LOCATION OF OPERATION: New York City
PRIMARY MISSION: To attend Sniffapalooza Spring Fling 2010 and address key representatives of the fumiverse.
Sat Apr 10 -- Primary Mission
Morning: The Sniffapalooza scene is in full swing when I arrive at Bergdorf Goodman’s basement beauty hall at around 10:30am. It's like some alternate universe key party, with glitter-eyed pleasure-seekers swapping perfumes instead of wives.
I’m on my own, and feel a little shy as I “excuse me” around the throngs of happy huffers crowding the counters. But as I make eye contact, and then small talk, and then instant connections with fellow perfume pilgrims, I realize I’m in a virtual village of “my kind of people”. All 140 of us.
In no time at all, I'm united with blog buddies melisand61 and Jake. Melisand61 had brought her teenage son, and teenage Jake his mom, but somehow they'd reconfigured into a whole new “fume family” by the time we meet.
Kind of like when wild gorillas adopt random young ‘uns. Or like that documentary where the zebra gets confused and becomes best friends with the hippo. Or like Disney’s The Incredible Journey where the lost cat and those two dogs band together to find their way home. Or...maybe just like two human beings, bonding over their love of perfume.
This is 16-year-old Jake’s first Sniffa, and while he’s wide-eyed, he certainly isn’t clueless. After all, it’s safe to say that Jake’s the only boy in America, and probably the entire world, wearing Caron Tabac Blond to high school.
Then I run into Laura, a charming connoisseur I’d met last year hunting and gathering at the Scent Bar when she was visiting from DC. She helpfully points out New York Times scent critic Chandler Burr chatting to fumies in a quiet corner, and I sidle over to introduce myself.
I’m excited to meet Chazzy B, since it was his books The Emperor of Scent and The Perfect Scent that had given me the final shove into full-blown perfume zealotry a few years back.
Chandler does an unreadable almost-double-take when I say hello, followed by a inscrutably uninflected, “People send me your video reviews all the time. And I watch them.”
The “and I watch them” hangs in silence, with no editorializing. This is a little unnerving. Even Luca Turin had thrown me a bone with his jokey “you’re doing the Lord’s work” comment in a recent email exchange.
But I persevere, whipping out my little digital video camera and requesting a quick interview. Chandler’s a real sport, graciously and thoughtfully answering my off-the-cuff questions. (Due to poor sound and lighting, the quality’s too shabby even for YouTube, but I’ll write it up for a future blog post.)
Mark Behnke, Basenotes’ “New in Niche” columnist, gets drawn into the conversation, and before long he and Chandler are hashing out the pros and cons of recent releases. Annick Goutal Ninféo Mio? Miles of smiles. Donna Karan Iris? Pained face-squinching.
As my priority is chatting with the fine citizens of Sniffaville and hobnobbing with Karens Dubin and Adams, any real interaction with actual perfume is limited. Anyway, I’m lucky to have access to most of this stuff in Los Angeles, so I’m not frantic about shoving every nozzle I see up my nose.
I make an exception for Dayna Decker’s line of natural fragrances, which has me at “squelch!” “Squelch!” is the sound of me dipping my crocodile-hide fingers into DD’s shea-buttery body cream, perfumed with any one of their 10 vibrant perfumes. I immediately glom onto Bardou, a garden-green rose with dew-drenched leaves and a sneeze of pepper.
My perfume pen pal Dan often makes fun of my love for “ancillary products”, as he, the perfume purist, calls them. But if a fragrance I enjoy comes in goo form, why not pounce on the opportunity to moisturize along with smelling good?
I snap up the Bardou “Essence Crème”, which, truth be told, is more of a beautifully fragranced body product than a proper perfume. In other words, the scent doesn’t last for more than an hour, but it does quench my dry skin.
I refocus on “proper” perfume once I spy the in-store Guerlain boutique. Bergdorf Goodman is one of the handful of locations in the US with an comprehensive selection of Guerlain perfumes. They stock the hallowed classics (including parfum versions of Mitsouko, L’Heure Bleue, Jicky and Shalimar), the more recent (as in “within the second half of the 20th century”) beauties (my favorites Derby, Attrape Coeur and Vetiver pour Elle among them), and L’Art et La Matière line.
I was about to say L’Art et La Matière is Guerlain’s version of niche (and let’s not forget Les Voyages Olfactifs line here, too), but with so many of Guerlain’s range unavailable beyond an Idylle here and a Shalimar edt there, the entire line pretty much seems like niche to me.
But before I can get oogly-eyed and wild-nosed over my elusive Guerlain prey, I notice my Sniffa herd drifting away from the Bergie’s watering hole and on to fresh grazing pastures. It’s time for lunch at Opia, with a full menu of speakers -- including me. Gulp!
Coming up: Lunch with Chandler Burr
Read Part 1 here.
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