I come from a family of what you might call theatre people. In university, my mother starred in a number plays, including a nationally reviewed production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? which featured my mother — smoking! cursing! — as Martha as well as a young Martin Short as Nick. After school, she was accepted to train at Canada's largest classical repertory theatre, but she decided to go to teacher's college instead. As a drama teacher one of her most enthusiastic students has been my middle brother, who has acted and written for the stage and is now pursuing his doctorate studying Modern American theatre. Since she retired, Mom mounts annual plays or musical revues, often with a cast involving sixty or more residents of her small town. Though my father, youngest brother and I are seldom assigned lines, we are always called upon to prompt, to manage props, spotlights and sound boards, or to play corpses.
It is time to admit that we do not have "presence". I don't think any member of my family has ever attempted to sweep majestically into a room... unless the entrance was preparation for a pratfall. (Both of my brothers have a talent for slapstick.) I will never be the woman Angela conjured out of Jean Patou's Que-sais je?: "elegant, with a difficult background and maybe bipolar tendencies". There are days I am relieved by this, of course, and especially the bipolar part. Occasionally, however, it would be nice to feel a bit like Greta Garbo, and a little less like somebody from Waiting for Guffman. One of the wonderful things about fragrance is that I can scent myself as if I am the star of my own life: tall, with an athletic yet languorous carriage, a high, stern bosom and magnetic eyes that speak silently of familial and romantic complications. In truth, I am five feet high, doughy-featured and never silent — but I smell great!
Robert Piguet's Fracas, YSL Opium and Guerlain classics like Shalimar and Mitsouko are often mentioned in the context of making a dramatic statement. While I hesitate to discourage somebody from wearing these monuments of scent for any reason, they are recognizable to many people. Familiarity with a fragrance — even a potent and enduringly gorgeous one — saps a bit of the mystery and force out of encountering it. For me, L'Heure Bleue is a perfume that perfectly evokes the secret, swoony eponymous "blue hour" of dusk. Still, it is difficult to do my best Catherine Deneuve impression when somebody approaches me while I am wearing it with: "Hey, that's that Guerlain perfume, right? My mom wears that one!" Like beauty, drama needs to be a little unsettling or odd to really strike home, and I find perfumes that are dramatic often have something hard and almost masculine about them.
Of course, I could also easily list off five dramatic Serge Lutens perfumes: Tubereuse Criminelle, Iris Silver Mist, Sarrasins, Arabie and Bois de Violette, say. Most people who are interested in perfume don't need to be signboarded in the direction of Serge Lutens for a little mystery, though. Posted below are my other suggestions for a star-making turn. And please don't forget Angela's Que-sais je?...
Thierry Mugler À Travers le Miroir: Appropriately enough for a scent named after Through the Looking Glass, there is a duality about this one that both repels and compels me. The opening absinthe note is striking, herbal and airy, not thick like liquor. Meanwhile, the tuberose at the heart of the scent is lush and slightly syrupy, though not overbearing in the way of some tuberoses. A chilly tingle of wintergreen floats above the darker base of the fragrance, where tobacco and creamy balsamic notes seem to make a nod towards the Guerlain and Caron classics. A perfume of light and shadow, resolutely elegant and not particularly feminine. This won a FiFi for creator Alexis Dadier of Mane USA.
JAR Golconda: I last listed this one here. On his blog, Perfume Notes, Luca Turin described this as "a huge oriental with the cheekbones of Katharine Hepburn and the shoulders of Joan Crawford." The carnation is prominent, but the absolute used here turns carnation into a carnal flower, a cross between lily and tuberose, with meaty, salty and camphorous notes.
Armani Privé Ambre Soie: A lusciously smooth yet transparent amber, this oriental has all the depth, warmth and sweetness of a classic amber, but with something like the sparkle and silky cream of rootbeer foam folded in.
Chopard Cašmir: A strange, sexy, indigestible start of peach and tropical coconut, followed by a massive heart of jasmine, ylang-ylang and the damp-newsprint smell of mimosa (last noted in Frédéric Malle Une Fleur de Cassie). An outrageous stew of animalic woody notes and powdery vanilla forms the base. The juice is by no means subtle and the bottle looks like a space saucer decorated by Shriners, but I recommend Cašmir as a scent as inexpensive, decadent and weirdly beguiling as Cacharel's Loulou.
