Perfume 101: 517 posts

My reader, Red, put it quite succinctly when we were discussing our fragrance shopping experience, “I am often confused and frustrated with the way retail fragrance counters are arranged and have all but given up the past pleasure of trying new scents on my lunch break.” Department stores with their crowded and poorly organized fragrance bars, commission driven sales personnel and lack of useful information definitely make fragrance shopping frustrating. Of course, in New York and other big cities there are various fragrance boutiques,where one can find a broad range of fragrances as well as passionate and well-informed staff; however, the reality for most fragrance shoppers is the department store. As much as I complain about the department store fragrance bar, I still love having lots of different fragrances to sample in one location while also checking in on the latest shoe sale. What if all one has nearby is Macy’s? It is in fact possible optimize the fragrance shopping experience. Below I will share several tips that have worked for me during my department store expeditions. Do you have tips of your own? Please feel free to share! I am always up for anything to make the fragrance shopping as efficient and pleasant as possible.

Continue reading →

Imagine if you walked into a liquor shop and found that every single bottle of wine, red or white, French or Chilean, vintage or regular table variety, was actually touted to be the best wine in the whole world. The shop assistant, instead of listening to your likes and your dinner plans, would flatly state, “Let me show you the latest thing we have received. It is my favorite. It is made from the special, “radiant golden” grapes. Men especially happen to like it.” To top it all off, imagine if all wines were haphazardly arranged on shelves, with no logical organization method. It sounds absurd, yet this is the way fragrance is sold today. Perhaps the main issue is that while the pace of fragrance launches has accelerated from about 100 in 1990 to nearly a thousand in 2009, the way fragrance is sold has not changed in decades.

Continue reading →

While any Russian will find an ironic reference in my title to the Soviet era film “Seventeen Moments of Spring,” for me it has less to do with Russian spies improbably masquerading as German officers than with a sense of nostalgia I feel around this time. As I watch cherry blossoms wilt in the puddles, I already miss their delicate pink haze. As I feel the sun burning my skin, I crave the chill of snow. As spring unfolds with all its holidays, I miss people who cannot celebrate them with me. Therefore, my scent palette this spring reflects my yearnings and moods with particular poignancy.

Continue reading →

 

Autumn is one of my favorite seasons, given the melancholic connotations in the early dusks and fallen leaves. It is a time when I fully give in to nostalgia, imagining the cherry trees in the garden of my childhood turning russet, the first frost on the shaggy bushes of chrysanthemums near the wooden gate, and the plaintive cry of cranes crossing the overcast sky above the terracotta roof of our house. Thinking of these familiar images, I reach out for a compilation of Turgenev and gaze out of my window at the rows of slender maple trees dropping their crimson leaves into the puddles.

I notice that my fragrance choices for autumn fall into the nostalgic realm: classical ambers, animalic chypres, spicy orientals and dark roses. However, since the choices themselves depend on my mood and the weather, I decided to organize my list in this manner: a set of fragrances for each autumnal mood.

Continue reading →

“Do you have skin? I only need one arm.” I am in my office at International Flavors & Fragrances speaking on the phone with an evaluator (an individual who works with the perfumer to guide him/her on the project). Spending most of my waking hours in the fragrance world sometimes makes me feel as if I am jettisoned into another universe. It is small, closed, and very passionate.  The language it uses is laden with industry specific jargon and turns of phrase. Take the aforementioned and very common scenario. The first time I heard this question I was utterly baffled, being completely unprepared for such a query. Of course, the answer is simple—skin is needed to test the fragrance. Although paper blotters are used heavily to study the development of a fragrance composition, the skin is the ultimate test. As a result, I wear no fragrance to work to make sure I “have skin,” and I return home wearing up to 8 different perfumes on my arms. I always get a seat on the train. …

Continue reading →