This Week at the Perfume Counter: In which your roving I Smell Therefore I Am reporter makes the marketplace rounds, nostrils flared

I keep going back to the Estee Lauder counter. Do I want Sensuous? I can't decide. I do and I don't and I might and maybe, don't pressure me. Everyone says it smells great for an Estee Lauder fragrance, but I tend to scratch my head at that, and not because it itches. I continue to be surprised at the House of Lauder: this week, by Beautiful. What an incredible, gooey, tobacco rose. Try to convince me otherwise. The more I smell Bernard Chant's work, the more astonished I am. Azuree, Aliage--even Estee, which many consider some kind of mistake. Is it because I grew up smelling the Lauder line that I love the fragrances so much? My mother had a half-empty/half-full bottle of Youth Dew on her dresser. It still might be there. I loved the gold bow affixed to the elastic band. I loved the smell, which seemed so dated it had pushed back into the future going in the opposite direction. I can't remember who had Estee on her dresser; possibly my paternal grandmother. I stood before her bureau smelling from the open bottle, which she displayed on a gilt, mirrored tray. It smelled fantastic then and smells even better now, with an emotional pull to it from accumulated memories. A brighter, more startling cousin to Chanel 5 and Arpege. Its silver cap seemed perfectly apt to me at the time. There was something chilly about it, like iced flowers.

Friday at the mall, the Lauder counter was unattended. A pretty blond came over to help but didn't know whether they stocked Tuberose Gardenia. She did price Sensuous for me, and told me, as they all do, how fantastic it smells, as if, being a guy, I can't smell a difference between, say, Joy and Ajax. Yes, yes, I said, fantastic, fantastic. After pricing Sensuous for me, she left, explaining that whoever usually worked Lauder was, like, in the bathroom maybe and would be back later, presumably in case I needed someone to tell me how good something else smelled. I left and went across the hall to Perfumania, which sometimes requires a great deal of patience. The staff there works on commission and, I'm told by someone who migrated to Macy's, are encouraged to sell, sell, sell. It isn't enough that you buy a bottle of Posion. You must also buy Ralph Lauren Pure Turquoise, and lotion, and here, what about this, and this other thing, and--hello, where'd you go? Someone at corporate believes there's no hope of a return customer at Perfumania--the client walks in, crazed, buys on impulse, then leaves, forever--so why bother with subtlety?

I'd just smelled Cinnabar and wanted to compare it to Opium. I also wanted to know the difference between the three Opium flankers Perfumania stocks, but I've been down that dead end road before. They have no idea. Better luck on the website, which has no pictures for these and offers no clearer an idea. My favorite saleswoman was there (I call her Gladys). She knows I have a problem and need zero encouragement. I'll be back no matter what happens, again and again and again, often several days in a row. If the whole city evaporated in a strange toxic cloud overnight I would still drive over, out of habit, exiting my car, walking directly to the location of Perfumania, without noticing its conspicuous absence, until I stood on its once-hallowed ground or whatever and looked up and was like, oops, oh yeah, that apocalypse thing. Gladys has her tester strips ready in one hand as I approach, a pen in the other. Hello, Brian, she says. What are you buying today? When I leave, Gladys doesn't say good-bye or come see us again. She says, see you tomorrow.

I couldn't tell the difference between Opium and Cinnabar and figured I'd allowed sufficient time for a bathroom break, so I returned to the Lauder counter. It was still unattended, and the blond was gone now, too, but a rather dour young lady approached me, or rather, waited for me to approach her. Did I imagine a tone of impatience in her voice? I wanted to price Private Collection. My sister used to wear it and it smells so-

Yeah yeah, hold on a second, her demeanor said. She was back there reaching around in the display case like a blind woman, and I thought, dare I guide her? She didn't seem like the type who wanted the raft at her drowning moment, unless she could be made to feel she'd found it and inflated it herself. It's right there, I started to say. Yeah, I know, she snapped. I'm just trying to blah blah blah, as if I'd interrupted a delicate procedure and now she'd have to start all over. Hmm, she practically yawned, once she'd extracted the Private Collection. "We have one pocket size and one larger but the larger is a spray and the pocket is a roll-on so your best bet is to go with the larger." I could plainly see, reading the boxes, that both were spray bottles, but didn't point this out. And how much is the Estee, I asked, once she'd priced the PC. Very cheap, it turned out, as the Lauders usually are. I took one of each. Ringing me up, she entered 3333 instead of 33, and was suddenly humble, as if I might run to the bathroom and report her mistake to the Lauder rep.

