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A personal scent bracelet for the fashionably adventurous

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One of the more fanciful notions to emerge from the Boston area’s tech scene in the past few years is the concept of scent-infused clothing, the brainchild of eclectic Harvard professor and entrepreneur David Edwards.

His latest company is Vapor Communications, based in Cambridge, which says it is “bringing scent into the contemporary conversation” through products infused wth natural and synthetic scent-emitting chemicals. Among its first offerings is an oBracelet (the “o” is for olfactory), which offers a way to wear a little scent-emitting sachet on your wrist during the day.

I paid $20 for the black oBracelet on April 20, shortly after the clothing items got a splash of publicity. Spring turned to summer; I nearly forgot about the whole thing until an e-mail arrived in early July from Don Zereski, a co-founder of Vapor Communications.

He said the bracelets were actually prototypes, and would be re-launched in the fall in a more final form. He offered a refund with interest, or to keep me in line for the finished product while shipping a couple of free test units. (The company is also producing a chocolate-scented women’s scarf, which becomes available next week.)

I opted to give the prototype bracelets a try, and they arrived promptly — but not before an ominous warning from Zereski: “Be careful with the black oChip. Some of them have shown signs of the scent oil melting the plastic that it comes in contact with over time.” Intrigued and somewhat terrified, I strapped the oBracelet onto my left wrist and went about my normal workday.

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I’ve always wanted to be the kind of person who could pull off a jaunty bracelet for daily wear, so catching the device out of the corner of my eye was kind of fun. As an adornment, its design was pleasing: a crisscross of leather held in place by a shiny silver knob, with the end jutting out at an angle. In the center is a plastic circle, about the size of a stack of dimes, that holds the scent packet.

The plastic housing on this prototype was hard to keep attached and the scent packet was a little too large for the case, prompting a bit of cramming before it could be worn. That left my fingertips coated with some of the clear, slightly slippery scent liquid, which I made sure to wash off before eating. If this stuff can melt plastic, I don’t want any on my tacos.

So, what’s it smell like? The oBracelet was being offered in two scents, Chocolate and Silence. Since I know what chocolates smell like, I ordered Silence, which was billed as “a fresh, wintry fragrance that is intended to help us be more sensitive to smell.”

I found the exact smell a little hard to place, but it did have a somewhat minty and astringent quality that still wasn’t like anything I’d encountered in nature. A colleague thought it smelled a little like household air freshener. When new, the packet — or oChip — was a bit intense, and I preferred the effect when it had worn off a bit.

The takeaway: The scent was not really for me, and kind of strong and acrid when fresh out of the package. But the idea is fun, and a conversation starter. Only the more fashion-adventurous should give this a try for now.


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