Uncommon scents
All last winter I wore Grandiflorum’s Blond Tabac, a clever fragrance that manages to be woodsy and girlish all at once. Every time I doused myself, I found myself leaving the house wearing a striped fleece cap with a big pompon on top and a pair of sturdy hiking boots. I felt like a futuristic, ultra-feminine lumberjack, and everyone from grocery store clerks to traffic cops responded to me with smiles. It was a good winter in many ways, despite being full of difficulty and sadness. On many days the Blond Tabac, which I had received as a Christmas gift from my mother, was what held me together, reminding me of who I could be.
A great fragrance can inspire you to live up to its promise, to dress and behave according to its nuances and suggestions. Good fragrances, in short, can build character.
The top of my dresser may be covered in beautiful perfume bottles, but they are far from being decorative. They are a catalog of my various states of being--some current, others waiting to be revisited and still others not yet lived. Together they form a map of my personality, and I use them on a daily basis to find myself. It’s no wonder that discovering a new scent for a new era is an important ritual.
For me, Blond Tabac will always evoke that fine, humble winter of rising to the occasion, and I wear it now when I need to reconnect with my sense of cheerful determination. But this winter, I’ve adopted Ghost’s Deepest Night, a fragrance that reminds me of the coconut and lemon grass soup from my favorite Thai restaurant. Deepest Night is a scent that makes me feel hungry and expectant, as if I’ve just ordered something delicious from the kitchen and can smell it cooking. This scent suits my mood exactly, since I’ve just finished writing two book proposals and am waiting for the good news to arrive. The fragrance reminds me to sit back and enjoy this period of anticipation, rather than grow anxious and edgy.
Next winter, when no doubt a finished manuscript will be put to bed and await publication, I’m already planning on living in Parfums DelRae’s Eau Illuminee from a new company started by San Francisco graphic designer DelRae Roth. Eau Illuminee is what I can only describe as the scent of completion. Like Chanel No. 5, it promises to become a definitive perfume. No particular note in this symphonic composition stands out; it is simply classy, urbane and as crisp as sunlight falling on a row of skyscrapers on a February afternoon. I can’t wait to wear it, but I feel like I have a ways to go before I get there (not to mention that, at $125 a bottle, it’s beyond my present means). In the meantime, I occasionally dab some on from a precious sample vial and wear it for an hour or two before my morning shower, just for practice.
But I’m already easing into spring with the help of what must be the world’s smallest bottle of the hard-to-find L’Or de Torrente, purchased on EBay after some tense last-minute bidding. Based on an inspired combination of coffee and roses, L’Or de Torrente is at once ornate and lively. It has the complexity of Oriental scents without their usual heaviness, and I often wear it when I’m going to a meditation class. I’ve come to associate its smell with the kind of deep, ruminative awakening that comes afterward. It must be the coffee.
For me, wearing perfume is all about keeping your senses awake, and that’s why it has always been important to try new things. Fortunately, every year brings a new crop of scents to be tasted. As with wine, some years are better than others, and this year is a good one.
Complicated and compelling fragrances are making a comeback. Dior’s Addict, Gucci’s latest eponymous perfume and Yves Saint Laurent’s Nu are all serious scents waiting for formidable, eccentric women to adopt them. Donna Karan’s Black Cashmere smells like tiger balm mixed with some kind of exotic hardwood, while Chanel’s Chance is so warm and fuzzy it could easily have been called Pink Cashmere. Michael Kors’ new Kors has notes of port wine and cognac, making it literally intoxicating. And Mont Blanc’s new Presence smells exactly like bottled power: a modern, muscular, authoritative scent for female CEOs and senators.
This year, even some of the eager-to-please fragrances from the nicey-nice smelling ‘90s are launching turbocharged versions. Lancome has introduced a souped-up version of Miracle called Miracle Intense. Estee Lauder’s Pleasures Intense is a glorious invention--a new take on a perfume that I have always hated to love (let’s just say that Elizabeth Hurley and I have exactly nothing in common). Until you smell Pleasures Intense, you won’t fully understand the following statement: Most perfume doesn’t actually smell anything like real, living flowers. Pleasures Intense does. It smells exactly like the bouquets of wild roses that used to come out of my grandmother’s yard. Intense? Definitely.
