“Don’t crush the molecules!” I turned around, a bottle of perfume in hand, to discover a sales associate approaching me with a look of mild panic. My crime was that I sprayed too much perfume on my wrist and tried to transfer the excess to another arm. “You’re about to crush molecules,” she repeated for emphasis, leaving me to imagine dramatic visions of aldehydes and ionones bursting like overripe grapes on my skin.

Out of all the nonsensical things I hear at the perfume counter, “don’t crush the molecules” (or its variant “don’t crush the scent”) tops the list of my all time favorites. I never argue with the sales associates, but I once inquired where they’re taught such a concept. What do the perfume sales associates know that still eludes modern science? One counter manager admitted that she heard more senior personnel say it and repeated it herself. Another recalled hearing this molecule business in a perfume training class (in my opinion, she deserves a refund).

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Patricia on her absolute favorite animalic scent.

One person’s poison is another’s…well, perfume. This is never clearer to me than when I enter the horse barn. Immediately I am surrounded by scents, both pleasant and not. Hay and leather mix with the earthy smells of manure, dirt, wood stalls, and the acrid smell of urine, all blended with the rich loamy fragrance of the horses themselves. Those who love only clean scents would not find this a pleasant place to visit, but I love to immerse myself in this world for hours at a time and enjoy all aspects of it, from currying, brushing, and bathing my horse, to riding and rubbing scented saddle soap and conditioners into my  tack before putting it away.

Many of the fragrances I wear on a daily basis remind me of my time at the barn. Leather and horses go together, and leather fragrances are among some of my favorites.

The Big Guns

Robert Piguet Bandit, if not the oldest of the “old broads,” is certainly one of the most assertive. I have an old bottle of unknown concentration, but the current version is just as potent. Bandit’s combination of everything leathery and animalic needs to be experienced. I may not wear it frequently, but I unstop the crystal stopper often to breathe in its dark richness.

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Bois de Jasmin will return on Friday, November 8th, and today we have our “Recommend Me a Perfume” thread. In case you’re wondering, the furry beast looking cute and cuddly in the title photo is Viola. She lives with my mom and usually spends her days destroying house plants, playing with curtains and galloping around the house like a mad pony. But whenever anyone wants to be comforted, she’s happy to assist.

I’ll check in when I have a moment, but my internet connection is going to be intermittent.

How does it work:

1. Please post your requests or questions as comments here. You can also use this space to ask any fragrance related questions. To receive recommendations that are better tailored to your tastes, you can include details on what you like and don’t like, your signature perfumes, and your budget. And please let us know how your search goes and what you end up discovering.

2. Then please check the thread to see if there are other requests you can answer. Your responses are really valuable for navigating the big and sometimes confusing world of perfume, so let’s help each other!

To make this thread easier to read, when you reply to someone, please click on the blue “reply” link under their comment.

Photography by Bois de Jasmin

Not just another simple cologne. Elisa on Parfums de Nicolaï’s L’eau Mixte.

If there’s one perfume category I’ve heard people call “boring” the most, it’s citrus. Perhaps it’s because there is less variation among citrus scents than, say, orientals or florals—a rose perfume, a tuberose perfume, and an iris perfume smell nothing alike, but lemon, orange, and grapefruit have a fair amount of olfactory overlap. Or maybe it’s because citrus scents don’t—can’t—evolve much on skin because they don’t last long enough to evolve; they are fleeting, volatile molecules by nature, destined to be top notes.

I must admit I have some of the same reservations about citrus-centric perfumes. I’ve got a few in my collection, and on a hot day, a few spritzes of a crisp citrus chypre like Clarins Eau Dynamisante or Monsieur Balmain hits the spot. But I don’t reach for them often, and I almost always end up putting something else on later. So to make me sit up and take notice, a citrus scent has to be pretty unusual.

L’eau Mixte, Parfums de Nicolaï’s eau de cologne release for summer 2010, was the first citrus to take me by surprise in years. Primarily a grapefruit perfume, it manages to be both refreshing and rich, hitting so many pleasurable notes at once—sweet, tangy, green, herbal—that it feels like getting out of a car to breathe in a big lungful of cool mountain air. Most citrus scents have a bracing quality, but L’eau Mixte is exceptionally bracing.

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Every now and then I have a longing for a picture perfect holiday, the kind advertised at tourist agencies with the ubiquitous image of blue waves, white sandy beaches, and a bronzed goddess in a bikini. Deep down I know that I’ll get tired of this kind of vacation after two days–and a beach bunny I’m not at all, but on an overcast, cold day, the allure of warm sand and sunshine is hard to deny. These kinds of blues–and that’s exactly what my longing indicates–have little to do with the weather and lots with stress and fatigue, and I’ve come to recognize them quickly before they take complete hold of me.

The easiest way to recreate the ambiance of a vacation is to find things that feel uplifting. I bring home bouquets of flowers to add a splash of color to my surroundings, float rose petals in my evening bath, and burn sweet Japanese incense in the bedroom. Then I temporarily set aside my beloved cool irises and woods for the most exuberant perfumes of all in my collection–the tropical florals.

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