perfume (2)
Posted 24 March, 2006 in that is f'ed up.
How do you figure out what perfume to wear these days? As far as I know, they don’t give out those tiny sample bottles anymore. I saw some in Chinatown but they cost money. In the drugstore, they keep them behind glass, and there is never anyone around to help you, nor are there sample bottles on the counter. In the department store it’s easier, but it’s hard to get a feel for a perfume with only one spray of it.
Smells are so important to me. My mom wore Chanel No. 5, and my grandma wore Red by Giorgio. I love both those smells. A friend in high school liked to wear all the Estee Lauder perfumes, and another friend just wore Tea Rose. Other people smell of their shampoo, or their hair product, or even their deodorant. Or BO if you’re unlucky. My dad wears Chanel for Men, which I also love: that plus cigarettes is the way he’s always smelled, and when he hugs me he leaves it on me. I don’t mind at all though. O wears Jean-Paul Gaultier, which comes in the gayest bottle ever, a muscular naked man-torso. It smells fantastic, very subtle and sweet. An ex-boss of mine used to wear the stinkiest cologne in the whole universe. It smelled like greasy old man and Brylcreem. He smoked cigars, which made him reek all the more. I hated him because of it, and I could always smell his stench as soon as he entered the office building.
I’ve worn White Musk by the Body Shop forever. I love it, but I’m looking for something new. Funnily enough, I’ve heard Britney Spears’ Curious smells really good. It would be hilarious to wear Britney Spears perfume, but I think it is $60, which is not so funny. But I can’t find a tester of it anywhere.
And I have a limited smell vocabulary: I know I like melissa, lily of the valley, and freesia, and hate patchouli (scent of hippy), overly peppery scents, and anything too sweet-smelling. That’s it; that’s all I know. It means nothing to me that a perfume has notes of violet leaves and neroli–who’s ever smelled those things? I don’t even know what a neroli is. (Wikipedia tells me it is oil from the bitter orange tree.) And base notes, heart notes, and top notes? Dude, I’m not a perfumier. I need to smell it myself.
Then there is the factor of whether O likes the perfume I choose. I don’t want my husband to think I smell bad, or not want to be around me because he hates the stink emanating from me. And he is a very particular kind of fellow. There are many smells he doesn’t like. I could take him around to department stores with me and smell perfumes, but he would inevitably find one that stunk really bad, and it would put him off smelling any others. Then we would go home perfumeless once again.
I guess I will just have to go to the department store, spray three different perfumes on three different areas of each arm, and smell them compulsively all day while trying to remember what each one is called. If one of them stinks, though, I will be in trouble. Either that or impulse-buy as soon as I smell something good, then have it fade five minutes later, or start to reek horribly and force me to wash it off. Either way my nose will stop working after about half an hour.
Right now, though, I am going to approach my perfume dilemma the same way I approach everything: by being a dork and doing research. I will even make notes. That will narrow my choices when I go to the department store, and I will know immediately what to smell first. I am so anal-retentive that I am actually beginning to suck household objects up my ass. But I will have good perfume. Oh, yes, I will.