees are asked to wear their t-shirt for three days without perfumes or deodorant. This results in end product of completely genuine natural scent, chock-full of pheromones hopefully. The shirts are then placed into bags with numbers and strangers are invited to take a sniff and look at what they think.

The idea of human pheromones

The idea is based on the widely known but not exactly scientifically accepted concept of human pheromones. In the animal world, pheromones called airborne molecules elicit a sexual responce in members of the opposite sex, reported Smithsonian. Researchers have yet to find a human version of the sex scent, but “that does not mean a human pheromone does not exist. It just means we have not found one yet,” the representative of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, George Preti, told Smithsonian. Creator Judith Prays thought this concept of human chemical attraction would be a good way to sniff out a possible mate, and therefore the pheromone party appeared.

According to the parties’ site, the get-together “is primarily successful in that it opens up interesting and intimate conversations, and barriers are broken down to make strangers chatting comfortable.” Whether or not you can truly sniff your way to true love does not seem to be of all that much importance at these parties. Couples simply enjoy that alternative dating idea for meeting other young and single people. “It is such a weird concept. It is a huge ice-breaker because you’re smelling a stranger’s T-shirt — you cannot be pretentious or cool,” said Judy Nadel, organizer of the most recent London event.