I went back to my old gucci II for summer

mmm. it's smells so crispy and fresh. like a juicy juicy mango grass.

today i tried white linen from estee lauder and i think i really like it. it's very fruity and clean; i think those fruity notes (melons and peaches) are what they kind of took out for the pure white linen, which i like but is drier. it's a sweet smell, in many senses of the word. i was really liking it, it was seeming like a prototype for all the fruity-sweet fragrances from lately, and then suddenly my brain made the connection of where i'd smelled it before: on preppy white ladies in the late 70s and early 80s. but that's a good association. it smells like someone who is well taken care of, all tanned and nourished and wearing immaculately laundered clothes, either a caftan or tennis whites.

what i have on my other arm is chanel cristalle, and wow it's good. it reminds me of this lancome aroma tonic body oil that i've had forever and that smells green and like rain, vegetal, only this is so sophisticated. what is it that makes chanel perfumes so sophisticated, marsha? aldehydes? it's so balanced. there's always a bitterness at the bottom of a chanel fragrance that i love. and this one has a nice mineral tang. but while i was smelling it there kept being this honey note kind of rising up every once in a while. different facets of a crystal.

here is a complaint: salespeople at nordstrom! just leave me alone! yes, i have smelled hanae mori. geez. who hasn't. and i want to just take my time with the climat and the sikkim and i don't need to smell hypnose again and you don't even know about peut-etre and you're only 18 and just leave me alone! grr. there's one guy at the fragrance counter who i think kind of knows some things. it's not like i'm luca turin or even chandler burr, but give me a little credit.

perfumeries in france are so amazing because the women who work in them actually know what they're talking about. that's probably too much to ask for in provo, utah.

fragrance wars!

I would love a movie called fragrance wars where perfumers were fighting it out to come up with the best most amazing perfume that ever lived! It would include romantic interludes and fight scenes (lab techs smashing bottles of expensive perfumery materials in each others faces) and explosions! lots of explosions! each scene would be accompanied by the appropriate scents pumped through the ventilation system at the theatre! everyone would leave with a massive headache! and no one could eat for a week!

c'mon! that's never gonna happen.

but a perfume war that does happen every day is one that happens in my mind. it is the war between the signature scent faction and the perfume wardrobe faction.

this war started a few weeks ago when I was just thinking about it like I normally do (think think think) and then K-tron was all like, "I want to find a signature scent." which initially pissed me off. I'm sorry! but that was my response! I don't even like the idea of a signature scent because to me it expects too much of one fragrance. this magic formula fragrance is supposed to be all things to all people at all times? it's supposed to smell just as good at the gun range as during a romantic interlude? and do you really want your beau to associate the gun range with your romantic interludes? I think not.

personally I prefer a range of scents. a wardrobe of concoctions to add romance and glamour to my work-a-day existence. but then I thought... that is me. it is like shoes... some people would like a range of shoe options to choose from, some for painting the house, some for gardening, some for show-going, some for expensive rendezvous. what have you. other people would prefer to wear their chuck taylor's to each and every one of these events. and they would feel perfectly comfortable doing just that. not my way, but maybe it is yours. I don't know.

I think at least have a winter and summer option for your signature scent. give the people something to wonder about. that is my thought.

if I were to have a signature scent for summer it would be diorella, all crisp and sunshiny. if I were to have a signature scent for winter it would be bulgari black, sweet and warm and a little tough.

I hope that helps.

just some stuff in perfumes this week

1. I wore my bulgari black again yesterday and was so happy.

2. I wanted Diorella so bad!

3. my lustful longing for Eau des Mervailles is getting slightly less.

4. I want Dzing! before they discontinue it.

5. finally got perfumes the guide by luca turin and tania sanchez.

6. been reading up on my perfumes.

7. went to anthropologie and sprayed the stinkiest thing ever on me, (it smelled like hot wet stripper in a cocoon of candyfloss). Was asking the jake-inator which ones he liked and he said, "I don't really care what a person smells like," (eyebrow raise from me) "as long as they don't stink." I thought about this for a long time and decided he got the wrong end of the stick as far as perfumes go. not asking what he's attracted to, asking what he liked. whole different ball game.

8. been wearing the lovely sjp body lotion every day and in love with that scent again. (I found a huge bottle at T.J. Maxx for $12, thanks Erin!) I just can't wear the little bottle due to fragrance.net being such hideous a-holes.9. my good is comin' to me!

