Jezebel
So there's a story by Jim Lewis on Slate about perfume. Not just about perfume, though — about writing about perfume. The story is linked to a book called Perfumes: The Guide, by husband and wife team Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez. I used to write about music, which I always thought was really tough; somehow the vocabulary ("upbeat, sing-along, power-pop" or "the songs meandered, looped, tinkled out or built to a dramatic orchestral crescendo") always seemed forced and limited. But describing a scent seems even more challenging. Lewis points out that the words perfumers use: amber, citrus, floral — are pretty vague. But! Luca Turin describes Fracas thusly: "A friend once explained to me how Ferrari achieves that gorgeous red: first paint the car silver, then six coats of red, then a coat of transparent pink varnish..." Can you smell it? Glossy, bright and sharp.
That review is poetic, but the one for Lalique's Le Perfum is more direct: ("Vile, cheap, obnoxiously chemical... I hope to live long enough to see this sort of faceless dreck wiped off the face of the earth. Nice bottle.") Some of the reviews get straight to the point ("The bathrooms in hell smell like this.") and others invoke vivid imagery ("a shrill little floral that feels like music heard through someone else's headphones") but one in particular caught Lewis' eye: It's for a perfume called Sacrebleu:
"If you travel at night on Europe's railways, near big stations you can sometimes see lights the size a teacup nestled between the rails, shining the deepest mystical blue-purple light through a filthy Fresnel glass. They appear to be permanently on, suggesting that the message they convey the train driver is an eternal truth. Since childhood I have fancied the notion that it may not be a trivial one like 'Buffers ahead' but something numinous and unrelated to duty, perhaps 'Life is beautiful' or some such. Sacrebleu has the exact feel of those lights, a low hum that may be eclipsed by diurnal clamor but rules supreme when, at 3 a.m., you know you're looking into your true love's eyes even though you can't see them."Yeah, so the perfume smells good. One can assume. But here's a question: Have you ever purchased a fragrance after reading about it? Can reading about a perfume make you want to buy it? And how would you describe your favorite scent? (Bonus if you don't use the words "clean" or "fresh".) Or do you just judge a perfume by its bottle?
The Sweet Smell of Success [Slate]
Comments
considering i mix my own smell from various bath&body works sprays, i'm not much of an authority. however, i've read several reviews of this book and i really would like to read it.
The Emperpr of Scent, a nonfiction book about Luca Turin, was one of the best books I've read this decade. Do yourselves a favor and pick it up.
I had a very brief email correspondence with Turin. He's a brilliant, brilliant man, and he's easily the most talented nose alive.
I've only worn two perfumes in my life, Sensi (I think it's Armani) and Coco Chanel Mademoiselle.
I still have no idea why I purchased either.
Analyzing perfume gives me a headache.
I'm a leather girl myself. My favorite perfume is a Chanel scent called Cuir de Russie (or Russian Leather.) You really can smell the leather, in a good way.
Sure I can describe my favorite purfume's scent: Lillies!
..... it's a favorite followed closely by the smell of men. I do love me some good man scent. Clean, dirty, sweaty, I'll take it all. All I ask is that he be attractive and naked in my bed, and I almost guarantee I'll like it. The smell, that is. Other things aren't so easily guaranteed, and it's tragic.
I've been wearing Lolita Lempicka for 4 years (shown in the image above), so let me try to describe it -
The scent of Parisian woman's skin after she has taken her bath and air-dried in front of the flowers in her window.
@♥ dosido ☮: s/b "Emperor of Scent". I wish he still had his blog "Perfume Notes" going, but the archive is great.
My husband buys perfume for me based solely on the name. Thus, I own "Pleasures," "Intense Pleasures," and "Amour Amour."
None of them smell very good, unfortunately.
Er, the perfume I wear daily was a Christmas present from my boyfriend. (DKNY Be Delicious.) It smells like apples. Basically my criteria for perfume is "Will boyfriend like it?" (since he's the one who has to smell me) and "Does it make me happy?" But my special-occasion perfume will always be Ready by A&F, because it makes boys want to have sex with me. Seriously, it smells amazingly sensual. Even girls are a little more affectionate when I wear it. I swear there are pheromones in it.
Hey! that's my perfume bottle you're showing - please don't show it. noone i know wears it and i'd like for it to NOT be popular. xthxbi
I wear Angel and it's pretty easy to describe. Chocolate.
You can't just purchase a fragrance after reading about it because you never know how somethings gonna react with your skin and pherormones or whatever the shit. but you can be intrigued. and suspicious.
i do wanna buy that rose/weed perfume that someone makes (i think its fresh?) because how could i not love it.
I admit, the Cannabis Rose review in the Times style magazine a few weeks back has made me want to scoot to a Fresh store and sniff away.
