While riding to work or scrubbing out the bathtub or working in the yard, sometimes I play a game to pass the time. It goes like this: if you could only wear perfume from one house for the rest of your life, which one would it be? Sometimes I include discontinued and vintage fragrances, and sometimes I tell myself I have to stick with whatever the house has on the market now or might introduce later. Sometimes I change the game so I have to pick just one perfumer.
Besides being a fun way to pass the time, thinking about what perfume house's work you'd wear if you could choose only one house is a way to think about who you are, too. Someone resolutely elegant would do well with Chanel or Divine, for instance, while someone who loves a good joke might choose Etat Libre d'Orange. Someone with easy access to the mall and no huge need for the avant garde could do a lot worse than Estée Lauder. Someone infatuated with aoud would have to choose Montale.
For me, Guerlain and Caron come to mind right away. Each house has a fat enough list of product that I'd have plenty to choose from, and each house has perfume with history and a retro feel that I like…