Other purchases this week included: Michael for men, Romeo Gigli Sud Est, Magie Noire (the old one), and ENjoy. I should point out that of all the perfume counters I've been to in the last few weeks, with the exception of Memphis Fragrance (which is always friendly), Walgreens was the most helpful. Imagine that.

YSL and the Nu Wave: A Review

Much has been made of Nu’s unisex appeal. There’s no mistaking the floral accord, but the alleged white orchid here is no more prevalent than the iris in Dior Homme, and tempered similarly by contrasting influences (in Dior’s case, leather; in Nu’s, pepper and incense). Both have a heavy waft of powder about them. Is powder feminine? Someone tell Habit Rouge. This is a tiresome line of argument, as which scent should and should not be worn by one sex or the other is a now nearly cro-magnum hang-up. Fragrance augments persona, and personality transforms perfume, creating context and reference point: thus, a man in Nu is a unique assertion of masculinity, and a woman wearing it has the forceful charisma of a truck driver (and yes, some men like that kind of thing. Give them the chance to discover it). A sexier masculine than its wan aquatic contemporaries, smokier than most feminine fragrances dare, Nu is quintessentially bisexual. Ford thrives on such complex cross-references and gender conflations. To wear Nu, Black Orchid, or M7 is to dispense with broad generalization, engaging the intellect of wearer and witness in an unspoken dialog about the myths of he and she. Nu harkens back to Habanita and Bandit in its heightened ambiguity, looking forward to a time when the male and female sections at Sephora will collapse into one and the same thing.

For the rest of this review and others, visit perfumecritic.com.

Dandy of the Day: Tilda Swinton

Actors are vain, needy creatures. Do they look okay? Are you sure? Should they do it again? They could do it louder. They could do it with more enthusiasm. They could do it as if they were a woman who's just lost her dog. Do you like them? Do you really like them? Most actors need to know. They need to be at the white hot burning center of your attention. If they can't be, they might die. We all might die. What actors do is of world importance: more important than war, famine, sickness, crime. Actors cure all those things just by speaking out--about their views, their experiences, their favorite colors. They want you to know: they're special. They want you to know you're special, so you can thank them for pointing it out to you. It goes without saying: without them, you wouldn't be special at all. It goes without saying but they're saying it anyway. If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there, who hears it, unless the actor is present and can then report it through various actor-y techniques. It's impossible to watch most actors on screen without wondering how many people they've thrown hairbrushes at, but there are exceptions among these exceptional beings, and one of those exceptional exceptions would seem to be Tilda Swinton. She doesn't play lesbian serial killers, true, but packing on pounds is a little excessive, if you ask her, just to show you aren't afraid of looking homely, especially when it's vital to you that everyone knows you're truly not. She shows up on the red carpet in Issey Miyake, looking like origami. She has no shame. She'll play man, woman, whatever. She leaves you to figure it out. She works with small directors, odd little films, and big budget headliners, even blockbusters. She speaks out without patting herself on the back. She doesn't pretend to be self-deprecating. In her personal life, which is mostly, blessedly, personal, she's her own person. Still devoted to the father of her ten year-old twins, she is also with actor/artist Sandro Kopp. Don't ask if you don't want to know; otherwise, she'll tell you. It's not like they're robbing banks or something. They're all together, though not in that Bruce Willis, Demi Moore, Ashton Kucher way. Swinton is our dandy of the day for this unfussy candor and many other reasons, and judging by her fashion forwardness, which is practically futuristic, we suspect she would wear something niche. We suggest Iris Silver Mist or Tubereuse Criminelle, if she doesn't know about them already (if she does, she likely heard of them long before we did). Both are nearly avant-garde in their strange interplay of pretty and potent, angular and full-bodied, dirty and petite. Some would encourage you to wait an hour or two after application before entering out into the world. Use caution with these two, they'd say. Tilda would say those first two hours are the very best.

Freedom, Choices & Perfume

Yesterday was the 4^th of July, Independence Day in the good ole USA. This got me thinking in a broad sense about freedom, independence and choices.