@brendastarlet: mmm...men's fragrances. I am currently into Vera Wang for men, but I also enjoy Dolce and Gabbana's Light Blue (for women). When I feel extra girly I wear Paris, which is the truest rose I've found. I also like Tresor in moderation.
I wish I could get my hands on some Jicky, but I don't trust ebay sellers and I don't have several hundred bucks to drop on a 'fume. But damn, Jicky has the best sillage ever.
@ineffable.me: jinx, darling.
Also, I think the book Perfume by Patrick Suskind does a great job of describing scents, from putrid to tantalizing to virginal
@bonnilicious: I wear it - we're the only ones in on the secret :)
@girlscoutcookie (ΔΔΔ): My sister wore Be Delicious for her wedding, so I will always associate it with Hawaii and Happy Times. I like it a lot as a summer fragrance. (Can y'all tell this is a passionate subject for me? GOD, I love scent.)
@sheistolerable: mmmmm, Angel is my favorite. Chocolate with spicy orange.
I have a bottle of Le Feu d'Issey that smells like ginger sprinkled on Froot Loops.
I bought Marc Jacobs cucumber because I read about it, but only after smelling it and carrying a sample around in my car.
My favorite smell is easy to describe: All detergent's Fresh Rain. If they made a perfume version, I'd wear the crap out of it. I refuse to switch to eco-friendly detergent because I know it won't smell as good.
I bought YSL's Young Sexy Lovely after reading a great review.
I bought my signature perfume, Gucci Envy, when I was 15 (10 years ago) and have been wearing it ever since. It smelled like Paris to me. Very glamourous, very urban, very far from floral. It's hard and unforgiving, but never owerpowering. For some reason it makes me think of wet city streets at night.
All I know is my reaction to perfumes is always visceral and not usually tied to reality.
I have the one in the pic! It was a gift from my mom. It's ok. The box was pretty.
@nadarine: Hee, you gotta use "darling" in a perfume thread. It just fits.
I wear Michael by Michael Kors, which is intensely floral and smells like the Middle East, summer flowers and sex all rolled into one. For the winter its Chanel Allure Sensuale, a muskier sexier version of regular allure.
For a budget, a sexy sexy smell is the Body Shop's White Musk. love it. I followed a girl around for a while just to ask her what it was.
Funny. I use the words sex and sexy but actually sex smell in a bottle would be funny and a little skeevy (as a perfume that is) - I guess we like smells that only REMIND us of the sex.
Every other month in Allure, there's a goddamn ten page article about perfume.
STOP IT. YOU'VE SAID EVERYTHING THERE IS TO SAY.
my favorite scent floats on the wings of fairies and happy unicorns. It shimmers, iridescent- flickering in the breeze. those days when I wander aimlessly down a narrow side street lost in the wonder of city life and grime the incredible luscious scent of my perfume comes to me in a whirl of impossible pink dreams. The bottle is of course a purple phallic horn of pleasure.
Yeah, I like the citrus smells, so it's hard to describe tham using any word other than citrus. The bastards keep discontinuing the ones I like though, Bath and Body Works' Citrus Punch, The Gap's Day, it's sick really. I can't be the only person in the world that likes smelling like an orange.
I had someone describe Jo Malone 'Pomegranate Noir' to me (ex-gf) and I went out and bought it with out smelling it.
It is fantastic, very dark, and just heavenly.
I initially pick scents because I just like them, but then they become attached to moments in my life, and that's what they remind me of. Like Bath and Body Works Peach and Country Apple lotions remind me of high school, Malibu Musk reminds me of being 12 and Ralph Lauren Polo Sport for Women (in the blue bottle) reminds me of Jamaica.
Warm - can I use the word warm?
My perfume smells warm. Like flowers bathing in the sun. Not too floral, not sickly sweet flowers. Instead, like more exotic flowers you'd find resting near some dark-barked tree. White and purple flowers embraced by the sun, the trees and the wind. The kind you'd want to roll around in and fell caress you. You'd want to pluck these flowers from their deep roots; but you won't, not yet. You'd wait for the perfect moment.
ahhahah I tried. I just pick a perfume that makes me want to sleep with myself.
I'm not a big perfume person. With shampoos and lotions I don't see the need to add another smell in the mix.
I must have a shit nose because it all smells the same to me.
But I love it when guys smell good.
I only buy a perfume after spraying it on myself in the store and smelling it throughout the day. Right now my favorite is Viktor & Rolf's Flowerbomb and the smell reminds me of cotton candy without being too sweet and sticky.
