In Your Opinion: 314 posts

How do your friends and family relate to your love of fragrance? Are they indulgent, understanding, puzzled, etc.?

Mention fragrance, and the responses range from “what is your favorite” to “I am allergic to all perfumes.” I have noticed how willing people are to talk about scents, especially when the concept of fragrance extends beyond a bottle of perfume. Therefore, I love discussing scents with others: what they wear, what they like, what they remember from their childhood, etc. My family went from being puzzled to being understanding and proud of my work. They are my main supporters. I was touched recently when I found out that my dad used to follow my blog and share links with his friends (he never told me!) The only thing my husband objects to is the presence of perfume samples on the floor, because he always trips over them.

What are your favorite scented products besides perfume (candles, soaps, lotions, powders, etc.)?

One of my favorites is Alba Botanica Midnight Tuberose. It is an inexpensive line of shower and body products scented with an airy linden and jasmine perfume, similar to L’Artisan La Chasse aux Papillons. Among candles, these days I especially enjoy basil and mint scented Cire Trudon Abd el Kader, rose and iris laced Tocca Florence and Annick Goutal Le Sac de ma Mère.

Photo by La Grande Farmer’s Market via flickr.com, some rights reserved.

What fragrances do you notice on other people?

I love noticing fragrances on people around me: strangers in the subway, friends, colleagues, dancers in my studio. It is exciting to recognize a familiar perfume, which always feels as if I’m encountering an old friend. If I cannot place a scent, but it feels familiar, the gnawing feeling will be there in the back of my mind until I finally figure it out. After all, I am scent obsessed, as you might gather from reading this blog! In NYC these days, I often smell Juicy Couture, J’Adore and Jennifer Aniston on other women.

Photo of Caroll Baker, Cannes, May 1965 by Claude Azoulay, from vintage_glamor.ru.

In the city, with its molten asphalt streets and suffocating subway cars, it is easy to forget the allure of summer. But the moment you leave the city, the summer appears in all of its indolent glory. Everything that seems to have been forgotten returns within a heartbeat—the long days of sunshine, lunches that somehow segue into dinners,  lazy afternoon naps. It seems as if summer is here to stay with its sounds of laughter, waves breaking against the shore, and rain dancing on the roof. And its sensations of rough sand against bare feet, of someone’s lips against your sunburnt skin, of velvety peaches. And its tastes of foraged wild raspberries, of grilled prawns, of milky corn.

And of course, the summer scents. My favorite summer perfumes not only capture the idea of summer, but they also evoke it well into the winter. Since in the summer I tend to have more time to change my perfume wardrobe, I have organized my selections around the scents I like to wear at different times of day.

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What is your most refreshing perfume? What fragrance makes you feel cool and uplifted?

As this summer has been alternating between rainy and infernally hot, I nevertheless have been relying more on my effervescent and refreshing fragrances. They brightened up the dull, grey days and made the hot and humid ones feel much more bearable.  So, here they are, my most refreshing perfumes, the ones that evoke a delicious sensation of ice cubes melting on skin: Prada Infusion de Vétiver, Hermès Eau de Gentiane Blanche, and Frédéric MalleAngéliques Sous la Pluie.

Photo: Frozen Strawberry by Carl Smith via flickr, some rights reserved.