Lancome Magie Noire: The pure Parfum of this is still sometimes available on auction sites and it's worth seeking out. Smoother and more feline, it plays up the honeyed fruit notes (raspberry and blackcurrant) as well as the animalic base of the scent. Like the lesser concentration of Piguet's Bandit, the Eau de Toilette of Magie Noire is bitter and smokier, with more emphasis on the vetiver and narcissus. Both concentrations would add a little magic to any entrance.
I love Magie Noire very much and am fortunate to have some vintage, which smells essentially the same as the current version, *except* that it is much richer and you can just smell the better quality ingredients. It is a rather intense and sensual fragrance that begs for velvets, bear rugs and blazing fires…
I think the most dramatic fragrance I have is some of the FM Noir Epices which is so moody and dark and unapologetic with that dense patchouli. Bal of Versailles is my big swooping dramatic womanly fragrance that I just adore, and has some past, um, “romantic”, memories for me. L’Air du Desert Marocain makes me feel like I just swooped into the set of the English Patient, and am living some sort of dramatic life in Cairo. And if drama is all about pretending, well then, these days I am trying to pretend that I am a calm, classy, sophisticated, totally “together” woman, and not a crazed mother of a toddler and overstressed at work. For that I reach for the No 5 extrait…. at lease I feel composed and sophisticated, and like I should be lunching in a chic cafe and not eating off my desk!
So glad you have some vintage Magie Noire – it’s lovely, in’t it? Smell it next to all the recent Lancome stuff and it makes you weep. I know I should think of Noir Epices as dramatic, but for some reason I don’t. Depsite the darkness and patchouli, I find it “glowy” and almost cheerful, in that it inspires me to go for a tramp outside in the leaves and crisp air with my dog (except I don’t have one…) Bal A Versailles is of course very romantic and dramatic, an excellent suggestion. And perhaps I should have worn No 5 extrait this morning, so I feel less crazed and overstressed myself, as my toddler is madly coughing and the cat is throwing up as I leave for work 🙂
Erin: I was content with my current bottle of MN, until I smelled the original! The current smells like they just thinned it out with water. It is a very pale version of the original – like someone ran it through the copier too many times – exceptionally faded. I can’t believe my absolute luck in finding some vintage – probably late 90s, early 00s. But I treasure it completely! If Lancome decided to re-release the original as a special edition, they’d have a blockbuster on their hands!!
Ah yes, the toddler and the cat sick – quite a combo. I always think our cat is in cahoots with our girl to sabotage us! No 5 is my weapon against chaos, and unlike my earrings, necklace, etc, can’t be pulled off!
Ah yes, the danger of wearing earrings around toddlers! Fragrance, OTOH, sometimes pleasantly transfers a bit, so you get a lovely whiff of a favorite perfume in the little one’s hair.
That happened in a really sweet incident with a tad bit of Le Maroc Pour Elle (and you really only do need a wee dab!). I tested it one time and a bit must have rubbed off on the back of my toddler’s hair from my forearm – my husband went nuts as that jasminy-patch-spices reminded him of his favorite record shop in Portland OR where he grew up. He was happy our little girl smelled of it, and now it is one of his favorite of my frags.
My younger sister always claimed that my beloved old cat used to smell like Coco (Chanel) when I pretty much wore that exclusively years ago. And this cat was very sophisticated too!
The potential for fragrance transference is one of the joys of wearing perfume to begin with!
Oddly enough Ann, I myself smell of Coco today. 😉
And yet, soon you’ll be missing these toddler days. My youngest just started kindergarten, and already I’m in a panic watching those short years slip by faster and faster. It doesn’t help that my first baby is a teenager now. Instead of the accidental transfer of scent, I’m facing spritzes sneaked by one girl busy pretending she’s not interested in boys, while the other indignantly tells me her friend said she’s not old enough for boyfriends.
I am already missing the early days as she is growing so fast. I wish I could have someone copy the smell of her head into a fragrance. I swear her head smells like soft powdery orris.
Your girls are funny with their no boyfriend-boyfriend comments! Incidentally, my no-makeup, no-frills teenager has been asking to wear some of my perfume recently. (Squee!!) What’s she’s picked out: Infusion d’Iris, DK Gold, and Rose d’Ete. She emphatically turned down the Tocade, saying it was, “too, um, well, boy-crazy, YOU know what I mean,” for her taste. I know I haven’t called it That Slut Tocade in her hearing, so she must be smelling what I smell in it (and I like Tocade!).