10. money comes to me easily and I get to have all the dreamy perfumes I want now!

guess what's happening now...

with the paprika brasil: the flower is back and it's iris! this stuff is so good i want to bite my own arm and swear. thanks marsha!!!

i only love spicy perfumes

marsha is a doll and she brought me a couple of hermes samples from her hawaiian vacash. it's saturday night and since i don't go out anymore and i'm in for the night i think i'll try them out and see what happens. here is the procedure: i apply the perfume and write my response--in real time! hold onto your hats.

i'm still learning about perfume, but i would guess that these would both be classified as gourmand fragrances, because they smell like food.

brin de reglisse: this is so dry and lavender at first, but almost immediately it becomes earthy and full of fennel, like i dipped my arm in a salad. the name means strand of licorice. there's only a tiny bit of sweet in it so it's way more fennel or caraway than licorice candy. you can really only whiff it from very close. it's starting to turn into something sweeter and mellower now. it's rounding way out, man. maybe i'll check in on it in a while.

paprika brasil: wow, this one is hot. like it burned the inside of my nose. good hurt. sandalwood and cedar! some flower i don't know enough to identify! (marsha would know it) maybe gardenia? chunks of sandalwood and whole gardenias floating in a red spicy sauce. spicy floral, thy name is paprika brasil. i will wear this if i ever go salsa dancing (which i can't imagine ever doing) or if i become a nun (somewhat more likely), because there's incense in there. i'm sister magdala, working in the refectory all day and taking spicy stews to the street children. ok, the flower is gone now. now it's just me and the precious woods and the spices. this is right up my alley.

the reglisse is candy now, 15 minutes later. i'm not sure i can use that. i wish it had stayed with the salad smell--digging up the tulips your husband's first wife planted and throwing them in the compost heap on top of some old lettuce. now it's very, very warm. amber?

marsha, here's an interesting thing: put these two together and there's something like rochas femme. warm skin scent with spice and cumin folded in.

p.s. i can only smell out of my right nostril right now!

p.p.s. this paprika--yesssssssssssss. a man should wear this. in his armpits.

I'm a huge nerd

and here is the reason why... I have been lust lusting for bulgari black for a couple of months now. It's literally been all that I think about. then I finally got it and wore it for about a week and it really was exactly what I always wanted and satisfying and I walked around in a dreamy cloud of perfume fragrances for that long. then one day...

I picked up my little sample of Eau des Merveilles by Hermes. which I got two years ago in London when I bought my scarf and I hated it. hated. it. but something in me was like, "let's give it a try".

I have not stopped wearing it since. at first I couldn't get enough of it, it was warm, it was woody, it was a little bit masculine, but just feminine enough. lesbians luuuv it. (yikes!) people complimented me on it right and left. just a whiff made my day bearable. I was very liberal with it. then I noticed I was running out... without ways or means to acquire a new bottle. or even a new sample... omg!! it's literally again all I've been thinking about. I'm now to the point that I dole out a tiny drop on each wrist every night and maybe one on the back of my neck but that is it. I'm actually afraid to try an American sample because I've noticed lately that the perfumes I get in Europe actually smell quite different from their American counterparts and what if I can't get any more of this juice for another 10 years, what then?

the thing about Eau des Merveilles is that it sneaks up on you. almost all of the other fragrance reviews that I've read say the same thing... at first they didn't like it, then suddenly they could barely live without it. In response to Emily's query below... I think maybe it's a scent that was a little before it's time... or maybe just timeless enough. I think it could really be an undiscovered classic.

so here's my question: are there fragrances that are older and maybe dated but that still work? marsha and i were talking earlier today about americans' tastes in fragrance and their fragrance habits, and i think it boils down to fads, not fashions, here and wanting to smell clean and freshly scrubbed. disinfected, and maybe a little fruit or flower on top. no hint of the smell of a living organism.

so what happens is that certain fragrances become so ubiquitous because they come to signal "clean" and "just-showered" and "up on the trends." we can all think of a host of these: clinique happy is sort of the ultimate, but there was ckone, that hideous bath and body works pear glace (or was that victoria's secret? it doesn't matter), maybe obsession for a while in the 80s.

come to think of it, here's another question: why can't i really come up with more of these zeitgeist fragrances going back before happy? is it because i was too young to be aware of perfume? only knew about perfumes marketed to girls? or is it because we approach perfume differently in the post-ckone world? is the heavily marketed and boring perfume a new invention?

it's probably some combination of those things. but there was charlie, after all, and jean nate, before there was happy. and there was benetton and love's baby soft. and chloe. and anais-anais. ok, never mind.

my point: mass-marketed, dated perfumes that nonetheless are good and can still be worn. this kind of grows out of the old lady smell thing, because i was wondering if there are smells that our granddaughters will smell on us and just think are the odor of decrepitude. are future generations going to associate pear glace with nursing homes? or are there smells that are pleasing to all and sundry? that haven't lost their goodness, even if they've lost their popularity, because they were pretty good to begin with? and what perfumes smell just so 80s that you can't really like them at all? do you have perfumes from your youth that were just it at the time but that now you can tell are not good?

marc jacobs was sort of thinking this kind of thing with his body splashes, kind of a return to jean nate. if i were a really dedicated perfume blogger i would answer these questions for myself, go through my collection and see what's up. maybe in a later post.