i'll be in new york for thanksgiving, and i'm going to need to spend a little time with perfumes. i think the frederic malle store is going to be a must. anyone have any other advice? last year i went to aedes de venustas, which was a'ight. it was too jumbly. i crave something more well edited. i need, like, the library of congress rather than harold bloom's study. bergdorf? barneys? bendel? saks? or just frederic malle and that's it?

check it out

confession:

i have a hard time remembering what perfumes smell like when they're not right under my nose. most of the time.

there is a guerlain shop here in toronto, so you'd better believe i went there the other day to close some serious and embarrassing gaps in my perfume knowledge. tried these: jicky, l'heure bleue, and chant d'aromes. the jicky dry-down was soooo surprising and modern; it is exactly like something you'd see coming out of some crazy plastic bottle marketed to tweens, only obviously genius and perfect. it's absolutely sweet, woody vanilla in the dry-down--it's bulgari black with no rubber. i love it.

my favorite smell right now is the apple sauce simmering on my stove. hmm... apple notes in perfume? time for some research...

today

today I wore chanel no.5. it's my "go-to" perfume these days for some reason. I love the way it smells right after the aldehydes all burn out... it's so soft. for Christmas, I think I'm going to buy myself the real parfum. yay!

um, the sephoras in jcpenney's have the fracas parfum on sale for 20 bucks. you should run to the store and buy it. it is amazing and the parfum is much more wearable than you might expect. floral and meaty. yum.


xo-
mp

p.s. the boy loves bandit. what could be better? I ask you.

please comment, readers

people use fragrance for different purposes, or encounter fragrance in different ways. here are a few ways of using fragrance i could think of:

-to be perceived in a certain way (sexy, clean, trendy, innocent, edgy, scary, intimidating, fashionable, a hippie)
-to perceive oneself in a certain way (see above)
-to trigger or express an emotion or physical sensation, in oneself or in others (comfort, calm, vigor, all the aromatherapy cliches you can think of)
-to express an idea or maybe an era ("the 50s" or "aldehydes", "the ubiquity of technology and manufactured objects", "riding", "fashion has replaced religion", "commercial fragrance is disgusting")

we get a lot of information from smells, and we try very hard to communicate things with fragrance. we're more or less successful.

a woman in my church congregation growing up used to probably dip herself in buckets of eternity. she could literally be smelled entering the chapel. this was a powerful message: "i am here, i am important, you all notice me. the room is mine. it doesn't matter what you think of me; we'll worry about that later. but my presence registers with each person in this large room."

so, if anyone is reading this, please answer this question (triggered by marcilyn's comment):

what do you want fragrance to do for you? why do you wear fragrance? please add to my tiny list of reasons people wear fragrance.

i have a new place of residence in which i occupy a single room. in this room is a gigantic ikea expedit bookcase that creates a tiny bed area and then a less tiny living area. this is great because it creates cubbies that can each be devoted to different purposes, like bedside reading, school reading, guilty pleasure reading (i.e. magazines).

the best cubby is this one:



perfume collection! the incense collection is in the box beside it. it makes the whole room smell good.

right now, living in an entirely new apartment, city, country, familiar smells are crucial. the esteban pivoine incense is burning pretty much all day, the prada eau de parfum is worn all day. happy, autumnal smells.

i'm in toronto, finally a big city, and there are perfumes to be smelled here that were not found in utah. a few i've liked:

-one of the juliette has a gun ones, but i can't remember which. the submissive one, not the dominant one. they're roses, which should mean i like them, but i don't know. lancome mille et une roses is definitive for me.
-the tom ford purple patchouli is delicious and luscious; the cyprus one, not what i wanted it to be. i wanted it to be the fragrance i smelled on the hairy hipster sitting next to me at sundance in 2008, but this wasn't it.

new old smells

i moved to toronto, which is near where i grew up, and there are smells here that flatten me with recognition and, i have to admit, revulsion. ok not revulsion.

