Sometimes, when I’m exhausted by work, or feeling anxious, or the moon is pulling strangely on my brain, I take special measures. I draw a hot bath and dig out an old magazine to keep me company in the tub. For dinner I have a bowl of pasta and maybe a generous glass of wine. And I choose a comfort fragrance to wear as the evening winds down.
A comfort scent is calming and not challenging and generally stays close to the skin. You should be able to go to bed in the scent and not be disturbed by it. With a comfort scent, you don’t feel compelled to sniff your wrists every few minutes to follow the fragrance’s development, you just relax into it and let it boost your sense of wellbeing.
For some reason, a lot of the scents that comfort me smell like food. S-Perfume 100% Love comforts me because it feels like a sheer blanket of cocoa and roses with the slight tingle of mandarin orange…
O.K., here’s a question: How many perfumes does a woman need?
Nasreen Rehmat’s tiny Parfumerie Nasreen in Seattle’s Alexis Hotel (“a jewel box,” her website calls it) is stacked floor to ceiling with perfume boxes and glittering display bottles. Nasreen’s specialty is being able to peg the perfect fragrance for a customer within minutes. For twenty years she has held court in her store, scenting the thousands of visitors who have sidled in and tucked their purses under their arms to avoid knocking a bottle off a nearby shelf.