Specifically I’ve been thinking about consumer choices and how they impact the economy. We all make consumer choices, constantly, that seem inconsequential, but are in fact, critically important. Companies spend millions of dollars on advertising, marketing and market research. Market research fascinates me. Market research is about you and me and our choices and why we decide to buy brand A over brand B. Marketing lures you, courts you, romances you into liking their brand and ultimately purchasing their brand. I don’t view advertising as a means of dictating how I should feel/think/act/purchase, I view ads as the companies’ attempt to grab my attention and make me like them and want to buy their product. So, in this sense, I evaluate and choose everything I purchase with this in mind. I have all sorts of reasons behind the products that I buy and won’t buy.

Here are some examples:

1. Tom’s of Maine, the image they create is of a natural, fair, “good-people” sort of company. I read several years ago that Tom, the CEO and his wife are actively anti-choice/anti-abortion and that a percentage of their profits fund right-wing anti-choice movements. I’ve never bought a Tom’s of Maine product again.

2. Cage free, organic eggs and free range chickens. I refuse to purchase Perdue, Tyson or any of the appalling offenders of holocaust-like death camps for chickens. I realize all the chickens are going to die and be eaten, but I will not be the consumer who gives this type of company a market. I will eat chicken and eggs from companies that allow the poor beasts to live a decent existence before they reach my dinner table.

3. Etsy. I love the idea of Etsy. I wish I'd thought of it. I love supporting individual artists that would otherwise never be able to attract my attention. Etsy is fantastic, I will continue to purchase from the individuals on Etsy.

4. Trader Joe’s is the best grocery store I’ve ever come across. Trader Joe’s has great prices for gourmet goods that would cost 3x as much anyplace else. Trader Joe’s treats their employees well, you can tell, they are happy to work there. Trader Joe’s is thoughtful and careful about the products they carry and the products they put their label on.

5. I’m finally getting to Perfume. So far the only perfumer/ brand that I cannot purchase is Tom Ford. Tom Ford crossed a line for me with his Tom Ford for Men ads. I’m totally fine with sexy ads, nudity, whatever. Sex sells so many products and I’m cool with that. I don’t want censorship, whatsoever, so I would much rather see all sorts of Tom Ford ads than to have him censored. However, I can *choose* not to buy Tom Ford perfumes. This is my own personal boycott of Tom Ford. Just for the record, I found his ads to be tired, shoddy, degrading, pathetic and inhuman. Inhuman is the worst offense for me. But most importantly, it's just plain boring. Yeah, I get it, sex sells. Is this the best you can do Tom Ford? Lube up a few pre-pubescent-looking girls and stick a bottle in their privates? If this *were* pornography, then fine, that's what it's supposed to be, close-ups of naked women. But this is meant to sell cologne, you couldn't think of anything more interesting? The models look like lifeless mannequins. They don’t have heads, faces, eyes -- they are soul-less. They don’t have pores or a single wisp of hair. But I guess that's the point. Tom Ford’s ads are shocking, and certainly cause one to stop and take notice, so they’re great ads in that sense because that’s exactly what an advertiser is aiming for – to make the consumer notice. I must wonder to myself if I am the only one to decide -- that’s it -- no more Tom Ford for me? This is particularly difficult for me because of The Posh Peasant. Tom Ford Black Orchid is a popular perfume. What do I do when customers request it? There’s a new Tom Ford perfume launching this Fall, White Patchouli, everyone is going to want it, what do I do then?

These are the sorts of things that have been rolling around in my head the past 2 days….freedom, independence, and choices. I like having these choices, they define me, and they ultimately impact a company.

PS: So I’ve been stewing all day about whether I should post one of the Tom Ford ads that turned me against his ‘fumes. I’ve finally decided, of course not! So I chose an ad I like, that has nothing to do with anything….but I was free to make this choice.

Montale Sandflowers, A Review

Once Upon A Time…..back in 2001, Pierre Montale relocated to Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia Mr. Montale created perfumes for kings, queens, sultans and princesses, using eastern influences, precious woods, resins, florals, sweet gourmand delights and exotic spices. This is how Montale parfums began.