one smell in particular is exactly the smell of the day care i went to called chalmer's green tot lot.* "the tot lot." "time to go to the tot lot." one year when i thought i was too old to be going to the tot lot i believe i was given the impression that i wasn't one of the tots but was somehow working there, supervising the tots, on a voluntary basis. anyway that place had a very specific smell of some kind of cooking covered up with a limey cleaning product. the back of the house i live in now smells like that.

part of moving is always taking stock of one's possessions, and i wound up consolidating my perfume samples--there are a lot of them. enough that i could smell different every day for a few months. i sprayed myself with serge lutens un bois vanille to go out to dinner with a friend from childhood. the funny thing is that the heart of that perfume is cuminy and waxy like the tot lot smell. it felt good to smell like that walking through watery summer night air in this grubby city that is so much my home.

*canadians have a knack for giving all kinds of things, institutions, stores, businesses, bands, the stupidest possible names. names, furthermore, that emphasize the silliest sounds of the canadian accent. if you know a canadian with an accent, have them say "tot lot."

now i want to wear my prada all the time. it is perfect for my reinvention as a canadian graduate student. it smells like ambery dry leaves.

summer of love

I guess what you should try to be into for your summer of love is the world of perfumed lotions and body butters.

start with almond body butter from the body shop. on top of that it doesn't much matter what you wear because you're gonna smell awesome.

if you want another almond fragrance that's really nice or you just want to spend some more money, you could try the "supple skin" almond oil from L'Occitane.



it's not as heady as the Body Shop one, it's a bit greener and light all the time.

I can't remember if the Jo Malone perfume I like is sweet lime & cedar or if it's lime basil & mandarin. one of them. it smells like a modern version of bandit. (well, you know.)

I'm also obsessed with the Jo Malone orange blossom. so fresh and so clean clean. if you're from a citrus state... it will smell like home and you will probably cry 'cause you're a big cry baby.

lotion is an excellent way to wear scent right now. first, because lotions are usually cheaper than perfumes, and they tend to last longer on the skin. you know I want to work the phrase "in this economy?!" into this post. and now I have. also because the scent is totally dispersed over your entire body you don't have to worry about questions like, "where do I wear this perfume?" or "is there going to be a random icky smell somewhere?" because no! there is not going to be a random icky smell. all your places are going to have a good and delicious smell. unless the lotion you choose to wear is from Bath & Body Works or Vicky's Secret. I just can't help you with that. there's no accounting for taste, bitches. and if your taste is bad, no one can help you, not even Emily.

a good thing to do in the summer is to keep your lotions in the fridge. then when you put them on they will be nice and chilly. that will help you a lot if you find yourself living in a desert with no or crappy AC. you will be so cool and sweetly scented no one will be able to resist you. NO ONE! you are irresistible!

fragrance goals: update

bored at work, reading through our old posts (marsha, this is a pretty decent blog), and i came across a list from last year of perfumes i wanted to get. so let's check in:

-en passant body cream [not yet; this is a biggie. many $$. might have to switch to iris poudre]

-child perfume oil [this is also a major purchase, usually about a hundy.]

-donna karan black cashmere [check. scored this at a discount online. but need cdg avignon incense now; this is an addiciton.]

-white linen [not yet. one day.]

-bandit [might go the fracas route instead; also not yet.]

-cuir de russie [another big purchase that i have to time out a bit.]

-some light cologne; not sure which one [got eau d'hadrien, as i reported, but just the edt--wah-wah. i might have to go acqua di parma on this one, iris noble. but that throws off the frederic malle strategy. this is turning into a chess game...]

-more mille et une roses [got it. now i have two full bottles, which should last me some years. frugal spritzing.]


if you're reading this and you'd like to comment, you could respond with some of the fragrances you eventually want to make part of your collection. part of your world.

interested in perfume again

been reading some of our old posts today, and i found i had to spend my lunch hour at nordstrom (only place for perfume around here). some of my finds:

-chanel is retrenching!! no more cristalle at retail counters, only at chanel boutiques! that is the worst thing i've ever heard, but i suppose it was inevitable, the economy etc.

what i sprayed on myself:

-no. 5, after reading all marsha's posts about it. needed to be wearing it. it smells like everything.

