Kai by Gaye Straza recently launched a new feminine fragrance called Kai Rose, a flanker to the brand’s original Kai. Kai was launched way back in 1999 (!), and if you participated in any perfume message boards, perfume swaps, or perfume meet-ups in the following decade, or even received a “gift with purchase” bag from Barneys during that time, you no doubt encountered a perfume vial tagged with Kai’s green-and-white logo…
Confession: I don’t have any tattoos. When I recently visited an exhibition on the history of tattoos at the New-York Historical Society, I found myself admiring some vintage designs, but I think my moment to get “inked” has passed. When I was a college student, tattoos were still a rarity on my campus, sported only by a few punk rockers and metal heads. When tattoos became popular with mainstream twenty-somethings, I developed a certain level of scorn for the butterflies and “tribal” swirls and Japanese characters everyone suddenly seemed to have on their calves and shoulders and lower backs. And by the time tattooing became legal again in New York and some truly talented tattoo artists were available, I was trying to maintain a serious façade at my then-workplace, for reasons I can no longer remember.
Changing public standards and personal circumstances would now allow me to get a tattoo, if I wanted, but I still don’t think I’ll take the plunge. The main reason: I wouldn’t be able to decide on one image or even several images…
My most cherished scent memories as a child were in the library experiencing real books which created a world of wonder and exploration. Living now in a technological world filled with iPads, Commodity Book takes you into the New York Public Library to recapture the experience of yesterday; turning the pages and breathing in the smell of dry paper mingling in with the open fresh air.
That’s a quote from Ketrin Leka, the perfumer who developed the fragrance Book for niche brand Commodity. How could I resist, right? I love reading more than almost anything else, and I do as much of my reading as possible from actual books, and the Main Reading Room at the New York Public Library’s 42nd Street branch is one of my favorite places in the world.
Given my paired bibliophilia and aromaphilia, you’d think I’d fall hard for Book. Did I? Not really…
I’m not an avid traveler. Motion sickness, fear of terrorism, a simple but strong attachment to my own bedroom (husband and cat included) — all things considered, I’d rather stay home. But I can always journey through scent, right? Well, there are so, so many niche perfume lines named after geographical locations these days. Every time I see a new one, I recall a line from the film version of “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” in which the main character remembers her young lover’s musical tastes: “He played me songs. The bands were new to me: Boston, Kansas, America, Europe, Asia. Travel exhausts me.”
For example: fragrance line Une Nuit à Bali recently rebranded as Une Nuit Nomade, promising a wider itinerary of global travels. They’ve followed their Bali-themed scents, oddly enough, with Une Nuit à Montauk, an olfactory homage to Montauk, New York. The mention of Montauk piqued my interest enough for me to order samples, because Montauk reminds me of 1) the movie “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and 2) a long-ago weekend trip with the above-mentioned husband. (If Une Nuit Nomade had named this collection Une Nuit à Nantucket or Une Nuit à Santa Monica, on the other hand, I probably would have kept scrolling, exhausted…)
The more obsessed you become with scent, the further you may venture in your quest for a fragranced life: beyond perfume and fancy candles, for example, you might become very particular about the fragrances of bath and body items or household products. (Hence my long and happy relationships with Lush and Mrs. Meyers, to name just two of my brand obsessions.) But why stop there? What about skincare? If I’m going to put something on my face, of all places, either it has to be unscented or have a scent that I truly enjoy.
On a recent browse through Sephora, I stopped to examine a new collection of skincare products from the beauty mega-giant’s signature line. There were brightly packaged lip balms, sheet masks, facial wipes and — most interesting to me, personally — four new micellar cleansing waters. About two years ago I stopped cleaning my face with soap-based cleansers…
