There is a reason I am writing about odor and grooming in a blog about magic performance, and it is not because I enjoy writing about deodorant. It is because I once performed a close-up set at a corporate networking event in Linz after a long day of consulting work, a delayed train, and a rushed change in a venue bathroom — and I forgot to reapply deodorant.
Nobody said anything. Nobody ever says anything. That is precisely the problem.
The event went fine. The effects landed. The audience responded. I left feeling good about the performance. It was not until weeks later, reviewing my preparation checklist with a friend who had been in the audience, that the truth emerged. “You were great,” she said, “but I could tell you’d had a long day.” I pressed her on what she meant. She hesitated. Then she said, with the careful diplomacy that Austrians reserve for truly uncomfortable truths, “You smelled like you’d been traveling.”
I have never forgotten to pack deodorant since.
The Silent Deal-Breaker
Here is what no book on performance will tell you directly, because it is too awkward to print: personal hygiene failures are the number one thing that audiences notice and never mention. A bad trick, they might forgive. A stumbled line, they will not remember. But the performer who stands too close and smells of garlic, or the close-up magician whose hands are visibly unwashed, or the mentalist whose breath pushes the volunteer backward — these create an impression that no amount of skill can overcome.
Ken Weber, in Maximum Entertainment, discusses the concept of the audience forming an impression in the first moments of encountering a performer. That impression is holistic — it includes what they see, what they hear, and what they smell. We spend enormous effort on what audiences see and hear. We spend almost no effort on what they smell.
And yet smell is the most emotionally powerful sense. It is processed by the limbic system, the same part of the brain that handles emotion and memory. A negative olfactory experience creates a visceral, immediate, and lasting negative impression that rational appreciation of skill cannot override. You can be the most technically brilliant performer in the room. If you smell bad, the audience’s primary memory of you will be discomfort.
The Checklist
After the Linz incident, I developed a pre-show grooming checklist. It sounds absurdly basic. It is absurdly basic. And I follow it before every single performance without exception, because the consequences of skipping it are invisible to me and devastating to my audience.
Shower. This sounds obvious. It is obvious. But “I showered this morning” is not the same as “I am clean right now.” If you have traveled, if you have spent hours in a warm conference room, if you have eaten a meal, if you have done anything at all between your morning shower and your evening performance, you are not as fresh as you think you are. I shower as close to performance time as logistics allow. When a shower is not possible, a thorough wash in a venue bathroom — face, hands, underarms, neck — is the minimum.
Deodorant. Fresh application, not the residue from this morning. I carry a travel-size deodorant in my performance case, alongside my spare batteries and backup props. It lives there permanently. The placement is deliberate — when I open my case to set up, the deodorant is the first thing I see.
Breath. This is the big one for close-up performers and mentalists. When you are standing eighteen inches from a spectator, asking them to think of a card or concentrate on a thought, your breath is part of their experience. Coffee breath, garlic breath, alcohol breath — any of these will create a barrier between you and the person you are trying to connect with.
My solution is simple: I do not eat garlic, onions, or strongly spiced food on performance days. I brush my teeth before performing. I carry mints — not gum, because chewing gum on stage looks unprofessional, but mints that I can use discreetly before the set begins. And I avoid coffee in the hour before performance, because coffee breath is the most common and least noticed offender.
Hands. For close-up magicians, hands are the focal point of the audience’s visual attention. Dirty fingernails, rough skin, visible cuts or blemishes — all of these register consciously or unconsciously with spectators who are watching your hands from inches away. I wash my hands thoroughly before every close-up set. I use hand cream in dry weather to prevent cracked, flaky skin. I keep my nails trimmed and clean. This sounds like vanity. It is professionalism.
Hair. Whatever your style — short, long, bald, bearded — it should look intentional. Hair that looks like you just woke up communicates that you did not care enough to prepare. Hair that looks like you spent an hour in front of a mirror communicates something equally problematic. The goal is “put together without trying too hard.” I keep it simple: a quick check, a minor adjustment, done.