@denapsu: I wore White Musk all through Middle School. Reminds me of school dances
I wouldn't buy perfume after reading about it, but I'm not above creepily sniffing strangers' necks and asking in a voice similar to Will Arnett what they happen to be wearing. That or I just pick up whatever bottle has Paris Hilton on the packaging and go with that.
My rules for perfume:
1. I must love it at first sniff.
2. It must make me happier for having smelled it.
3. It cannot in any way remind me of my grandma's Avon perfumes, which all smelled the same to me. Like window cleaner.
I'll give anything a sniff. 95% of perfumes, though, don't pass test #3, let alone 1 & 2.
@♥ dosido ☮: I also love Aqua di Parma, which I bought in Europe several years back, and when I was younger I wore 4711. (Now I think it's a little sweet...)
By the way, Jezzies, in France this is the Fete de Muguet (lilly of the valley.) The street venders sell little bouquets that people give to their friends. So here are muguets for everyone.
[danae.mon-blog.org]
@toubab: Gucci Rush smells filthy in a marvelous way. It makes me think of a woman who just had surreptitious afternoon sex and hurriedly spritzed herself with something spicy to cover up the sex musk (but didn't quite succeed). YUM. It's a dirty, dirty fragrance that will get you seriously noticed.
@RyanB: What a beautiful description!
@girlscoutcookie (ΔΔΔ): "Does it smell like food"? is a BIIIIIG determining factor for me in choosing fragrance. No joke.
Also, can anyone actually tell the difference between the little scented perfume sample "inserts" you get in magazines? They all smell the same to me, and that smell is Eau d'Interior of my Grandmother's 1973 Mercury Cougar.
i wear stella mccartney rose absolute and i love it... i just wear what my boyfriend likes and he picked that one out... before that it was vera wang for women for the longest... are both pretty simple, but not sweet... i hate smelling like a candy store, but at the same time i don't want to smell like my grandma.
@GTCosita: Yeah, you've got to know how you feel wearing the perfume before you can invest $100 in a bottle of it. Sephora testers, I found, are def the way to go
@♥ dosido ☮: My all-time favorite men's fragrance will forever be Fierce by Abercrombie. I feel a little gross liking anything they make, but I can't help it-- it's so hot. Freshman year I was sitting in my then-boyfriend's room waiting for him to get ready to go out, and his roommate was getting ready too, and we had this conversation as he was preparing to put on his cologne:
Boyfriend's Roommate: Watch out GSC, you're about to want to have sex with me after I put this on.
Me: Is it Fierce?
BF's RM: Yep.
Me: Then yes. Yes, I am.
To this day I kind of find it irresistible, even though my boyfriend doesn't wear it. He wears Kenneth Cole Reaction, which is nice too, but not the same.
@bonnilicious: That bottle is in every Nordstrom catalog they send me.
Sorry, secret's been out for awhile. :(
@Philthyist will cut a bitch.: Ah yes. Old Spice, no?
@RyanB: I wore it in middle school too. It reminds me of a summer camp I went to because the dorm room I stayed in reeked of it.
I'm old-scshool with Anais Anais - which smells, um...clean and fresh.
Sorry, I suck at descriptions!
Just got obsessed with parfume recently, and so I bought The Guide when it came out.
It's informative, but annoying. Luca Turin is kind of a blowhard, a chemist obsessed with the "architecture" of scents (it's science!! and very masculine!!).
I prefer the blogs, usually run by awesome, intelligent and discerning lady-folk:
nowsmellthis.blogharbor.com
perfumeposse.com
boisdejasmin.typepad.com
I love vanilla scents...mmmm
My freshmen year roommate still wore Love's Baby Soft (it was five years ago). She was die hard about it too. I don't even know if that qualifies as an actual perfume. Maybe a JV precursor to perfume...
A prof of mine once described his colleague/colleague's office as smelling of "equal parts ass and Febreeze." It got the point across pretty damn accurately.
I wear the Demeter perfumes that are one single scent--my favorite is "Wet Garden." I like smelling and smelling like fresh-cut grass. Everything else smells like fruity air freshener to me.
This thread is making me want to have sex. Goddammit.
My friend used to work for Women's Fragrance and now works Jo Malone so I wear whatever freebies/testers he gives me when I go visit him or when he pays me in perfume when I help him move. Luckily it snagged me Coco Chanel Mademoiselle which my bf loved so much he used it as a ROOM SPRAY, yeah, I shrieked for a good two minutes when he told me.
@nadarine: oh darling, what does that say about us?
I think describing perfumes is similar to describing wine. 45% actual taste/scent, 45% flowery words and BS, 10% lofty presentation.
@denapsu: Many courtesans used their own natural...er...we'll call it "musk", dotted behind their ears and on their pulse points. Kinda gross, but an intriguing idea.
Right now I alternate between Annick Goutal Songes (a cl