March At Perfume Posse says one of her daughters has never lost her baby-head smell and she goes in for a little shot of it now and then when she is asleep. I am always sniffing my daughter, both for transferred perfume and her own lovely smell. She must think her mother is a loon.
Do you all know that L’Air de Rien was supposedly made per Lyn Harris’s wish to replicate the smell of her young brother’s hair? I didn’t enjoy that the first time I smelled it, but when I sampled again before swapping it away I actually thought it smelled quite nice in a skin-musk way.
Ah, baby-head smell…
“That slut Tocade.” LOL. Well, she is cheap!
I have a freaky fondness for the smell of my boys’ hair after they’ve been playing outside, too. Girls just don’t produce the same odor, for some reason, but I well remember my younger brother’s hair smelling the same. Sweat, grass, wind, and something that smells sort of waxy… gosh, I can’t describe it… but if L’Air du Rien smells like that, I MUST sniff it at least.
Ohhh, as someone who has two long haired kitties, hairballs always show up at the most inopportune moments, don’t they??
Casmir- I love the sweet strangeness of it, and the fact that it’s not subtle. At all. I totally cracked up at the “bottle looks like a space saucer decorated by Shriners” comment, hilarious! It is so true! I was a SA at Dillards in the 90’s when it was initially released, strange bottle was one of the many comments I often heard!
Magie Noire is another scent I just adore, it’s bitter and dry/woods on me, I love how it perfectly captures a crisp fall walk in the woods. That, and the original Fendi are holy grail scents for me.
The kid was making noises like retching and I was thinking: This has to be a coincidence. They can’t both have hairballs.
I think I’ve told you before that my kitty looks just like your pic. With my black cat, your great description of your MN love mirrored by our fall weather here, and the copy of “Lolly Willowes” that I’ve been reading, I’m feeling sort of pleasantly witchy at the moment.
Thats right, you had mentioned you had a black kitty too! Smokey has a bit of the devil in him too, he is hilarious! Our other cat is the complete opposite, a complete lover-bug. I try to be careful, but they usually smell of whatever scent I’m wearing that day.
My big drama scent is Divine by Divine. Makes me feel all high heels and red lipstick, even though reality is more as you described your morning. In fact just last week I had a poopy-toddler-and-vomiting-dog morning. Oh the glamour!
But as you point out, though the magic of fragrance, we can be anyone we want/need to be.
I tried my Divine sample for this article and was horrified to discover it had gone skunky. It was older decant in a plastic atomizer so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but I was shicked and distressed. Have you tried the new Eau Divine? It’s excellent, though of course, very different in style from Divine….
Boy, I can’t type today – articles missing, “shicked”… sorry!
Divine gone skunky – say it isn’t so? I’ll be sure not to be to stingy with mine. I need to try Eau de Divine again. I was so excited to try it that my expectations might have tainted my initial reaction – which was that it was only so-so. Must try again.
Well, it’s not your typical “eau” – or so I thought anyway. I like the violet, and the subdued warmth of it. It also lasts *really* well, which is maybe the result of it being focused less on citrus than the average cologne.
Ann, it’s so interesting: You KNOW how I love Noir Epices, but I get not one drop or whiff of patchouli from that! Just a luscious orangey, dense floral (lots of geranium?) over some deep, rich sandalwood. I would tell patch haters to have no fear of this one and sample it just in case!
And it’s definitely dramatic, and in my top three loves for sure.
I like the fact that the patch I do smell is not the cleaned up antiseptic patch so common now. While it’s no headshop patchouli either… it is really very complex stuff. I don’t get the aldehydes at the opening, but a bunch of very intense, compact spices and florals. It is kind of an intense skin scent.
Gosh, I’ve got to try that…
You do!
Ditto.
And likewise.
Ohh, this sounds like a “must try” for me…..
I like Noir Epices a lot, but on me it’s not dramatic. Dense yes, but fairly quiet and close-wearing.
H, interesting. This is more my experience once the top notes settle down.
AnnS, I echo your sentiment totally. Vintage MN is stunning, I’ve worn it so much throughout the years that it just feels like part of me.
By the way, did you see on the lancome website, the lotion was recently discontinued?
I promptly went online, wrote customer service about my displeasure, and then ordered three tubes of the lotion.
If I ever get a Lancome head-office type within my sights, it’s not going to be pretty!