My first Montale experience is Sandflowers. The name seems impossible to me. Sand and flowers? Flowers growing out of dry sand? I honestly didn’t know what to expect. So, I spritzed and sniffed. At first it’s a big resinous, cinnamony, sandy, sweet cloud. You’ve got to give this one some time to settle. Once it begins to settle, perhaps 5 minutes later, the vision begins to emerge, I felt I could smell what Sandflowers was meant to evoke ~ an oasis in the middle of the desert. A small ocean paradise in the midst of a vast dry sandy blowing wasteland. A Salvador Dali painting perhaps? The ocean and the desert are equal partners both playing their roles in a friendly supportive manner. Sandflowers is just so odd, so unusual, I just have to sniff and sniff to try to figure out what sort of aromatic painting Pierre Montale created.

Once in the dry down phase I began to smell a big wide expansive openness, a breezy, slightly sand-pitted wind wafting over me as I sit next to the oasis, which is definitely salt water, with some seaweed and algae pushing up to the shore. The waves ebb and flow and the warm sun high above shines down on my skin and warms me. I am so comfortable in Sandflowers, it warms and relaxes me. I feel like I could close my eyes and soak up the sunshine, listen to the waves and smell the salty water and sand around me. This is gorgeous dry weather. I am such a hater of humidity that to smell Sandflowers and imagine this most beautiful sunny dry day is an olfactory delight. To call this a beachy scent would give you the wrong impression, especially if you think beach scents smell like coconut, pineapples and lush tropical fruits. But Sandflowers is a beachy scent, in the truest sense of what a beach smells like, minus the people wearing sun tan lotion. Actually minus any people, it’s just you, with a book, on the most gorgeous day, soaking up the sun, sand and salty water. I hesitate to use the word marine, since this doesn’t remind me of any other marine-type scents I’ve tried. Sandflowers is joyous. It smells like freedom and peace and relaxation and nature. I love it.

This is all I could find as far as a list of notes:
notes from the ocean combined with the coolness of juniper berries on a base of sandalwood and oakmoss.

PS: Montale parfums are potent, 2-3 spritzes are plenty, and the lasting power is amazing, at least 6 hours if not more.

Looky-loos

I can spend hours in the Korean-owned fragrance store here in town, going without food, water, sleep, or even contact with the outside world. The place has been a total education for me. Within a short three months I've been able to smell dozens of perfumes I might otherwise only have read about. The owner took over the store from his relatives, who operated the place for years, so a healthy percentage of the inventory dates back to pre-reformulation, meaning that even those I think I'm familiar with have the capacity to surprise me.

The first time I walked in, I spotted the old Montana for men. It has a great, bracing smell, cedar astringency, very nice. Adjacent to it was the newer formulation. The old is boxed in red, the new in blue. There's really no comparison. As often happens with old and new formulations, the two are completely different fragrances. The recently re-released Magie Noire, on sale at Perfumania, is a pale iteration of the original, which the Korean shop has. The original is strange and indolent--barely this side of foul, and wonderful for it. The re-release smells good, but really only indirectly references the original, the way a matchbox car does its source. Imitation of this kind requires crude generalization. Corners get rounded off. Suggestion substitutes for detail. Several of the perfumes the owner has carried haven't been reformulated, they're just hard to find: Issey Miyake's Le Feu D'Issey, Etienne Aigner No. 1, Yohji, K de Krizia. Every time I go in I see something new. One day I looked up and saw two quarter ounce bottles of Bandit pure parfum. The place is a museum, a history lesson, and a candy shop.

I ask a lot of questions. Who buys what, or does it actually sell at all? I won't bore you with how popular Paris Hilton's perfumes are. Because I'm there often and for significant blocks of time, I witness various shoppers come and go, and what they ask for fascinates me. I've yet to see anyone play. They come in looking for Mariah and that's what they want to see: not something different or even something like it. Recently a girl came in shopping for her boyfriend. He wears that, she said, pointing to Jean Paul Gaultier. This looked promising, until she said he has about ten bottles, all lined up in a row. She wanted to buy him something, but she wasn't sure what. He drives a nice car and he runs three businesses, she said. He dresses nice. I suggested Body Kouros, because no one else would be wearing it and it smells phenomenal. She liked it but she didn't know if he would.

"Now, is that in the same...what am I trying to say?" she said. "Are they in the same..."

Do you mean class? I asked. Do you mean Is Body Kouros in the same class as Gaultier?
"Yeah," she said. "The same, like, level."

