The smell I hate more than anything on the planet is the smell of the airport duty-free shop. The mix of fragrances is quite horrible and I didn’t want my stores to smell of anything.
— Frederic Malle, quoted in Scents of self in the Australian, explaining the inspiration for the "smelling columns" in the Frederic Malle boutiques.
I’ve never been in a duty-free shop, ever, so I can not comment on their odor…..but I love to open up my newly requisitioned perfume cabinet and take a huge nose hit…..smells lovely.
Smells like the perfume section at Macy’s…not good.
i love the combined smells of perfumes, the dept store cosmetic section, the duty free shop, and like Daisy says, the inside of my perfume cabinet…..heaven
Maybe it’s because we’re smelling a combination of things we really like as opposed to many things we may not like….all I can tell you is that my perfume cabinet smells divine and I’ve noticed that it can make it harder to decide what to wear! So different from when I had my collection piled into the fridge….especially when I’d find a bag of baby carrots and a head of lettuce on top of a chanel box…..grrrrr.
I, too, like swinging open the door of my fragrance cabinet. (The scent is dominated by the chypre J-L Scherrer.) Years ago I was attracted to the combination of fragrances imbrued in stores, but the stew today is not comprised of the same ingredients.
That must be the difference – what’s in your own personal cabinet is all stuff you like, and might actually be semi-related. For instance, what’s in my “off-season” storage right now is pretty much florientals, plus No. 5. It smells great. And my summer stash is composed of mostly green florals and floral chypres, and they all smell great in a mob too.
The wooden box where I keep my samples is pretty much Perfume Stew, though.
Mr. Malle woud probably be horrifed and yank my perfumista card at the knowledge that I absolutely love the smell of the shampoo/soap aisle at the grocery store!
At the other end of the spectrum is the pesticide/herbicide aisle at the hardware store. I passed out one time, just walking down that aisle at Home Depot.
From the article “I was sitting on a beach one day talking to some girls who told me they were not wearing perfume any more because they either had a choice to wear something like one of the very nice classics and smell like their grandmothers or their mothers or to smell like everybody else and they didn’t want that either,” says Malle. AS IF no other fabulous niche lines exist ? As if there was a vacuum only he could fill? Not pursuaded.
There were certainly far fewer when he started though.
My thought is the same as Robin’s – didn’t he start the company in 2000? I was of the impression that the majority of the niche lines now extant weren’t around then, and that his company was one of the primary influences on the expansion of the niche market, but I could be wrong…
I’d agree w/ all of that.
Dyptique was created in 1961; L’Artisan in 1976 and the Salons du Palais-Royal in 1992…. to name just a few. Hardly a perfume desert.
True. But how easy was it for people who did not live in or near major cities to buy these fragrances 10-15 years ago??
Clearly the man has never been within a 2 mile radius of a LUSH store.
So true! You can tell whether or not a town or shopping mall has a LUSH before even arriving.
LOL!
You know, even at Sephora stores I’ve never had the impression of all the scents mixed together at once; clearly his sense of smell is more sensitive than mine (hardly surprising). I do have a problem, though, with the scent assault in a certain kind of gifte shoppe–you’ve all been in one–where they sell a full line (or lines) of scented candles, scent diffusers, and whatnot. Every scented candle in the Yankee Candle range, maybe dozens of scents, all competing for your attention. It’s kind of an omni-scent, and I really can’t stand it. Half the time when you buy something non-scented from one of these stores, it comes home permeated with the omni-scent.
“Omni-scent” what a great word!!! And it describes places like Yankee Candle and the like so well!
Agreed. Scented candle smell (CHEAP scented candle smell, no less) is the worst.
Worst of all: dollar store candle scent. Love the carcinogen paraffin!
I don’t notice it much in Sephora either, but I do in Macy’s. I suspect they spray the air in Macy’s.
It might just be that the SAs in Macy’s seem to be the most aggressive about randomly spraying innocent passersby or casual browsers… or am I the only one to have experienced that?
Maybe that’s it! They don’t do that in Sephora.
You’re not – Macy’s does spritz more than other places.
Robin, thanks very much for the link. Excellent article. So true: Malle started his collection when it really WAS a completely new concept. His fragrances are uncompromisingly unique and of the highest quality, and, while I don’t love them all, I admire them all. My world would not be as beautiful without the likes of Le Parfum de Therese, Carnal Flower, En Passant, Iris Poudre, Une Fleur de Cassie. . .
Yes…despite the avalanche of niche houses these past few years, the best are still the older ones, Malle & Lutens, etc.
Ah! And while reading today’s piece on the new Parfums MDCI releases, it bears repeating here how comparatively sanely-priced the FMs are! No fancy caps, no fancy bottles: the money’s all in the juice, and it’s worth every penny.
I can’t agree more with this article. Victoria’s Secret, Bath and Body Works, and Yankee Candle seem to have their own expansive fragrance orbit, and VS isn’t too far from the food court here, which doesn’t smell the most appealing on its own. If you happen to be walking a certain span between the two, the combination of smells is almost nauseating. I have to re-bag tarts I purchase from YC so the fragrances don’t cross-pollinate to creat something totally unappealing like mocha and water lilies or some such.