I found two bottles of MN lotion at an older common department store (used to be Kaufmann’s in PA, and now is a Macy’s). I would bet there are many dusty bottles of MN lotion at older less current department stores hiding in drawers.
I’m always making people go through dusty drawers. I think the SAs think I’m crazy.
I only have vintage Magie Noire edt – and it is so utterly amazing! Very Inner Drama if you ask me, though – I find it exhilarating and reminiscent of a wet, blustery November. Huuuuuuge sillage on that one, too.
I love a big honkin’ tuberose for drama – Fracas would do, or Balenciaga Michelle. In the same vein of “I don’t care what YOU think I smell like,” Rumba or Bal a Versailles.
There is truth to what others have commented: that whatever lights you up inside can give you the confidence to wear almost anything with drama and damn-the-torpedos flair!
Oh! Thanks for this…I had no idea there was a “Through the Looking Glass” scent. As a Lewis Carroll afficionado, I’ll have to check that one out, though it sounds too bizarre for me to pull off. The name would be enough to compel me to keep trying. 🙂
I was not totally overwhelmed by the Miroir Miroir scents when I first tested them – they are much more subtle than Angle or Alien, and unfortunately much more expensive. But I found myself returning to them again and again at the Mugler counter. I own Vanities and Envies (Desire) and think I shall eventually have to buy A Travers, as well. It is a little bizarre, but elegant, too, and I feel compelled to wear my mini of it more often than I would have guessed.
It’s so nice to hear someone speak kindly about Casmir — it usually gets roundly bashed :). I love it, and have been wearing it on and off since college. It IS a very loud, weird, dramatic scent, but I also find it strangely comforting, and it smells great in cold weather (I wouldn’t dare wear it in the heat).
It *is* oddly comforting – I think its how plush and expansive it feels. Glad to have a fan here…
When I was young when this came out, and I didn’t have access to fragrances so much ( remember before there was internet shopping) and didn’t have any money…. well, I coveted a bottle of Casmir. I think I’ll have to revisit my long lost curiosity of this fragrance.
Ann, you should be able to find it for a really reasonable price at discounters now.
Great article, Erin! Your description of your family made my day.
I’ve missed these fragrances, but will have to check out Casmir ASAP. “Strange, sexy & indigestible!”
Thanks very much. We are close to begin with, but I do find that battling microphones, stage curtains and malfunctioing rubber chicken cannons brings a family together. Casmir is worth a try – very unique!
At the time of this comment, this thread seems to be the most recent. It could have been written 10 years ago, though, then it would have been very, very modern …
Casmir is a pussycat of a fragrance. It’s like a silky blanket, a roomy armchair and a cup of hot chocolate in November. Ah, you want a tiger fur in front of glowing embers and champagne glasses within reach? Sorry, that’s from another play.
The real prima donna fragrance list is incomplete without:
1. Lancome Poeme – an intoxicating symphony of heavy flowers, instantly recognizable – very strong and very “Diva’. Have you seen “Under the Tuscan Sun”? it’s what I imagine Lindsay Duncan to be wearing, in her parody of the Fontana di Trevi scene from “La Dolce Vita” .
(PS Dolce Vita the wonderful Dior creation has unfortunately been redone, as in toned down. I still think it glorious and in fact am wearing it right now, but it no longer lives up to its cinematic namesake.)
2. Christian Lacroix Tumulte – for those who remember it – sophysticated floral oriental, and “oriental” here means Chinese rather than Middle Eastern. Maybe because of the bottle. This is the fragrance of a diva yet to be discovered, a magnetic, mysterious and somewhat unsettling presence.
3. Calvin Klein Obsession, if someone still dares to wear it.
4. Paloma Picasso – hey, how can you forget this one?
5. Fendi, the original.
All these fragrance have mega-presence. In the age of crisis when modesty is in and ostentation is out, the statement they make may be misinterpreted. Hope they come back in style soon.
Sorry, I don’t think I’m quite getting what you mean with the first two paragraphs. Haven’t had a coffee today and my brain is misfiring.
