Summer Dulldrums

I keep trying to remember where I was this time last year, because the mood I've been in for the past month or so feels very familiar, and I want to think it's some sort of seasonal affective disorder which takes root right after Spring. Nothing depresses me more than Summer. I can count on one finger the fresh scents I like, and I'm not a heat person, though after fifteen years in the South I've developed a thick enough skin to get me through to October without incident. I admit, a few of the fragrances I like end up on people's Spring and Summer lists, but I tend to wear them in the Winter, preferring their crisp sensibility in a colder climate. The seasonal flankers rarely interest me. My skin seems to sweat away whatever I spray at it in a matter of minutes.

This is all another way of explaining why, like Abigail, I haven't been writing much lately, I guess.

And yet I keep wearing, and keep trying to wear, and keep smelling. It's just that I'm not as inspired as I get during the Fall and Winter seasons. And a funny thing happens; when I surrender a little, and give up trying to make sense of Spring and Summer fragrances so single-mindedly, I return to the things I truly like, and see them in an entirely new context.

Last year, the catalyst was Habanita. I love Habanita in the Winter but to me it had always seemed a study in powdered excess. In the heat, the powder dried away, leaving all the tobacco I'd always heard about but failed to see. It became this amazingly smoky, sultry thing. And yet if you ask almost anyone, Habanita (and many other fragrances I love) are strictly back shelf material until October rolls back into view.

What I'm starting to realize is that, while yes, there are plenty of scents which speak to a season in some site-specific way, the idea of seasonal fragrance in general is as much of a marketing tool as gendered fragrance is. I knew this, but never thought too much about it. Taken to its logical conclusion, it means that what really changes seasonally are our perceptions, so that it isn't necessarily about buying something different as seeing the same thing in a different way. No marketer would let that theory fly out the boardroom.

Yesterday I tried Bijan for Men, and was amazed by it. I'm wearing it today. It has a wonderful orange undertone, some oakmoss, nutmeg, clove, carnation, cinnamon, fir, honey, florals, leather. Aside from the orange, these are not the kind of pyramid players you see allowed off the bench during June, July, and August, and yet you put them on that stove and they start to cook in a fantastic way. I can smell Bijan and I know that almost everything I'm loving about it at the moment is something that would be dormant during the Winter. The stuff I'm liking most would be inert without the heat.

A few other fragrances I found the heat to reactivate for me lately have been: Shocking by Schiaparelli, Lush Karma, Serge Lutens Chypre Rouge, and Kenzo Elephant.

I'd love to hear your allegedly counter-intuitive Not-So-Summer Summer discoveries...