Bethany manages the perfume counter at my local Saks Fifth Avenue. She’s helpful and looks like a 1940s film star, but best of all she genuinely seems to like perfume. Instead of spritzing a fragrance on paper and saying the words we hear so often in department stores (“It’s beautiful, we all love it, why don’t you treat yourself?”) she’s as likely to hand me a sample and shrug and say, “Tell me what you think.” So when she was excited about the new Natori Eau de Parfum, I had to try it.

The curtain on perfume marketing lifted for me for a moment when Bethany talked about her introduction to Natori. She said before a perfume launches, perfume marketing staff sometimes fly in from Seattle or San Francisco, take the cosmetics sales associates to lunch or bring in food, and make their pitch. In the case of Natori, besides being treated to lunch, the Saks sales associates watched a DVD in which Josie Natori talked about how she grew up in the Philippines with perfume around her, and how her grandmother scented handkerchiefs to put in her purse. She said that perfume nourished her more than food. (Bethany noted that Natori was on the slender side.)

In 1984, Natori released a fragrance, also called Natori. The latest version of Natori, created by perfumer Caroline Sabas, was based on the original version. Natori’s press release says that it has notes of “sparkling aldehydes, rose, plum, ylang-ylang, purple peony, night-blooming jasmine, patchouli, amber and satin musk accord”.

Natori is a mature woman’s fragrance. It opens with a perfume-y burst of aldehydes floating over jasmine and amber….

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