The next generation of fragrances offers a dizzying array. When I’m overwhelmed and confused by it all, I spend a couple of days wearing Miller Harris’ Citron Citron, which combines Sicilian lemon, Spanish orange and Jamaican lime with mint and basil. It’s as palate cleansing a scent as the orange slices you get after a feast in a Chinese restaurant.
Change is good and, even if you’re happy with your signature fragrance, it might be time to try something that has a similar feel but is less commonplace. If you’re one of six women in your office whose bane it is to love Pleasures, you might try Cabaret, a new perfume that is just as wearable, with notes of rose, peony and pink bay laid over amber and musk. Cabaret is worth buying for its stunning, long-necked red bottle alone. If you’re an outdoorsy Cool Water Woman or Nautica type, try the even fresher and more exuberant O2xygen Woman from California North, a company in the Bay Area that’s run by real sailors who know what adventure should smell like. My favorite of the innocent scents has always been Yves Saint Laurent’s Baby Doll, and I’ve long searched to no avail for a bottle of Jean Patou’s Hip, which I’ve heard is Baby Doll’s older, faster sister. If you’re a fan of Calyx, the original green floral, then try the new green bloom called Kai, which has the bees buzzing at Apothia at Fred Segal.
Apothia has also launched its own fragrance, Apothia.if, a perfume developed by a panel of 100 randomly selected customers. The panelists responded online to various generations of samples the store had given them, narrowing the field down to a floral fragrance that is the very definition of a staple. Apothia.if is the Hanes T-shirt of perfumes, and it comes in a convenient and utilitarian roll-on.
Everyone needs T-shirts, but who says black lace isn’t a staple, too? The year’s best boudoir scent is called Perfect Twilight. Made in Malibu by Creative Scentualization, Perfect Twilight smells like a violet nosegay, but with a racy undertone, more like an African violet--a fleshy, fuzzy, ever-so-slightly primal variation on the flower’s sweetness.
I’ve never had a closet that didn’t contain one or two high-quality men’s suits, and some men’s scents also make excellent choices for women. Dunhill’s Desire Blue smells literary and dandyish, like something Virginia Woolf might have borrowed from Lytton Strachey’s dop kit. Wearing it with a blue polka-dot men’s blazer from Sy Devore and a loosely knotted tie, I feel awfully witty.
Dabbling in vintage scents can also add depth to your palate. A whiff of Katharine Hepburn as she strode around in jodhpurs railing at Jimmy Stewart in “The Philadelphia Story” would likely have smelled just like the recently revived Rochas Femme. Created in 1944 as an exclusive bottling for the couturier Marcel Rochas’ wife, Rochas Femme is a nostalgic, jewel-toned scent with a slap of leather and horse-sweat behind it. Women in the ‘40s were no sissies; just look at those shoulder pads.
Dior is also relaunching its line of classic fragrances. You may have a hard time remembering if your great-aunt (the one who had the fling with Rossellini right before he married Ingrid Bergman) wore Miss Dior, Diorissimo, Diorella or Dioressence, but you’d be able to smell the difference right away, even after all these years. As for the Guerlain classics, skip the Shalimar this time around and go right for Samsara, which is as milky, sly and wicked as Eartha Kitt purring into your ear, “I want to be evil.”
The choices seem endless. If you’re having an identity crisis, or just a financial crisis, M.A.C’s new trio of fragrances, MV1, MV2 and MV3, won’t break the bank. Each is a gradient of a common theme. “V” is for vanilla, which is present in each; 1 is fresh and bright, 2 is warm and homey, and 3 is spicy and exotic. At $20 each, you can buy all three for the price of a single bottle of most designer scents. Their matching, ultramodern bottles are irresistible--like what might be handed out as part of your gear should you join the crew of a spaceship. I don’t even like vanilla much, but these scents are so well-balanced and clever that I can’t resist interacting with them. I’ve decided that MV1 is for daytime, 3 is for evening, and 2 is for weekends. But wait. Do they even have weekends on spaceships? No matter. From where I’m standing right now, the future sure smells bright.
