Favorite Fragrances For Winter Days
Although winter in Florida is often sharp with sun and steamy with humidity, each year I envision a cooler northern climate dressed in icy snow as white as a glacier and brushed with evergreen boughs and red berries. In this fantasy landscape I smell pine and fir and chestnuts; moonlight takes on a brief hint of peppermint and pale winter sunshine smells of lemon slices in water. Overlapping shadows of trees and animals moving among them leave traces of fur, civet, and bark. The smoke from a neighbor’s chimney trails wisps of oak through the night air. Winter murmurs rather than shouts in my imagination. It is a more delicate time of year than is summer, when things are so enormous, hot and huge, that they crowd one another out. My winter perfumes are my favorite ones and are often more environmental than are the scents I wear at other times of the year.
Here is my top ten for winter, in no particular order of preference:
Serge Lutens Fille en Aiguilles: Pine is my favorite note, in or out of a perfume. My home is decorated with pine cones I have collected in the great forests of North America and I burn pine candles year round. Serge Lutens melds his pine to an un-iced gingerbread house that wafts incense smoke from its chimney. The opening reminds me of rubbing pine sap between my fingers and inhaling the fresh, wintry aroma.
