Lists: 150 posts

In the past decade, my life has gone from urban to rural. Ten years ago, I’d never have imagined myself spending most of my time outdoors in the hot sun. Also changed is my wardrobe. Shorts and flip-flops are the order of the day, but St. Tropez this is not.

I’m out in the swamps a lot with my camera, sweltering under the tropical foliage, trying to capture the perfect picture of an alligator, or I’m on a wobbly boat at twilight trying to steady myself as an osprey flies by with a prize mullet in its claws.

Glamour has taken a backseat to necessity here. I carry a pocketknife rather than a powder compact. One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is the need for a glamorous everyday fragrance.  Fragrance for everyday glamour is different than perfume for evening-out glamour or the one for seductive glamour.  The scents of everyday glamour are a personal reminder that special scent can be a part of your day regardless of how you spend it.

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Elle Magazine recently published my article “How To Be Unforgettable” at Elle.com. In this piece, I explore what makes a fragrance memorable and why some perfumes receive more compliments than others. I hope that you will enjoy it.

Perfumer Sophia Grojsman was returning home one evening when she noticed a man following her. As she quickened her step and clutched her handbag, the man shouted, “Wait, wait, I don’t mean any harm, I just want to know the name of your perfume. It’s amazing!” The fragrance was Calvin Klein Eternity, which Grojsman was designing at the time. Once launched, Eternity rapidly climbed to the top of the charts, and today, this explosive floral is still among the best sellers. Grojsman’s anecdote is an extreme example of a perfume compliment, but the poignant reactions that scents can provoke made me wonder—what is the ultimate head-turning perfume? To read the rest, please continue to Elle.com.

Do you ever compliment others on fragrance? If so, what perfumes have received compliments from you?

Painting: Cassatt, Mary, A Corner of the Loge (In the Box), 1879. via Wiki-images, some rights reserved.

I have a friend who will not wear rose fragrances.  They remind her of her grandmother, and this opinion is one often echoed through perfume discussions.  But ask a rose lover for his or her favorite rose fragrances and the discussion opens up to a world scented by roses—reds, pinks, yellows, and whites; Rosa damascena (damask) and Rosa centafolia (cabbage); Bulgarian, Moroccan, Iranian, Turkish; soliflores or blends; attar of roses or rose absolute; the most realistic, the ultimate rose…

Most rose lovers agree that there is no such thing as the ultimate rose; as is true with the flower itself there are simply too many perfume variations to ever settle upon just one.  From creamy to clear, from spicy to green, rose fragrances are as simple or as complex as can be imagined.  Some settle on the skin as if one is wearing a bouquet, while others announce their presences in operatic registers.  Still more are dark and earthy and others smell rained upon.

While for me nothing approaches the experience of the scent of the bloom on its thorny stem, I wear rose fragrances more than any other.  Here are some of my favorites:

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One evening my husband and I strolled through the Beguinage in Leuven, a university town in the Flemish part of Belgium. Beguinages (or begijnhofs as they are called in Dutch) were medieval lay sisterhoods in which women led lives of piety and charity without taking permanent vows. At best, the Catholic church had an ambivalent attitude towards the beguines. Women weren’t supposed to have this much freedom or to exist independently from male control. The sisterhoods were prosecuted and labeled as heretics, but despite all of this they maintained their order. Belgium had the highest number of beguinages in the world, and about 30 remain today (albeit non-functioning). If the desire to live free from men counts, then the beguines might very well represent the earliest form of the women’s movement.

Although today Leuven’s Beguinage is a UNESCO heritage site housing university students and faculty, there is an aura of serenity pervading its narrow streets. The setting sun tints the grey cobblestones a rich gold and plays on the still water in the canals. The swallows paint delicate arabesques over the sky, making me strain my neck as I admire their graceful spins. The red geraniums spilling out of the window boxes give off their dusty metallic scent, and each tiny streets ends in a small secret garden awash in roses and privet. The beguines may have vanished, but their oasis of quiet beauty remains. Continue reading →

Summer is a wonderful time to wear fragrance.  It’s the season to break out the cool, the sparkling, and the refreshing.  It’s the season to leave behind the warm, the dense, and the heavy.  Orientals that smelled sumptuous at Christmas smell overstuffed in summer, a lesson I learned when I sprayed a thick woodsy vanilla on my wrist in Manhattan one hot July day.  Hours later, I couldn’t remember what the scent was, but I remember how it smelled.  The vanilla note that was so beguiling in winter had turned sour and unattractive.  The woods smelled not of a curl of smoke but of a soggy, recently doused fire.

I live in a place that I like to refer to as the “heat locker.”  It’s imperative that I have a library of scents that can carry me through six months of the year, most often in high humidity.  The scents I choose range from the effervescent to, paradoxically, the plush. It’s all in the nose (and skin) of the beholder!

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