Re: perfume cabinets, I’ve been trying to find something appropriate with no such luck. Any suggestions either etailer or brick and mortar for someone in the midwest? Also, once you’ve found one, do you insulate it somehow to keep it cool in the summer months and warmer in the winter? Our bedroom is pretty much a batcave due to the shades etc. as it is, which is fine with me, but I also know it’s good for my fragrances. My dresser, closet, and any other spare bit of space on my half of our room has long runneth over.
Mine are in an unprotected cabinet in my office. Some day I will look for something more decorative. Some people buy wine refrigerators…
Just a note to frugal readers: wine fridges are designed to keep red wines at the temperature for optimum aging — around 55 degrees — and white wines (in a separate insulated section) at optimum serving temperature — between 9 degrees and 13 degrees, generally. They’re also designed to keep the wines at a carefully regulated humidity level. They also have special tilted racks designed to store bottle at the right angle. You’re paying a needless surcharge for those nifty and needless features, when all a fragrance requires is to be consistently chilly in a some dark place. Cheaper and better to buy a regular ol’ fridge!
Sincerely, a wine writer
Thanks R! I really don’t know if humidity matters in perfume storage or not.
Which brings up a problem I was having while I had my perfumes in the frigerator….condensation. Every time I took a bottle out, even for just a minute to use ….it would immediately be covered in condensation! Not a big problem if the bottle is etched but it was damaging to the bottles with labels…and a couple bottles are in their boxes….and the boxes were not faring so well in the fridge.
I had thought ‘cold storage’ was the way to go…now I’m thinking that a nice dark cabinet where no sun is coming in a window and no heat duct close by is better. It’s also been pointed out to me that so many of these wonderful vintage fragrances have been stored in someone’s lingerie drawer for years and are fine!
Robin, humidity matters not one iota.
Inside a glass bottle la juice cares nothing for humidity or condensation…..but your labels will get all bumpily.
I use a jewelry cabinet I got at World Market/Cost Plus for under a hundred dollars. I love it, but I am still pretty much at the sample stage, and have very few full bottles.
It’s perfect for all the samples and smaller decants, though, and is very simple and attractive as well. Even my husband likes it!
I have an antique washstand (looks like a cabinet – you would put your washbasin and pitcher on it, to wash your face in your room) next to my bed. It’s great for my “out of season stuff.” The currently-being-used summery bottles are in a closed cardboard hatbox on my dresser, so that they’re more available.
And I love the smell of my washstand. At the moment, it smells rather strongly of my vintage No. 5 extrait, Parfum Sacre, and YSL Champagne. I had to put the Tocade back in its box and then also into a plastic ziplock baggie – that sucker RADIATES.
Ooh, Tocade! I bought a bottle of that at TJ Maxx (as close as I will ever come to a “find” there) for $10. I wanted to try it because I have a bottle of Bond No. 9 West Side, and have heard people say that Tocade is what West Side wishes it was. I can’t explain my need to have it, except to do a wrist-to-wrist comparison to see what a sucker I was to buy the Bond.
Lucky you… my TJMaxx stinks. There’s NEVER anything there.
I spent $23 on my Tocade, and it will probably last well past my lifetime. It’s the kind of thing that you never find on scent splits, because it’s so darn cheap – but I should have split a bottle with someone. I like it, but not enough to use that much!
Why don’t my perfume stashes smell like anything?? My linen closets throw out wonderful wafts of orange blossom and lily of the valley scented soaps, but my frags? I guess they must be stubbornly capped.
Yours must be tightly capped, and that’s probably good. I have bought soooo many used bottles from ebay, however (Can you say, CHEAP?), and often they waft the scents inside them into the air – I suppose from overspray getting onto the label, or something.
I stand right there in front of my collection, make a selection and being spraying recklessly……which is why I got kicked out of the refrigerator…(no one likes lettuce that tastes like Champagne de Bois !)….so moved everything into a nice dark cabinet (oak entertainment center right here near the computer!) in the coolest, darkest room, due north with trees side of the house. I still stand right in front of it and spritz with abandon….so far no one has complained of the computer tasting of Eau Suave….
Once upon a time walking through a perfume department in a store was a pleasure because the fragrances that were being sprayed around were wonderful – no plasticky fruity florals for a start. I hardly ever had cause to shrink away from people on public transport.
I love the smell of the drawer where I keep my samples, but then I don’t have any of those horrible scents either in it.
Mmmm… the sample drawer does smell lovely. I keep my currently being used scents in the spare bathroom because no one ever showers in there, so it stays cool. That bathroom also usually smells heavenly since any overspray hits the towels and surfaces in there.
Overspray is a wonderful thing!
These comments were fun to read.
I kind of *like* the smell of duty-free, even though objectively I know it’s awful, because it’s exciting. It means I’ve escaped the house and am going somewhere on a plane!
*whispers* the bottom drawer in my wooden perfume cabinet is a mix of decants of Les Exclusifs, JAR and a couple schmancy Guerlains. It smells glorious.
It’s true! FM probably escapes the house all the darned time so it doesn’t have that sense of adventure to him that it does to us.
Yeah!! Give Mr. FM kids, some demanding pets and a sizeable pile of laundry to do and I bet he stops complaining about that duty-free smell in short order!
I honestly don’t think Frederic Malle would have anything to worry about even if he didn’t have ‘smelling columns.’ Considering his fragrances have zero sillage and last all of 1 hour, I don’t think they would create much of a waft in his stores. Sorry to be so nasty but I think his scents are so incredibly overrated and I’m not a fan of people who think they’re the bees knees either – and I definetely get that sense from him.
LOL…