Clothing check. Collar straight. Buttons aligned. Shirt tucked. Shoes clean. No visible stains, wrinkles, or damage. I do this check in the venue bathroom mirror, under fluorescent light, which reveals every flaw. A thirty-second visual scan from collar to shoes catches problems that you cannot feel but the audience can see.
The Close-Up Performer’s Special Challenge
Stage performers have distance as a buffer. From thirty meters away, the audience cannot smell you, cannot see your fingernails, and cannot detect the coffee stain on your collar. Close-up performers have no such luxury. You are performing in someone’s personal space, handling objects that they will touch, standing close enough that every detail is visible and every scent is detectable.
This proximity creates an obligation that stage performers do not share. The close-up performer’s grooming must be impeccable not because vanity demands it, but because the performance distance demands it. Your hands will be examined. Your breath will be detected. Your clothing will be scrutinized from arm’s length.
I learned this through a mortifying experience early in my walk-around career. I was performing at a holiday party in Vienna, working table to table. Midway through the evening, I noticed that one table seemed reluctant to engage. They smiled politely, they watched the effects, but the energy was flat. I assumed the table was simply reserved — some groups are like that. It was not until I excused myself and visited the bathroom that I discovered a piece of spinach from the dinner that had been lodged visibly in my front teeth for what was probably the last thirty minutes.
Thirty minutes. Multiple tables. Multiple intimate interactions at close range. And not one person told me.
Why Nobody Tells You
This is the cruelest aspect of grooming failures: the social contract prevents people from mentioning them. Nobody will tell you that you smell. Nobody will mention the food in your teeth. Nobody will point out that your fly is down, that your shirt has a stain, that your hair is standing up at an odd angle. They will simply endure it, form a negative impression, and never book you again.
Weber’s emphasis on the audience’s first impression becomes terrifying in this context. The impression forms before you have performed a single effect. If that impression includes “this person’s grooming is off,” everything that follows is colored by that initial reaction. The audience may still enjoy the effects. They may still laugh and applaud. But the overall impression — the one that determines whether they recommend you, rebook you, or remember you positively — has been compromised by something you could have fixed in thirty seconds.
The solution is not to rely on others to tell you. The solution is systematic self-checking. The checklist. Every time. Without exception.
The Travel Performer’s Kit
Because I travel extensively for consulting work and perform at events across Austria and beyond, I maintain a travel grooming kit that lives permanently in my performance case. It never gets unpacked. It never gets borrowed. It exists solely for pre-show preparation.
The kit contains: travel deodorant, travel toothbrush and toothpaste, breath mints, hand cream, a small comb, a lint roller, a stain removal pen, and a small mirror. Total cost: about twenty euros. Total space: smaller than a deck of cards. Total impact on my professional presentation: incalculable.
The lint roller deserves special mention. Dark clothing — which most performers favor for its slimming and professional appearance — shows every speck of lint, dust, and pet hair. A quick pass with a lint roller before going on transforms a suit jacket from “slightly worn” to “pristine.” It takes ten seconds and the difference is visible from across the room.
The Larger Principle
All of this — the deodorant, the mints, the nail care, the lint roller — comes down to a principle that Scott Alexander emphasizes repeatedly: respect for your audience. Every element of your preparation communicates either “I cared enough to prepare for you” or “I did not think this was important enough to bother.”
The audience does not consciously evaluate your grooming. They do not sit there thinking “his nails are clean” or “she smells pleasant.” But they unconsciously register the overall impression: this person is professional, prepared, and respectful of my time and attention. Or: this person is sloppy, rushed, and does not seem to care.
Grooming is not about vanity. It is about the message you send before you open your mouth. It is about eliminating the barriers between your skill and your audience’s experience. It is about ensuring that nothing — not a smell, not a stain, not a piece of spinach — gets between the magic and the people you are performing it for.
The checklist sounds obvious. Follow it anyway. Because the day you skip it is the day nobody tells you that your show was great but you smelled like a delayed train from Linz.