Elon Musk turns perfume salesman with Burnt Hair. Everything you need to know about the $100 fragrance

Tesla head honcho and controversial billionaire Elon Musk changed his Twitter bio to “perfume salesman”, announcing the launch of his new fragrance named Burnt Hair. With the tech entrepreneur calling it the “finest fragrance on Earth”, Burnt Hair appears in a red bottle priced at around $100. 

The marketing of Burnt Hair: The perfume has been launched via Musk’s The Boring Company. While the company is usually involved in developing underground tunnels, he also uses TBC as a front for selling items such as a limited-edition flamethrower, “Tesla Tequila”, satin underwear, and now Burnt Hair. The company’s website describes its scent as “the essence of repugnant desire”!

The font and look of it all wouldn’t be the most aesthetically-original for observers but going by Musk’s previous surprise drops, the essence of Burnt Hair is its deliberate flashiness and the power of Elon Musk’s name as a brand of his own. 

Even the product description is as deliberately showy and loud as possible,

Musk’s tweets also describe the perfume as an “omnigender product” and add that one can even “pay with Doge [the cryptocurrency Dogecoin]”!

How are people reacting? 2022 has been a turbulent year for Elon Musk given the sexual harassment allegations against him and friendship rumours with Vladimir Putin. But with his Twitter antics, he has successfully managed to distract people away from such issues (at least going by the Twitter reactions). 

Naturally, a barrage of satirical tweets have been unleashed ever since Musk announced Burnt Hair’s launch on Twitter. Some are remarking on how the general absurdity of the product shows good salesmanship on Musk’s part and gets people talking. Others are complaining about the $35 packaging and delivery charges that go along with the $100 perfume. 

Other weird celebrity fragrances: Celebrities launching their own fragrances is quite an interesting and often-times absurd pop culture phenomenon. While actors Bruce Willis and Antonio Banderas, musician Prince, the band KISS, and even novelist Danielle Steele have been at the forefront of launching their own perfume lines with conventional fragrances, there have been some absurd smells associated with celebs.

For instance, novelist and comic book writer Neil Gaiman (whose The Sandman got adapted into a recent Netflix series) launched nine perfume lines in 2007 with fragrances such as "Lemon Scented Sticky Bat", "Robotic Scarab", and "Blood Kiss". Each perfumed bottle came with its own mythical excerpt penned by Gaiman himself. Signing a deal with perfume company Coty, popstar and fashion icon Lady Gaga launched her fragrance in 2013 that was marketed as the smell of "blood sweat and semen"!

Sometimes, the standout feature might not even be the smell but the packaging. Senegalese-American singer Akon is a case in point as his Konvict line of perfumes (named so after his record label Konvict Muzik) were packaged in two handcuff-shaped bottles tied together. 

Coming back to Burnt Hair, Musk claims that 10,000 bottles have already been sold! Do you think it is a good marketing strategy for Musk or just a prank that needs to be ignored?