So I told her that YSL, who'd just died, is to Jean Paul Gaultier as Leadbelly is to Rap. She'd never heard of Yves Saint Laurent and she didn't really care. She didn't want something nobody else was wearing. For her and her boyfriend, and for a lot of people, cologne is a label, to be recognized and to impress. She didn't end up buying anything.

Leaving a perfume shop without making a purchase is so unthinkable to me that I literally can't imagine it. So you're low on funds. Don't you want a sample? Aren't you curious about wild cards? What if the best perfume you've never smelled is sitting on one of those shelves somewhere? What if something up there smells a lot like the stuff you wear now, only better? Every time I'm standing there and someone walks in smelling of nothing, it hits me again, how few people actually wear cologne, and how few of those wear anything any good or which at least expresses something unique about them. When my co-worker started wearing CK1 I was so enthusiastic. It was so nice to have someone else's cologne to play off of. When I got Lolita Lempicka au Masculin I gave it to her. It reminded me of Lempicka for women, which I already had. By giving it to her, I could still smell it. She's the kind who goes through one bottle at a time--and only applies once a day, so it wouldn't be going anywhere soon.

I have a fantasy, and it goes like this: I walk into a perfume shop, and all the usual suspects are there, sniffing all the same old same olds. Then somebody off in the corner (I like to think a guy) lights up like someone stuck his finger in a socket. His eyes are huge. He has a bottle in his hand. I gather he's just smelled it. He speaks directly to me because I'm the only one paying attention. If I wasn't paying attention, he'd be talking to the shelf.

"This stuff is amazing. Oh my God Oh my God oh my God. How have I never smelled this? Did this just come out? And in Eau de Parfum. And by Maurice Roucel. It's practically edible. There's only one bottle left. There's only this tester. Do you think they'll sell it to me? Do you think I can talk them into it? I'm prepared to sell my body. I'd wash dishes if they had any. I can't leave without this. I have to have it. I have to have it right now."

Dandy of the Day: Vintage Mick Jagger

Well, no, certainly not now--but for a time, some time ago, briefly, during the sixties. When you look at Jagger these days, even in older pictures, it's difficult to see what he was; just as, when you smell L'Heure Bleue, it's hard to ascertain what exactly its impact would have been around the time it was released. You're told it must have been a phenomenal aberration in 1912, truly unusual, yet the overriding association, now, is a fussy elderly woman with a pink suit and a hair rinse to match, such that you don't really smell what the fragrance is, only what it recalls. In the sixties, Jagger specialized in a subversive renovation of the dandy aesthetic. Yes to ruffled shirts and Edwardian jackets. Yes to stovepipe pants and pointed shoes. Yes to long hair, yes to make-up on men, yes to painting vintage interiors with psychedelic colors, cultivated androgyny, easy virtue, yes all around. For many people, tearing down the boundaries of an established conservatism wasn't just a kick but a serious form of civil disobedience. A man can look like many things today but wearing make-up, as Jagger did in Performance, is still asking for it. Dancing as if a woman has possessed you and desperately wants out, as Jagger did on stage (see Gimme Shelter), is flaunting your perversion in a way that even gay men and maybe even women would find offensive today, because it frightens the horses, and gives the wrong idea, and no one will get anything, certainly not equal rights, if they don't work overtime to act like everyone else. Just say no to yes, in other words. Jagger hasn't helped things. On a good day, he looks like the establishment he once set about to overturn. On a bad day, he looks...rode hard and put up wet. Our dandy of the day is a snapshot from the near past. Try to see it clearly, without the goggles of conditioned disdain. In this photo, Jagger might be wearing Loulou, by Cacharel, the bottle of which, like the juice, recalls a practically ancient deco excess of style and luxury, beauty for beauty's sake. All yes, all the time.

Sharing the Wealth: From My Collection to Yours

Recently, I became an ambassador of good will for some of the perfumes I love. An exclusive boutique here in town, I just discovered, sells Bond No. 9, Fracas, Sisley, and Delrae, the line of fragrances created by Michel Roudnitska, son of Edmund, creator of Diorella, which makes him royalty in certain circles. The store sells Manolo Blahniks and Laboutin, Prada bags, high end jewelry and trinkets catering to a certain kind of fashionably aspirational clientele, the kind of women who shop while their husbands bank or barter. The Roudnitska line hasn’t done too well, and the manager, who’s heard of L’Artisan but not Serge Lutens, is discontinuing it. Bois de Paradis had clearly been the best seller, as there was none left. She had no intention of re-ordering.

