Perfume 101: 517 posts

Amber perfumes are some of the most popular choices for cool weather, and today Patricia explores various options, from light to dark, from simple to complex.

Ambers are crowd pleasers, the Golden Retrievers of the perfume world, ready to encompass you with a warm, furry greeting and a wag of the metaphorical tail. Granted, some are easier to love than others, and there is always someone who would rather not, but generally speaking the amber aims to please. Here are some of my favorites.

Amber for Beginners

My “starter” amber fragrance was the easy-to-wear L’Eau Ambrée by Prada.  With mandarin, rose, and jasmine to sweeten the way, I happily wore it until the patchouli drydown started to grate on me. I graduated to the warm and beautiful L’Ambre des Merveilles by Hermès, and its sweet caramel vanilla seems perfect for the cooler months. It reminds me of Prada Candy, but I much prefer its greater complexity. Every September I reach for the stunning starry bottle turned on its side.

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This blog can occasionally get breathless about perfume classics, and if you start me on Après l’Ondée, you’d think that you haven’t lived until smelling this Guerlain perfume from 1906. There is nothing wrong with admiring classics and sharing one’s enthusiasm about them, but I would like to provide some balance to the veneration of perfumes made before most of us were born. There is a fine line between acquiring a taste for new combinations of materials or unfamiliar notes and forcing yourself to like a perfume just because it has a pedigree.

First of all, not all fragrances made decades ago were great, so just because perfume is old, there is no guarantee that it’s special. There used to be just as many copycats, slapdash affairs, and lots of crass (and sexist) marketing in the past, so romanticizing the era misses the point. Even Jacques Guerlain created numerous failures before coming up with gems like Mitsouko and L’Heure Bleue. Similarly misplaced is the idea that liking classics is an instant mark of sophistication. I can’t think of less sophisticated perfumes than Dana Tabu, Schiaparelli Shocking or Estée Lauder Youth Dew. They’re loud, brash and impudent, and that’s their very point. Great perfumes to be sure, but refined they are not.

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This time of year makes me prone to bouts of melancholy. I don’t like to bid goodbye to summer vacation, August peaches and picnics in the park. Since my school recollections are filled with the institutional smells of many children in confined spaces, burned milk, wet chalk and blackboards cleaned with a musty rag, I can’t get excited about the whole “back to school” thing either. My memory refuses to budge from this Dickensian vision even when prompted by the delicious smells of sharpened pencils and ink; I hated school until I started college.  I get out of my funk once the fall gets further under way and I notice the walnut sweetness of fallen leaves in the morning air and become grateful for any rose still blooming along Brussels’ chestnut lined avenues. But in the meantime, I just make the best of the transition and come up with lists.

Lists are somewhat of an obsession. I’ve been an inveterate list maker since my childhood. My mom treasures a compilation of “books I am going to write” that I came up with at the age of 12. They include “The History of India,” “The History of Greece” and “Constantinople, Jewel of the Byzantine Empire.” (Why on earth did I study political science at the university and not history, I now wonder.) I’m less ambitious these days and instead I just make lists of dishes to cook, places to explore in Brussels, perfumes to try or books to read.

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The Belgian province of Limburg is an expanse of green fields punctuated by neat red brick towns. Although Brussels is a much more laid-back and calm city in comparison to London, Paris or Berlin, as I stroll through the woods near Hasselt, Limburg’s capital, I feel as if I just left a bustling metropolis. It’s all serenity, stone church spires and the soft rustle of leaves in the trees lining the river. And the rich perfume of lavender.

Although lavender is usually associated with Provence, there is a 4 hectare farm near Herkenrode in Limburg, and it’s open for the summer. “Yes, we have lavender in bloom, and it’s a genuine variety, not lavandin,” I was told by a lady at the nursery. “Please visit before we harvest it.” The following weekend my husband and I drove one hour to Limburg to see the lavender fields of Belgium.

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Even if you live in a city with lots of perfume shopping options, sooner or later you discover that buying fragrance online can be simpler and cheaper. You google the name of your favorite scent, and lo and behold, it’s offered on Ebay, strawberry.net or fragrancenet for considerably less than at a brick & mortal retailer. Moreover, the choice is vast, from popular best-sellers like Hugo Boss to niche stars like Serge Lutens. The only question, is it safe to make a purchase?

The answer is no, it’s not 100% safe, but the level of risk varies. The list of aforementioned sites can be expanded to include dozens of others, and while they have different standards and selling angles, most of them are not authorized retailers for the brands they carry.  What they offer is grey market inventory, which includes goods that are imported from abroad and sold outside of the manufacturer’s official channels of distribution.

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