polls: 59 posts

Today is Bastille Day in France, so if you’re celebrating, I wish you clear skies and beautiful fireworks.

My topic for today seems straightforward–you open a bottle of perfume and just spray wherever you want, but every perfumista has her favorite tricks.  So, how do you wear perfume? Do you dab behind the ears, spray all over, walk through the scented mist? What’s your favorite way to perfume yourself?

The trick I learned from my mom is to apply fragrance when I’m fully dressed, so that a bit lingers on my clothes. Fabric retains fragrance really well, and this kind of application can be a great sillage booster for ethereal fragrances like anything from the Hermessence collection or L’Artisan Parfumeur. On the other hand, heavier blends work well dabbed right on skin. I apply Guerlain Shalimar parfum by dabbing a bit under my collar bone, on my wrists and behind my knees (to help the scent rise up).

Photography by Bois de Jasmin: escargots and hamburgers food truck.

A wonderful thing about blogging is that it allows me to meet people from different countries and places. I have become friends with perfume lovers in Japan, Nigeria, New Zealand, and South Africa, to name only a few places I haven’t yet visited. Some of you also live in small towns in the US and you’ve shared your recollections of their own unique scents.  I wish I could visit them all!  We would walk around the streets, spot the blooming plants, pick up pine cones and notice that the diner across the street smells richly and pungently of frying bacon.

A couple of weeks ago, I ran a poll about bottling the scents of your city, and the responses were so moving and fascinating that I thought that it would be fun to compile them into a post. So, let’s create a scented map and describe the places where we live in terms of their smells. If you haven’t participated yet, you can leave a comment here or email me your responses at editor at boisdejasmin dot com.  I will then put together a post with your comments. Don’t worry about duplicating the cities–my New York or San Francisco might smell very differently from yours. Also, don’t shy away from including the less savory smells. The sour run offs from the fishmongers in Chinatown may not be pleasant on a hot summer day, but they are a part of the city’s olfactive profile.

Spring in Kiev, photography by Bois de Jasmin, all rights reserved

My internet connection is intermittent this weekend, so I may be a bit late in responding to the comments.

According to conventional fragrance marketing, most women run screaming from animalic notes, unless they are the clean, laundry type musks. Anything that smells too untoward or raunchy is a taboo. Now for most of you it may not be the case, but as I hear over and over again about the “fear of anything dirty,” I wonder what you think about it. Do you like animalic notes or detest them? What are your favorite “dirty” perfumes?

I enjoy the animalic notes in vintage fragrances like Chanel Cuir de Russie, Robert Piguet Bandit and Estee Lauder Azuree, which smell like a well-worn leather jacket. Serge Lutens Muscs Koublaï Khan is a fragrance I wear on a regular basis for its delicious rose wrapped in dark musk. L’Artisan Dzing! smells both like wet cardboard and a warm fur coat.

My favorite animalic perfume though is something called Lola. She’s my mom’s cat and she smells of soft musk and cedarwood.

I was always the kind of person who planned her meals around desserts. I thought nothing of having a chocolate cake for breakfast and ice cream for dinner. But as time went by, my sweet tooth diminished somewhat. This morning as I was trying to pick out a pastry for breakfast, I surprised myself when I reached for a salty pretzel instead of a chocolate filled croissant.

When it comes to perfumes, on the other hand, I was never a fan of sweet, sugary blends, preferring the salty vetivers, green irises and tangy orange blossoms. Yet, as my dessert cravings diminish, I find myself craving vanilla and caramel in my fragrances. Today I’m wearing Parfums de Nicolaï Vanille Tonka and enjoying its smoky vanilla custard whipped with toasted almonds and cinnamon.

What about you? Do you have a sweet tooth or do you prefer salt, in both food and perfumes?

Photography by Bois de Jasmin, all rights reserved.

The other day I was walking through New York’s Chinatown, and I realized that I kept smelling a strange melange of scents: rotting vegetable peels, run offs from fish mongers, linden blossoms and salty sea air. It hardly sounds like a perfume to dab on your wrists, but those are the scents of my city. Also, I can’t forget the exhaust fumes, metallic dust, hot asphalt, freshly baked bread, and wet grass in Central Park.

What about the place where you live? If you were to bottle the scents of your town, what would they include?

Wishing everyone a great Memorial Day weekend!