Just as some women can tell you exactly what they wore or what they weighed at every significant event in their lives, I can tell you what perfume I was wearing. As a child, I loved to sniff the flask on my mother’s dresser, a cobalt blue bottle called Evening in Paris, whose name conjured up smoke and midnight blue swirling taffeta.
— From Confessions of a Perfume Slut at Huffington Post.
What an enjoyable read, especially with the mention of NST and The Guide. 🙂 I like her current scent favorites.
Yes.
I think we’re all going to see ourselves in this. I can tell you what scent I wore at every significant moment in my life (AND what clothes I wore). But I don’t want to talk about weight!
Most people probably will! I myself can’t even remember what perfume I was wearing last week.
Hardly a surprise, given the number you test!
It’s more about my terrible memory, sadly!
Sorry, but I find it kind of creepy, not sweet if your husband likes you to wear the scent his mother does. Thankfully mine feels the same way!
haha That was a little weird. But I enjoyed the article despite that image. 😉
My MIL was a beautiful woman – she was very glamorous as a young woman in 1940’s Chicago when she snagged my FIL, a GI (and nice Jewish boy) who served as a jet fighter and was studying to become a doctor . She continued to be a glamorous young mother in the fifties, with a full slip under her dresses, red lipstick, and a scarf while driving the 1957 Chevy station wagon for carpool (Yes, my husband actually DID grow up in Leave it to Beaver land and he acknowledges and appreciates same. I’m very jealous.)
When I first started wearing Shalimar last summer, my husband kept telling me he recognized it, because of course young Cecile always put some on before going out. I never knew her to wear it, because sadly she lost her sense of smell which was the first neurological episode in what would be a rapid decline into dementia for several years before she died. It reminds him of being in his bed, listening to her getting dressed, kissing him and his brother goodnight, the clicking of mah-jongg tiles when she had “the girls” over, or when she and his dad were going out for an evening alone. I choose to take the fact that I smell like she did during that time of their lives as a compliment. She was the best Grandma ever, too.
I’m with you there. It’s *very* creepy.
A few years ago, I made the mistake of giving my partner’s mother a sample of the perfume I am wearing. She liked it and said she too wanted to wear. Luckily it is a Serge Lutens Exclusive and she has no idea how to obtain it. I have always refused to let her know how to get it. That perfume should be associated with me – and only with me – in my partner’s mind. I have given the woman a mountain of samples over the years, why does she want to wear this one in particular? I think I know the answer to that question, and I don’t like it.
That is creepy.Good thing she won’t be able to get it since its an exclusive.I once wore Angel to my friend’s house and her husband loved it so much he asked her to ask me what it was.I told her and ever since then he bought her Angel.One day I was with her and I could smell the Angel and then it just felt like her fragrance not mines anymore.If that makes any sense.So I don’t wear it often only at home once every blue moon.Then she moved on the Prada and now Flowerbomb I steer clear of these perfumes.
Lucky for me my boyfriend’s mom isn’t into perfume. But I do have a friend onto whom I’ve projected my perfume mania, and now she, subsequently, is obsessed. Which is great, except that she recently bought a scent that I used to love and now I have mixed feelings about because wearing it invariably reminds me of her. Now the scent is sort of ruined for me because I like to think that I’m the only person in the world who smells that fabulous. Ridiculous, but I can’t help it!
eh. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. The fact is that I didnt create the perfume myself–I didn’t have any input at all, and consequently have no right to think that I’m the only one who should/could wear it. When you love something I guess you want to be the only one to possess it, but thats a desire I try to suppress. I’m not monogamous with my perfumes, why should they be so with me? (:
All of that is in theory though. I should add that in practice it does make me mad….I just try very, very hard to ignore that emotion.
But scroll down to read the comment his mom left at the end of the article — it’s very sweet.
Thank you for mentioning it! I initially had the same reaction as everyone, but I can believe that the situation was probably more along the lines of, here’s a guy who likes women who wear perfume, he wants his sweetie to wear perfume, he hates Aromatics Elixir (I’m with you on that one!), he knows what he likes, so he bought L’Heure bleue. There’s a certain bracing simplicity to some of our spouses’ motivations!
Well said, Bergere! I have always said that men who love women (including their mothers), make the best husbands. Men who make PERFECT husbands love cats, too. 🙂
My lovely mother-in-law (who is 94 now!) and one of my equally lovely sisters-in-law wear Shalimar every day. I like that fragrance a lot, but I don’t wear it because it’s “theirs”. I suppose in a way that is rather silly!
Yup, I love a guy who can love my perfume!
I saw that, too! What a delightful article. Thanks for sharing this, Robin!
I loved the MIL’s comment. And I think bergere is correct about not over-thinking our spouse’s motivations. 😉 My spouse? Loved his mother, loves cats, can’t tell one perfume from another. Hey, two out of three!
Hi, I am the husband of Liane–really. There is nothing Freudian going on here, I just really like L’Heure Bleue. It has a light powdery scent that reminds me of spring violets after a rain. Is there anything wrong with that?
Marc
No! You have excellent taste and it sounds dreamy to have someone buy and appreciate L’Heure Bleue (and describe it so well!). With the exception I mentioned above, my husband’s general attitude towards my perfume habit is “as long as you like it…” provided I’m not dipping into the college funds to support my Guerlain habit. Your wife and your mother are two lucky women.
