Jean-Louis Scherrer is one of the hidden classical gems. In the US, you might have to search for it at the discount shops, but the Europeans can easily find it at most perfumeries where it sits someplace between Ralph Lauren and Stella McCartney on the alphabetically organized  shelves. The tall oblong bottle filled with pale green liquid is not flashy, and the first whiff of the perfume doesn’t reveal anything extraordinary–leafy and peppery, with an unmistakable  wet earth note that you find in many classical green perfumes. It takes a few moments for Scherrer to weave its spell.

Classical is the best way to describe Jean-Louis Scherrer, because it’s a perfumed time capsule. Taking a deep breath of this green, earthy perfume is like stepping back three or even four decades. They don’t make them like this anymore. Scherrer was launched in 1979 by a French couturier who dressed women like Françoise Sagan, Jackie Kennedy, and Claudia Cardinale. Shortly thereafter, he added Scherrer 2 and Nuits Indiennes (now discontinued) to the collection.

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Denyse Beaulieu of Grain de Musc is on a North American tour promoting her book The Perfume Lover. If you’re in New York, you can meet her on March 22^nd from 4 to 8pm at Aedes de Venustas, a perfume boutique located at 9 Christopher St. With each book purchased, she will give away a 2ml spray sample of L’Artisan Séville à l’Aube, the star of her book.

Canadians can meet her in Toronto and Montreal.  For more details, please see Denyse’s post about her tour activities.

Our “Recommend Me a Perfume” is here today. I’m already craving spring, but we still have snow on the ground and my favorite warm fragrances are in heavy rotation.

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.

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

It may be March, but here in the Northeastern U.S., spring is still elusive. Bulbs have started to poke through the firm soil, but they are still over a month from blooming. Even once the official start to spring rolls around, everything where I live will still look very much as it did in the middle of winter—barren, grey, and spare. I could sit and brood, longing for springtime, but instead I’ve decided to start spring early—indoors—by jamming the windowsills with the fast and incredibly fragrant paperwhite narcissus.

Paperwhites are among the easiest and most rewarding of flowering bulbs to grow indoors. They often flower within two to three weeks of starting the bulbs, and for almost no effort, they reward you with clusters of incredibly fragrant, snow white blossoms that easily fill a room with their rich, indolic fragrance. Even if you have never smelled narcissus before, the scent of paperwhites immediately evokes springtime, with a heady white floral perfume that is accented by chilly earthiness and fresh, green touches.

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Do you know the feeling when you try an outfit and can’t decide whether it suits you or not? You think, “maybe it would be fine if I were to add a different purse or wear my hair up…” Those are the kind of pieces that end up gathering dust in the closet. Perfume is not exactly like clothing, because some fragrances don’t cast their spell on you immediately, but as my recent experience with Chanel 1932 proved, sometimes the first instinct is the correct one.

I admit to having a certain reverence for Chanel. Its perfume collection includes some splendid gems like No 5, Bois des Iles, Cuir de Russie, and No 19, and even releases like Allure and Coco Mademoiselle have the kind of attention to quality that one rarely finds at department store counters. For this reason, I wasn’t ready to give up on 1932, a new addition to the Les Exclusifs collection, but when I first tried it on my skin I found it to be pale and limpid.

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