Last week, I was perusing the interwebz for sale fabric and I stumbled across a small, unassuming little notification in an online shop that a collection of scented fabrics would be available soon.
Scented. Fabrics.
For a moment, I hoped I had read this in error and it really said sentient fabrics, because that would be less terrifying. But no. Scented fabric. Fabric imbued with some sort of alien stink technology that you can probably never wash out and which eventually infects every other fabric it touches with its invisible stench rays.
I honestly cannot imagine who thought this was a good idea. Probably somebody who has never been to a guild where half the membership wants the entire group to sign a pledge never to take a shower in the same bathroom where somebody has once stored a sealed container of Bath and Body Works shower gel within 2 weeks of attending a meeting. People are freaky about smells. Some people really do have reactions to perfumes and need to carry an Epi-pen at all times or they get migraines if exposed to certain smells, but lots of people just hate to smell anything they didn't cause.
And you just know the available smells are going to be pretty predictable: strawberry, lemon, grape, some sort of rosy flower, maybe cinnamon. Lavender. In the fabric collection I saw, there was a grey one and the name of it didn't indicate what the smell was supposed to be, so I'm hoping it's something like Storm Runoff or Dust Bunnies or That Chair That Grandpa Won't let Grandma Throw Out Because It Still Smells Like The Cigars He Used to Smoke Back In The Days When A Man Could Enjoy A Nice Stogie After Work Without Somebody Getting All Up In His Grill About Lung Cancer. Of course if you want that smell, just buy some fabric on eBay.
In fact, here are some of the smells I think they should offer:
• Salted caramel (because let's face it, that's just good business—every quilter on earth is apparently in some sort of intimate relationship with salted caramel. I have no idea if you can even smell the salted part, but I guarantee you no one will care.)
• Tom Hiddleston's neck
• And...no, that's it. That's all I got. Seriously, who thought this was a good idea?
And why stop with smell? Surely even now fabric scientists are hard at work developing a viable formula for flavored fabrics. And again, the offerings would probably be pretty obvious: strawberry, lemon, grape. Chocolate. The tears of one's enemies. I would buy a ton of taco flavored fabric just because I could, but only as long as it didn't smell. Smells are gross.
I bet what those little Howard Starks are actually keeping in the vault is acoustic fabric—fabric you can hear. Using a special type of nano-thread that can record several seconds of sound, the fabric stays perfectly silent until it is touched. Then it sends signals through the nervous system directly into the ear drum, so the fabric communicates directly with the consumer. Naturally, several companies would see this strictly as a marketing opportunity and embed ads in the fibers, but the truly enterprising would realize that this is the best way for quilters to listen to dirty audio books while sewing. Or if you could buy fabric with one word per color or print , you could create a quilt that sends a message as you run your hand over it, such as "Get your dirty, stinking mitts off my quilt, bitch."
Who knows what's next on the horizon, but scented fabrics are really a thing that is coming to invade your nostrils. I only wonder if somebody remembered to send them the deer memo?
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