This week, we're doing something a little different with The Monday Mail. Sandra is not a newcomer to perfume, in fact, she comments here as Nile Goddess so some of you may have “talked” to her in the past. But Sandra says she has not fallen in love with a fragrance in a long time, so she'd like our help.

Here is what we know about Sandra:

She lives in Prague, has just turned 40, is brunette and “very temperamental”.

She loves Egypt and everything Egyptian, including Egyptian history, music and dance.

She is willing to buy online, so access is not a problem, and she has not asked for any price limits. She is looking for something unusual, and is especially hoping for recommendations from niche brands she might not be familiar with…

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This week, we're (hopefully) helping Rae. She's a student in her 20s, studying arts and design in a large city. Here are a few more details about her:

She says she usually strikes people as older than her age.

She is interested in all fields of art: music, performance arts, photography, literature.

She wears muted colors much of the time, but owns more dress shirts and blouses than T-shirts, and can pull off a red lipstick any time of the day.

Rae is looking for a calm and soothing fragrance…

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Huge thanks to everyone who chimed in last week to help Tracey find a new perfume. Hopefully she'll get back to us and let us know if she found a winner; meanwhile, we've an even tougher challenge this week: Lavonne, who admits that she is “completely ignorant about perfume”.

Here is what we know about Lavonne:

She is a 50 year old recently divorced mother of 3, and describes herself as “professional, well-organized, somewhat conservative”.

She has purchased fewer than half a dozen bottles of perfume in her entire life…

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I don't get a ton of reader email, but most of what I do get goes along the lines of “I like (fill in blank) and (fill in blank), can you recommend a few perfumes I might like…”

I always answer, but I'm not sure recommending perfumes is a particular skill of mine, so today we're going to try out a new semi-regular feature: I'm going to post some information about Tracey, my latest correspondent, and I'm asking everyone to please chime in with some recommendations. Plus, this gives me an excuse to post a picture of the newish R2D2 mailbox from the United States Postal Service, which I have been hunting for but have not yet seen in person…

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