Interesting list. Love the Picasso myself. People do often suggest louder, more ostentatious fragrances for drama, but I find the “whafters” ultimately get my attention more. Casmit, however, is loud. I’m admitting that 🙂
NG, I like your list. Paloma Picasso is a lovely scent. I have a mini from the 90’s that I treasure…
Is this another one that has been heavily reformulated? I thought it was a pretty inexpensive formula to begin with (while smelling lovely…)
Yikes – I love the Paloma and the Fendi, but to me Poeme is the worst chemical stew Lancome ever put out, I just can’t bear to be around it. I have not forgiven them for either it or Tresor, as well as dumbing down their best one, Magie Noire. They seem to be hell-bent on destroying their fragrance image.
For Eighties drama, I think of Alexandra by Alexandra de Markoff – I my drama queen older sister wore it back then, and it was a perfect match. It is discontinued but you can still find it online – if you like shoulder-pad rose chypres, she’s your gal.
The Alexandra is an interesting recommendation – I’ve never heard of it. I’m not fond of Poeme either, but somebody who thinks Casmir is a pussycat fragrance is clearly playing in a different league from us! 🙂
Dior Poison may be too well-known to fit the “unfamiliar” criterion, but it does make a statement and will get you noticed. Like Ann, I pick Bal a Versailles for drama. For some reason, wearing Bal or Dune makes me feel good about myself, and a positive self-image is an attention-getter.
I thought about Dune for this list – great scent! So true what you say about self-image, too. Perhaps this is why harder, more masculine fragrances seem dramatic to me: they make me feel more confident.
Oh, the things that we will smell. Oh, the differences in our perceptions! Casmir is dissed kryptonite.
It’s certainly a love-it-or-hate-it! Of course, some actresses/stars are like that, too. The magnet was two poles, as we say around my house 🙂
Ooh, I love Cašmir and just bought a small bottle of sibling Mira Baï unsniffed for next to nothing; I’m hoping it’s almost as interesting.
Can I be obvious and suggest PG Drama Nuui? I love that.
And maybe because I have it on the brain this week, I think Nahema extrait is incredible and would make almost anyone feel like a movie star or royalty.
I was thinking of Nahema too, as it is just so outstanding. But for me it is so chic and ROMANTIC that I don’t always see it as dramatic. But it definitely has that special oomph that makes a fragrance and the person wearing it stand out.
I guess this was ultimately my thought, too: romantic rather than dramatic. Or maybe I was just excluding all Guerlains for my barely-justified reasons….
Areyouwearingitareyouwearingit?? I sure hope it’s happy with you.
Hey, two that I thought of including, too. Glad you’re enjoying the Nahema extrait, which is one of my faves also.
I had a small sample of Golconda and I cried when I used the last of it, it was so beautiful. (I was probably being overly dramatic.) Golconda is definitely a perfume for an old-school movie star. It particularly made me think of the movie The Red Shoes, with all of its hyperreal color and outsized emotion. A full bottle is way outside my budget, but I am contenting myself with a DSH dupe called Fleuriste. It’s not as weird as the JAR, but it captures that vivid, fresh, carnal quality well.
La Fleuriste is really pretty, isn’t it? I’ve only tried it in the oil and wonder if it would scintillate more off the skin in edp.
I have the edp with fixative and it has a nice amount of sillage.
I have not tried any of the DSH dupes, but they intrigue me. Will have to check this out.
Well, that might be considered over-dramatic by some, but I think it’s touching! Like you, I could never buy a full bottle – I misremembered it as one of the less uber-expensive of the JARs, then recently found my price sheet and it’s one of the spendiest ones (sigh) – but maybe we’ll both get in on a bottle-split one day. I have a few precious drops left, because I buy it when the JARs are on sale at decanting sites.
Space saucer decorated by shriners — heheheheee! Great post. Also, you have magnificent skin. And a great sense of humor. And excellent taste in books…
Hey, just payback for all the great chuckles you give me weekly. It’s a mutual love-fest here! 🙂 I just finished “The Siege of Krishnapur” (JG Farrell) and am busily recommending it to everyone.
Interesting article. I too enjoyed hearing a bit about your family, Erin! I like the sound of the Ambre Soie – I’ve yet to try an Armani Prive.
I am not the dramatic type, but two fragrances came to my mind for this category. I do adore Frederic Malle Une Rose, and feel very “in the spotlight” when I wear it. I save it for special evenings. And I recently tried DelRae Amoureuse for the first time. What an unusual knockout of a floral! It’s probably too dramatic for me to really wear, but it made me swoon.
Oops – see my reply below.
A list of dramatic fragrances would not be complete without Jil Sander Woman III. Unfortunately it is out of production and almost impossible to find but one whiff and you will be transported to the streets of Ravenna on a fall day – heaven!