I have to laugh, because I was getting ready to post that I didn’t think it was all that weird. We are talking about L’Heure Bleue here – not Circus Fantasy or something.
The motivation is obviously subconscious and therefore you are not aware of it (and neither is my partner’s mother). L’Heure Bleue is a very nice scent, but there are thousands of others out there. Surely there must be at least one that you could have bought for your wife and that wouldn’t have been associated with your mother. It could even have been another Guerlain (they used to all have the same base).
I really enjoyed reading that.I can relate to her so much especially that scent is so powerful and holds so much memories.
Yes 🙂
I’ve never felt so lucky that neither my mother or my mother in law ever wears fragrance!!! All the fragrances in the world are available to me! (insert evil bwa-hahahahaha here)
I’m just relieved that my CEO is so tolerant of some of the oddities that I thrust under his nose without warning and the demand “smell this!”
I don’t always remember what I was wearing to particular events in my past except it was whatever scent had captured my interest for that season or year. But I’ve always worn something!
Now I’m blessed with a collection that makes my non-perfumista friends jaws drop when I throw open the doors of the Cabinet …I love that response…..and I cackled with glee every day as I select a scent…..the SOTD today? Teo Cabanel Alahine (this one I blame on Mals) 😉
My SOTD, third day in a row, is Frapin 1270. [I have you to blame/thank for that one Daisy! :-)] I finished my little sample. 🙁 On Sunday, when I finally tried it, it was love @ first sniff – then I came online to look up the notes and nearly fainted [from sheer delight]! It’s one helluva scent.
ooooo Frapin 1270 ….but you love Ginestet Botrytis too and they are similar. ( Don’t you have a bottle of Botrytis? )
Both wonderful cozy scents for cold weather, yes?
I only had a sample of the Botrytis & I did like it. I like the Frapin better!
my work here is done, heheheheh. 😉
I was thinking of ordering a sample of Botyris today. The SotD is Back to Black. My first time sampling it and I really like it. I love little boxes and the presentation with the locking box might prove too hard to resist. Sigh, at least the refills are only $170….
Cynthia ordered the travel refills from Saks and they did not require her to buy or present proof of the original presentation bottle….substantial savings!!
Yes, Julia, the travel refills are totally affordable! Go for it!!!
Our husbands sound so much alike! Mine is a little tired of me thrusting my wrist under his nose and asking if it smells more like diapers or rotting meat. Me trying to explain the whole circus experience of Dzing! and it’s animalic opening on me is the sort of thing he likes to avoid. 😉
And clearly, I still don’t have a real firm grasp of this board as my comments keep winding up out of order.
LOL we figure it out. hey, Julia, email me and I’ll send you samples of Botrytis and Frapin 1270 , no prob.
Golly, her great aunt gave her Tabu when she got her first period? Maybe it’s my half-WASP upbringing, but there’s just so much wrong with that!
Really, because she gave her a “grown-up” perfume? That doesn’t bother me at all.
I think it’s partly the sluttiness — as Joe put it — of the Tabu, partly that her entire extended family knew she’d gotten her first period, and partly that it was an occasion for gift giving! All this is very alien to us repressed WASPs.
My uncle announced my cousin’s and I told my parents if they did that to me I’d never speak to them again LOL
Tabu wasn’t slutty when I wore it in high school. The sluts in our school wore Calvin Klein Obsession (another great frag), Love’s Baby Soft (oh, the irony!) and the requisite sillage of tobacco and marijuana.
Hey, wait just a second now. I wore Obsession in high school!!!
Come to think of it, though, I WAS pretty slutty. 😉
😀
and of course there is also the play on words, tabu/taboo, right? our society has historically treated women’s menstrual cycles as very dirty things that must be hidden and which are “taboo” to be spoken about – not to mention all the other things we do to make our bodies less offensive and more “palatable” (smoothing, lifting bras, spanks, etc. etc. the list goes on and on). there is a certain irony in giving her tabu to welcome her to that world of women-hood.
That is kind of hilarious… not that it’s a “grown up” perfume (like Chanel or White Shoulders) but something that could connote sluttiness. But maybe we only think of it as slutty in retrospect?
I really liked the article. I just discovered Aromatics Elixir during the holidays, and I liked it, but I’m not sure I would ever imagine it described as “sparkling.”
Yeah, I don’t think of Tabu as slutty, really.
Great article. Swap a few of the perfume names and omit the cool great-aunt and this is pretty much the story of my perfume life.
My scent life is quite dull in comparison!
I didn’t think this article was very original. In fact, Turin already compared Apres l’Ondee to Debussy, and Sanchez, Bois des Iles to cashmere. No new ideas here!
Yay. I wasn’t going to say anything (my Stage 5 cynicism seems to be gathering momentum at a dizzying rate and I don’t want to be a downer to more enthusiastic types), but now you have, let me agree wholeheartedly. And the Slutty slant was pretty corny on top of it. (Whoo! I kind of like letting loose a little. I could get to like this.)
Love,
A Woman Who Can Certainly See How a Person Might See That Glass as Half Empty
I didn’t like the “slutty slant” either – the writer couldn’t pull it off the way Perfume Posse can!
Good eye — didn’t notice (or remember the previous comparisons).