If I handed you an unlabeled vial of Estée Lauder Azurée to sniff, you might be puzzled. It certainly smells niche, with its strange opening and complex sillage. Could it be from Serge Lutens? Not likely, given its aldehydic sparkle. Maybe something new from Parfumerie Générale? No, no that, either. Estée Lauder probably wouldn’t be your first guess…
I’ve spent years looking for the perfect dress, a dress I can wear in the winter with boots and a sweater, in the summer with sandals, with pumps to business meetings, and out at night with a Miriam Haskell necklace and hand-knit shrug. When wearing this dress, I won’t have to hold in my stomach or worry that my bra straps show. Slide the dress over my head and I’m done. Well, I haven’t found the dress yet, but I think I’ve found its perfume counterpart: Y by Yves Saint Laurent.
Y is a clean, soft green chypre that lays a gentle background. It is quiet and elegant, but still warm, and when you’re wearing it people notice you and not your scent. It stays close to your body. Someone crammed against you in an elevator when you’re wearing Y won’t think of perfume but will think you’re still warm from your morning shower and maybe have clipped a few flowers from the garden for your desk…
The Leather sisters — Christian Dior Diorling, Estée Lauder Azurée, Piguet Bandit, and L’Artisan Dzing! — lived together in a large house in a neighborhood that used to be popular before everyone moved across town to Fruity Floral. On the mantel was a photo of their father, Knize Ten, who was on a business trip to England talking with the Bentley upholstery people. Next to it was a photo of their mother, Lanvin Scandal, who had been discontinued years ago.
This morning, Diorling was the first to rise. She wrapped herself in a couture satin robe and went downstairs. Just as she was pouring coffee into her Limoges cup, Dzing! came into the kitchen and grabbed a ceramic mug she’d made in pottery class…
Has anyone else noticed the explosion of incense fragrances over the past decade? In past years, incense seemed to play a backstage role. Sure, the old classics Creed Angélique Encens, Chanel No. 22, and Lanvin Scandal all have incense, but a trip to the perfume counter these days gives you the choice of at least a dozen fragrances featuring incense front and center, from the Comme de Garçons incense series to L’Artisan Passage d’Enfer and Dzongka to Etro Messe de Minuit to incense “soliflores”, if you can call them that, from Lorenzo Villoresi, Crazylibellule and the Poppies and others. One incense-based fragrance that stands apart from the crowd is Yves Saint Laurent Nu…
A few weeks ago I was at the grocery store, and my checker was a sweet, indie-rocker type with blond, shaggy hair, a fully-tattooed forearm, and a pierced eyebrow. As she moved her arms to load my grocery bag, a waft of Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue drifted over. My heart leapt. I’m not a huge fan of Light Blue, but I loved smelling perfume in public. “You smell great!” I said. “It’s not too much?” the cashier asked.
I live in a neighborhood in Portland, Oregon with probably the most vegans and biodiesel-fueled cars per capita anywhere in the world. Running through the neo-hippie is a strong vein of rocker, too, leading to dread-locked white girls with scarlet lipstick, lunchboxes as purses, and bottles of kombucha. The older generation of Portlanders has a higher portion of ex-Grateful Dead followers supplemented by more financially secure Portlanders driving Priuses, designing gardens of native plants, and adopting babies from China. Don’t get me wrong: I wouldn’t live anywhere else. It’s just that most of these people don’t care about perfume — or worse, they actively dislike it…