Today we’re helping Erin. She loves perfume, and says her “day doesn’t even seem to happen” if there’s no perfume involved. Her problem: her tastes run to warm weather fragrances, but she really wants to find an appropriate — and sophisticated — fragrance for cold weather. Bonus points if she can afford it on her graduate student budget.

Here is what we know about Erin:

She’s just about to hit 30.

Erin works out strenuously most days of the week, and she reveres coffee, bourbon and great food.

She’s writing her dissertation in literature (British Literature, 19th Century, to be exact), and says “while I span the Romantics and the Victorians, I find myself at home with neither aesthetic (sorry–nerd tangent)”.

Erin says that when she finds a fragrance she loves, it’s like “olfactory nirvana”. The closest she has gotten to this feeling is with Hermès Un Jardin Sur le Nil, her current favorite…

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Today we’re helping Ruby, who says that if money were no object…

…I would have [perfumer] Olivia Giacobetti make me a fragrance that evokes the following: A night with a huge golden moon. A library in a very old British castle. Crumbling paper, leather bound reference tomes, wood polish, parchment and ink, a fireplace, hot tea and pear almond tart, a bit of mineral from the stones on the hearth, fresh flowers just harvested from the garden, a bit of damp earth and rain still clinging to their stems. Martin Gore is sitting in an ancient leather wing chair by the fire. (I’m guessing headspace technology will have to come into play on that one)

In real life, she can spend up to $150. Ruby is a makeup artist and photography student in her mid-30s. Here are some other details about her…

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The Monday Mail is back from its holiday vacation! If you want to get on the waiting list (and it’s not too long right now), see the instructions here.

This week, we’re helping Jennifer. She loves perfume but she’s relatively new to the subject, and she says her tastes are “all over the place”. She’d like to find a versatile fragrance for day or evening, something “pretty and elegant with an interesting twist”. She’d also like to keep the cost under $150.

She’s in her mid-20s, and she majored in science in college but she’s drawn to the arts, especially literature (she loves everything from Marian Keyes to Virginia Woolf).

She says she’s an introvert, and people describe her as calm and gentle.

She lives in Hawaii, where she works part time and attends massage therapy school.

Jennifer says she doesn’t know much about notes, but she thinks what she might want is what she calls a “disguised” gourmand: nothing to sweet or “in your face”, and no sugary vanilla — it should be cloaked in incense, woods, musk, leather or smoke…

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The Monday Mail is about to take its holiday vacation, but first, here is an open thread for participants in the Monday Mail articles to share their experiences, and hopefully let us know if they found what they were looking for (or went bankrupt trying). I’m sending out emails today requesting feedback from everyone who took part between May and August of this year, so check back over the next few days to see what we can find out.

Here are links to the articles for each participant…

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This week we’re helping Sofina, who loves perfume and wants to find a new signature scent, preferably one that everyone else isn’t already wearing. She loves to shop online, and she’d love to keep the cost under $200. Here is what we know about Sofina:

She’s almost 30 but people usually think she’s 25 or younger. Some people say she looks like a young Isabella Rossellini but her style icons are Katharine Hepburn and Lauren Bacall.

She’s a perfectionist to a fault, and a “glass half full” kind of person.

Her everyday wear is casual (jeans) but she likes to dress up for formal affairs with dramatic jewel tone colours, red lips and high heels.

Sofina loves fresh cut grass, citrus, bergamot, peppers, honeysuckle and black currant…

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