Perfume Pen Pals: Neutrogena Rainbath

Katie,

For me, summer vacation has come to mean traveling from one house in which I don't write to another house in which I also don't write. The vacation houses are always more scenic than my own but they also have more ants and less water pressure and so my state of mind remains about the same.

This year would have been no different if only on the morning of my departure I hadn't tried to carry too many things, stumbled and, with great force, slammed my leg into the stairs. People always say accidents happen in slow motion but for me the accident was instantaneous and it was the whole week after the accident that happened in slow motion.

Acqua di Parma / Colonia

Living in London, the defining perfume of my past few years here has been Molecule 01 by Escentric Molecules. Not a day goes by that I don't nab a whiff of a waft of "the little aromachemical that could" in the city's streets and tubes, galleries and supermarkets. I smell it in double-kiss hellos with film editors, yoga teachers and pop stars' himbo consorts.

Perfume Pen Pals: nu_be

Katie,

I recently tried the nu_be series, "an olfactory periodic table," which smartly counters the complaint that these new brands put out too many perfumes at once. If anyone criticizes nu_be, it's like criticizing the chemical structure of the whole world. "Too many perfumes? You try living without oxygen!"

Prada Amber

A few years ago, I smelled Prada Amber being worn to great effect by an elegant woman at a TV industry party. The party was a "class reunion" of the first TV show I ever hosted in the UK, the notorious pop culture crash called The Word. The Word was live on Channel 4 every Friday night at at 11 o'clock, an hour of the biggest stars, the hippest bands, and the most shocking, tabloid-freak-show studio events.

Perfume Pen Pals: Kerosene / Black Vines

Katie,

I know nothing about most occupations but here's how I imagine roller coaster architects work: they draw up dozens of plans for coasters that are never built because the designs are so unruly, almost every rider would get sick. Eventually, the plans are meticulously reigned in and, because of this, these architects surely see their finished coasters as a compromise.

Promosexual: The Fragrance Lab at Selfridges

Smelling perfume is my favorite self-mesmerization technique. There's nothing like huffing fancy French fumes to still the squirrels running wild in my head. It's a ritual: drain the brain, spray the scent, breathe, allow colors and words and images to fill the mind. And repeat. And repeat.

As perfumer Sophia Grojsman has said, perfume is “medicine for the soul.”

Tom Ford / Neroli Portofino

My video review may be about the de-lovely Neroli Portofino by Tom Ford, but this bloggy blurb is concerned with swellegant Tom Ford himself. Specifically, with his declared four-bath-a-day habit.

Prada / Infusion d'Iris Eau de Parfum

Prada Infusion d'Iris eau de parfum is a real steel magnolia of a perfume. It's tender, even yielding as it works its way into an ample dust bunny of musk and iris.

L'Artisan Parfumeur / Voleur de Roses

 

I rediscovered L'Artisan Parfumeur Voleur de Roses during a severe bout of perfume ennui. I still loved my wild herd of woody roses: Malle Une Rose and Portrait of a Lady, Byredo Rose Noir, People of the Labyrinths A*Maze, Amouage Homage, Clinique Aromatics Elixir, Agent Provocateur Signature, but overfamiliarity with these high-rotation favorites had slightly stilled the thrill.

Fumes in the News: "Vamp in the Veil" Spends $166K a Day on Perfume

It was the headline that snagged me -- an irresistible combination of peekaboo seduction and the porn of mad-money extravagance: “Vamp in the Veil Spends £100K a Day on Perfume”. (That's about $166,000 a day to us Yanks.)

Marni by Marni

In devising Italian avant-schmatter brand Marni's eponymous fragrance, perfumer Daniela Andrier did something clever. She distilled the label's austere whimsy / “man repeller” aesthetic into a perfume that conveys hipness, minus that pesky repelling part.

Perfume Pen Pals: Lisa Kirk Revolution

Katie,

I like organizing things, curating collections of things, I own things mostly so I can put them into groups and subgroups. I'd always classified this as a charming eccentricity (I even organize my eccentricities), but after wearing and labeling thousands of perfumes, I'm fed up. It's a lot of work and most of these perfumes, especially of late, are terrible. I'm organizing terrible things.

Hermes Jour d'Hermes

Jour d'Hermès is girlish but sophisticated. It's an ebullient floral bourrée at a time when flowers in perfume are sneered at by the young 'uns. Or seem only to be allowed smuggled under the cover of grit and oud, sheep-in-wolf's-clothing style.

But like a resolute posy pressing through a crack in the sidewalk, Jour d'Hermès asserts its right to unabashed floweriness. It's pretty and that's enough.

Jour d'Hermès is available from FragranceX.com, Sephora.com, and BeautyEncounter.com, starting at $70 for 1 oz

Perfume Pen Pals: Beach Fragrances

Katie,

As you know, we're enduring a drought in California, which has resulted in lots of worry and excellent weather. Good people speak with furrowed brows about conservation, bad people whoop it up and go to the beach. I do both, depending on the company I keep, which means I'm complex...or a chameleon...or a sociopath.