Never tried it! Will try to get that whiff….
They’re darn expensive, those Armani Prives. The Ambre Soie is definitely worth trying, though, and if you love it enough to fork out the dough, it’s got the best bottle (the tiger’s eye rock on top.) The FM and DelRae are two others I considered for this list – you guys are reading my mind today! I just bought Emotionelle, if you can believe it. Finally just decided to admit my melon love. Amouruese is my other fave from the line.
Bang-up article Erin. I nearly fell off my chair when I read that “Decorated by Shriners” line.
As for drama, has anybody gotten a good whiff Bond’s Success? I have a sample of it but haven’t screwed up the courage to put it on my skin. When I opened the stopper what I got was a whopper of an oriental in the 80’s tradition, all attitude and big shoulders. It made me think of “drama” in a snap-of-the-fingers, twist-of-the-neck kinda way.
I’d have to agree with you on the eighties character of Success, because to me it smells surprisingly like eighties-era Coco (which has been reformulated and is no longer the same beast) mixed with Spellbound (launched in 1991 but still with that huge eighties feel to it–Lauder really missed the boat on the early-nineties zeitgeist). Since Coco smelled like pure liquid confidence (I got a friend to wear a couple of drops to a job interview, and she got the job) and Spellbound had more of a fireside-sex vibe, a combination of them is going to be big drama, someone who makes a scene in the bedroom and the boardroom.
I like Success a lot. You really should try it on your skin.
Nor,
In a Crystal Carrington, sequins and shoulder pads kind of way??
Thanks very much. I haven’t gotten to that Success yet, but now I am seriously intrigued. It almost sounds like parody, a “Wall Street” made smell.
Ha! Paging Mr. Gekko…
It looks like such a weird name when you type it out, doesn’t it? I wonder whether they intended the lizard connotations. I imagine they did…
I smelled Magie Noire in a department store a few weeks ago, and it bore so little relation to my memory of it that I’m not sure I would have recognized it even as a wan imitation.
However, just yesterday I smelled the old stuff on a slightly skanky-looking woman browsing the yogurt section at the supermarket! Weirdly enough, this is the second time recently that I’ve smelled something fabulous on someone at the dairy case of good old Stop & Shop (not sure what the first woman had on, but it was marvelous) — and both times, the women disappeared as soon as I worked up the courage to talk to them…
Normally, I’m sure people are delighted to be approached in the yoghurt section about their delicious perfume. I get nervous if I’m wearing S-ex by S-perfumes, though. I remember reading a TS comment on Bois de Jasmin that you should pronounce it “Essex”. There is something slightly incongruous about wearing something so rich and dramatic as Magie Noire in the dairy section…
Yogurt is far too prosaic, I agree… She should have been browsing the exotic vegetables, or perhaps picking out a live lobster from the tank!
They have lobsters at the Stop & Shop? They do not have them at my local No Frills. I can always grab rappini or dragon fruit next time I’m wearing Magie Noire, I guess. 🙂
Jeesh, I think I’m a Drama Queen because I love so many mentioned here!
We should have little certificates printed up 🙂 ……
Drama queen? Moi? But of course! 🙂
Carnal Flower works well, when you want to bring out your inner movie star, but if you need to feel fierce and imposing too it won’t do the job. For that you need something like Bal a Versailles or Jolie Madame. Rance’s Josephine works for me too, it is both unusual and majestic. Jean Patou Sublime is statuesque and big-shouldered, a real attention-getter, but best in the older version, just like Magie Noire.
Wearing a men’s or unisex fragrance can do the trick too, if you pick the right one. I just discovered Fumerie Turque, and no one can be ignored if they wear that! And Lonestar Memories is virtually guaranteed to put the wearer at the center of all attention.
Ah, Sublime. I am sad about that one. I have a solid that is not at all like my decant (of liquid) from many years ago. What a great fragrance that was, and statuesque indeed.
Lonestar Memories is certainly a great choice from the men’s side of the isle, and one of my favourites from Tauer.
Dramaqueen=Guerlain. The classics. Nahema ist too pretty, but LHB and the others are just divaesq. Currently fell in love with Jardins de Bagatelle… *sigh*
Weirdly, I find Nahema to be one of the more diva-like ones – but also romantic, as others have said. Glad to hear you’re enjoying Jardine de Bagatelle.