Had she ever heard of Annick Goutal—or Montale? No, she cautiously admitted, but she’s interested in branching out with additional niche lines. You could tell this woman is at a crossroads. What to do, as a purveyor of luxury goods, when Sephora becomes your competition? No sense in stocking Paris and Elle if they can be had by a girl in a halter top and flip flops at the mall. You might as well sell Wind Song. Lutens is exactly the kind of thing these ladies would go ape-shit for; those sleek, anorexic bottles, their liquids various shades of wine, honey and grenadine. I’d never heard of the brand when I first saw the Lutens display at the Perfume House in Portland, and the bottles intrigued me with a gravitational pull I still don’t entirely understand.

It’s not that they look exclusive, or even particularly exceptional. Set alongside each other like a monochromatic bank of delicate glass brick, they look homogeneous, if anything. I suspect the fact that they don’t bother standing out makes them more appealing. They look like something no one has told you about because they haven’t yet noticed them sitting there. In a world of common knowledge, where everyone’s birth date, Social Security number, and bank pin can be found online, where you can track down the girl who spit on you during recess forty years ago simply by punching in a few otherwise random words, a secret is the equivalent of a Mercedes with seat warmers. Then again, Beanie Babies looked utterly unremarkable, and everyone wanted those.

I painted a picture for the manager, careful not to get carried away by my own enthusiasm. I need to think of her, I thought. I should think practically and base my suggestions on what will work. I’ll be helping no one, including myself, if I pimp Montale Aouds on her. They simply won’t sell. And then where will I be? Back to buying blind off the internet, with a scrubber to every keeper. While Fracas might move, would Bandit? I could see Baghari and Visa on the glass shelves with the bright light illuminating them from behind, those marvelous black bottles sitting there like discreet weapons, popping against the white background like flowers set off by aldehydes. I could see L’Artisan lids catching light, shooting it in criss-crossing beams over the ceiling. At the moment, Bond No. 9 arrays itself front and center in the store’s new perfume corner screaming fun, fun, for all a good time. So, yeah, that’s an easy lay. Beside them the Lutens would look uptight, if not totally frigid. Who wants to buy impotence? Considerable strategy would have to be applied. I decided the best bets were L’Artisan and Lutens, ultimately, supplemented by limited selections from Annick Goutal and some of the other niche lines, which meant Heure Exquise and Songes but probably not Sables.

This woman looked at me distrustfully, like most people do when you start making obvious your overwhelmingly unreasonable all-consuming obsession with fragrance. She can see my cabinet at home, I thought irrationally. She can see how it’s overflowing, threatening to take over another compartment, the contents of which will have to be moved to the attic. My family’s heirloom china or whatever it is will be stomped on and broken when I carry the tree up next year but I won’t care because my perfume has a safe place. She sees how I’m humoring myself for the time being by stacking boxes on top of the cabinet, as if there’s still room and I simply haven’t gotten around to putting them away yet. She sees the money I spend on cologne, the strange familiarity I’ve developed with salespeople at the mall’s discount kiosk and Perfumania. She sees me at Marshalls combing through Azzaro and Paul Sebastian boxes looking for a rare find, the second time this week. She sees my sickness writ large all over my face. What the hell does a person who isn’t making or selling cologne need with all that information? I believe she assumed I was in door-to-door sales, the guy who comes to your porch with a briefcase and a needy, familiar smile, refusing to leave until you’ve committed to a white leather bible with your grandmother’s name embossed in gold down the spine.

What I would be happy to do, I explained, is bring you a selection from my own private reserve. It was no newsflash to me that what I really wanted was to sit down with someone who’d never smelled Dzing! and watch her eyes pop, her cheeks blush, and that shock of recognition pass across her features, that feeling you get when you seize the unfamiliar, some little miracle of scent someone’s fit into a bottle. I wanted ever salesgirl on the floor to rush over, not to sell me the fruity banal nothingness of YSL Elle but to find out what the excitement was about over there where something like a meteor seemed to have landed, creating commotion. My mind was already hopping through the carefully stacked boxes in my Butler’s Pantry, which fit together like a puzzle and shift precariously according to my current field of interest. I told her I'd be back next week with a bag of bottles.