-no. 19, which i only realized today, after wearing for ages, is so rosy. why didn't i notice that before? was it something i ate? i can't get away from rose, and i don't even try to fight it anymore.

oh no. 19, you are probably my one true love.

-creed chevrefeuille original, and chevrefeuille is honeysuckle (i always thought it was hydrangea). the least victoria's secret honeysuckle you could imagine. this smells like a salad, ergo i love it. this is a salad filled with green peppers and celery and it was left out on the counter overnight. in the drydown: cumin! basically identical to rochas femme at a certain point.

-creed vetiver, which i have no use for. i have dryer sheets for this.

to smell clean and well-groomed

we haven't written anything for a while--sorry to our follower. let's see if some random perfume experiences make up for it.

-i bought an eau d'hadrien eau de toilette because it was on sale at nordstrom rack. disappointing. i had been dreaming of it for so long, but the edt is soooo different from the eau de parfum. it's all lemon candy and no bracing cyprus. i really need a good eau de cologne scent. the other one i like right now is creed royal delight, which is not really cologney. not citrussy. it's almondy and shalimary.

tokyomilk ex libris is a good cologney choice; very crisp and upright and funkier than eau d'hadrien, which is sooo sweet and adorable. ex libris is more undeniable than adorable. and it's cheap!

-the other way to go would be to get an irissy, powdery job, like michelle's frederic malle iris poudre, which i sprayed on myself yesterday after i took a shower in her lovely and serene bathroom. it's so, so subtle. i couldn't smell it on myself even after i had sprayed it several times, and at the same time i couldn't not smell it. its smell registers on a subconscious level. it's the next day, and little wafts and suggestions of it are drifting around me. it seems like the kind of perfume that would change you into a different kind of person without your knowing it.

i've been wanting aqua di parma's iris noble ever since i smelled it at c.o. bigelow in n.y. and saw marisa tomei and her young actor boyfriend. what i really want is the soap; it feels wrong somehow to spray that powdery-clean smell on yourself rather than wash it into your skin or powder it on.

people in north america don't powder themselves anymore. we shower so often there's no need. and use crazy chemical deodorant.

-here's a development: esteban, makers of my favorite peony incense, are doing perfume. check it out here.

PATRIOTIC!

sometimes I make mistakes

(like for instance, dousing myself with costume national's scent intense! it smells like amber which smells like hippie sex) while at work.

xo-
mp

Dear Jesus

Please bless that I can have this:




YES!

Le Labo Sample Pack
by Luckyscent Sample Packs


The Scoop
The long awaited Le Labo sample pack, fetureing eleven Le Labo fragrances including the new Oud 27 and the highly celebrated Rose 31.

Rose 31
Oud 27
Ambrette 9
Bergamote 22
Patchouli 24
Iris 39
Vetiver 46
Labdanum 18
Fleur D'Oranger 27
Neroli 36
Jasmin 17

I'm not kidding, J-dog. SEND TO ME!!

xo-
mp

serge lutens miel de bois

this might be the one. smells like honey and wood. some white flowers, because that's what honey is made of, but the sweet honey smell blooms on the skin.

when i picked this one at aedes de venustas, the lady who works there said something like "that's interesting." she was trying to push fleurs d'oranger on me or chypre rouge, which is fine, but this thing is a real Smell.

what boys should smell like

not 1985, which is the smell of polo. not 1992, which is the smell of sportif. something either citrus-y or wood-y.

Thierry Mugler cologne. (your girlfriend can borrow it- natch.)




Terre de Hermes. (your boss now answers to you.)




j.k. bitches, these are just two I know and like.

all my love little smellies,
mp