vintage perfume ad of the day: Giorgio Beverly Hills

What can you say about this perfume, application of which was practically mandated by law at one time? You see the packaging and a boat of memories comes floating back. In one of these memories, it's high school, between classes, and you're approaching the cool girls in the hallway, wishing you could evaporate, because you really don't feel like dealing with their shit, they're such a clique, really they just want to spread shit about people, which you could never really understand, because if you're so fantastic, if you're so great, why do you need to waste so much time talking trash? What are you trying to prove? That you're not the one who's ugly? That you're not as average, as generally unexceptional, as you worry you might be? As you get closer to their crowd, they contract in toward some unseen nucleus of exclusion, their backs to you, and your stomach sinks, then tightens, then you're like, Oh get over it, grow up, this is only High School, and you remember what your mother always says, "They're just jealous, that's all, green with envy." Then you remember how ridiculously out of touch your mother sounds when she says that, so ridiculously out of touch that you can't possibly be reassured by it. So they're jealous. So what. You still have to deal with them everyday. And of course as you pass there are tremors of laughter, that heartless cackle indigenous to the shallow. They're probably commenting on your hair, or your shirt, the way you're holding your books: they take pains to make sure you can't tell exactly what they're ostracizing you for, so you can't actually change something to win their acceptance, and instead will feel an overall nagging sense of inferiority. You look ahead to get through it, beyond them to a time when these girls will be bitter and disappointed, waiting at home for The Guy, who is out making money but will come home smelling like stale office coffee and upholstery that sees a high quotient of fat asses per day. You can see how their bitterness will have shaped them; their figures, their faces, their outlooks. How boring they'll be. And where will they go, what will they do, with no one, with nothing to contract into? Like you, they wear Giorgio, but the similarities end there. For them it's badge, for you it's armor. It keeps their laughter at bay, drowning it out with the white noise of near-stink. You can't put it on or smell it without seeing those yellow and white stripes, a sunny prison consigning you to life among your "peers". Even the bottle is brutal, shaped like a club, like something you'd hit someone over the head with. It hides who you really are, protecting that, so you can preserve it for a time safe enough to bring it out, if a time like that ever comes. It doesn't matter what Giorgio smells like, or whether you actually like it. It's part of your school uniform. What matters is, they can't get through it to you.

Dandy of the Day: Isabella Blow (1958-2007)

Isabella Blow was an English magazine editor and international style icon. The muse of hat designer Phillip Treacy, she is credited with discovering the models Stella Tennant and Sophie Dahl as well as the fashion designer Alexander McQueen (she bought his entire graduate thesis collection). Blow often said her fondest memory was trying on her mother's pink hat, a recollection that she explained led to her career in fashion. She worked with Anna Wintour and Andre Leon Talley at various points. As with Talley, half her work seemed to be expressing and asserting her personal aesthetic. In a 2002 interview with Tamsin Blanchard, Blow declared that she wore extravagant hats for a practical reason:

"...to keep everyone away from me. They say, Oh, can I kiss you? I say, No, thank you very much. That's why I've worn the hat. Goodbye. I don't want to be kissed by all and sundry. I want to be kissed by the people I love."

Toward the end of her life, Blow had become seriously depressed and was reportedly anguished over her inability to "find a home in a world she influenced". Other pressures included money problems (Blow was disinherited by her father in 1994). On May 6, 2007, during a weekend house party at Hilles, where the guests included Treacy and his life partner, Stefan Bartlett, Blow announced that she was going shopping. Instead, she was later discovered collapsed on a bathroom floor by her sister Lavinia and was taken to the hopsital, where Blow told the doctor she had drunk the weedkiller Paraquat. She died at the hospital the following day.

Images of Blow, in which her inimitable spirit is abundantly apparent, remain iconic illustrations of committed individualism. We at I Smell Therefore I Am believe that Blow might have worn any of the following:

Robert Piguet's Fracas - tuberose softened in butter.

Frederic Malle's Carnal Flower - the exact moment of
orgasm, bottled.

Ava Luxe Midnight Violet - a bed of violet glowing under the moon, the smell wafting upwards with each step taken through the woods.

Annick Goutal's Sables - a bonfire in the field, its smoke surrounding you, leaving with you on your clothes.

Thoughts?