Ten years ago it would have been impossible for most of us to have become as absorbed by perfume as we are now. Ten years ago if we'd stumbled across a bottle of Guerlain L'Heure Bleue and were fascinated by its combination of old-fashioned femininity and offbeat melancholy, we might have trolled through the perfume counters at department stores in big cities to smell other Guerlains, then tried in vain later to remember what we smelled. Most of us wouldn't have had anyone to send us samples of Balmain Vent Vert and whisper how it has changed over the years, or tell us about the surprisingly terrific old fragrances at the Estée Lauder counter, or introduce us to Serge Lutens, who — at least stateside — we may not otherwise have encountered.
The internet changed all that. We can share impressions and read reviews of perfumes then swap samples to see if it's worth ordering. We can find our Evil Scent Twins so we know what to avoid — or try. And we can meet all sorts of fascinating people.
But there are drawbacks, of course. In response to last week's review of Hermès 24, Faubourg, one commenter mentioned the perfume had been her entrée to the fragrance "rabbit hole", and I knew just what she meant. The internet has made it easy for those of us who can get a little compulsive about perfume to go hog wild. I went from three bottles of perfume five years ago to near a hundred now — and that's not counting decants. Rabbit hole indeed.
My ticket down the rabbit hole was Frédéric Malle Noir Epices. I'd read about it in a magazine, then tried to find information about it before a trip to Paris several years ago. I took Frédéric Malle's online survey, which providentially recommended Noir Epices and Le Parfum de Thérèse. When I arrived at my hotel in Paris, I was mortified to discover I'd accidentally packed my bedtime reading glasses — vintage pink cat's eye glasses with rhinestones — and my eyes were too shot after the all-night flight for contact lenses. Sporting the pink glasses and red eyes, I walked through the spring rain to the Frédéric Malle store on the rue de Grenelle and bought a 100 ml bottle of Noir Epices. A few months later I discovered Makeupalley and swapped the bottle away (I was crazy!) but received in return lots of decants. Researching the decants led to Now Smell This which led to niche and vintage perfumes which led to crossing dinner reservations off my list in favor of something from Comme des Garçons and spending my lunch hours prowling thrift stores for vintage perfume. And here I am.
How did you find your way to Now Smell This and — if you've made the leap — down the rabbit hole?
Note: image of Alice by John Tenniel.
I purchased some perfume in an independent store the lobby of the Seattle hotel where I stay for business. My DH then bought me the guide and I started collecting samples. I found NST after looking for on-line blogs and it has been so helpful to guide me along and enhance this perfume adventure! Thank you one and all for your advice, thoughts , reviews and comments.
Wearing L’Artisan’s Timbuktu today – loving it, but trying to track how long it lasts before it disappears.
I bet I know the perfume store! Was it Parfumerie Nasreen? A terrific store. I went to college in Seattle, and had the internet been around then, Nasreen would have been my ticket down the rabbit hole for sure.
Angela, you are absolutely right – it is Nasreen. I still ask for her recommendations and she has sold me some amazing perfumes!
She truly is one of a kind!
Awww, I miss Seattle. I lived there for five years. I never came across that perfume store when I was there either. It sounds nice though. 🙂
If you return, be sure to find it!
So did I, devilbunnies – five years as well! I miss Seattle terribly. Some days it’s an actual physical ache. And I do remember Parfumerie Nasreen! Now I can’t remember the name of the boutique hotel it was in. lol This is a bit bizarre but I still dream about that store, only I have to wind my way through some horrifying, endless maze of a mall to find it. It’s always hidden in some little insignificant hallway and when I get in there I always seem find a fragrance I had totally forgotten about but fell in love with all over again. Paging, Dr. Freud! Or rather, Dr. Jung, I like him much better! 😛
That does sound very deep!
I so understand what you mean. I don’t think I will ever love another city as much as I love Seattle. I had to leave for health reasons (my family is in California) but I hope to get back to Seattle again someday. I will most definitely be checking out that perfume store the first chance that I get! 🙂
I’m wearing Timbuktu for the first time today, from a sample from the Posh Peasant–and after a walk it totally disappeared! I wanted to try it for at least a couple of years and it was impossible to find anywhere. I like it, but it’s staying power seems kind of. . . meh. . . on me at least
That’s a shame–it’s such a singular fragrance.
I’m not giving up! I’m going to try to enjoy it again on a day when I do a little less (it was an especially active day spent outside). I agree, it is very unique. I really wanted to try both it and L’Air du Rien. Still haven’t tried L’Air–it seems like people love or hate it–so I’m a little scared to just go out and get a full bottle!
Definitely make sure you sample L’Air du Rien first!
Is that the Alexis Hotel? I used to stay there quite often when I traveled to Seattle for work. Unfortunately, it was before my perfume obsession started so I never did go in and now haven’t been back to Seattle for several years. I’m kicking myself for not checking it out, although I didn’t know anything about niche lines at the time.
Yes! That’s the hotel. I wish I would have bought a bottle of Fille d’Eve I smelled there once.
I can totally blame NST! I’ve always loved perfume, but basically struck to a single signature fragrance (Cabochard for a long, long time, and then a few others after that). And there I was innocently writing a novel about a chocolatier when I started running out of words to describe the smells of chocolate, vanilla, caramel, etc. (smells are so important for a candy maker). So I started googling away (I found a really interesting description of what the smell of caramel is made up of) and somehow stumbled on the NST site. I fell instantly! What were all these intriguing perfumes everyone was talking about (Bulgari Black, Dzing!, etc.) and how soon could I smell them, too. So then it was off to San Francisco with a list, and, oh, there is a way to order samples by mail, and, well, I think you know the rest….
I can guess at the rest, all right. Great story! How is the novel coming along?
I was researching some discontinued perfume (already an aspiring perfumista) I believe it was either Byblos Mare or K de Krizia.
I read some article by Marlen in Basenotes and then bounced into one of the He Said/She Said he used to do with Robin.
After that, and thanks to the great community in this blog and the RELENTLESS and PASSIONATE ABOUT FRAGRANCES (these are the best adjectives I can use to describe her, my caps are not shouting, but admiration) Robin and her team, I became an official perfumista.
Many years have gone by, but in my mind coming to NST is like the virtual equivalent of coming to a small tea house in the woods were old friends await with Earl Gray and cakes just out of the oven. A pause to indulge with friends in a shared pleasure.
🙂
Let’s drop a veil of grace here and not mention the side effects of going through the Rabbit Hole, like making my partner stop in the middle of the rain to take a peek through a darkened (and closed, it was sunday) drugstore window because I believe I saw Le Feu d’Issey through the corner of my eye… hehehehehe
Holy Smokes! If that was Feu d’Issey, snap it up!
I love your description of the tea and cakes in the woods. Very Alice and very nice.
You know, I could swear that it IS Le feu… My partner says that I mentioned Le Feu Light…. I will return when it is open!!!
Everytime we walk by, it is CLOSED, they close on saturdays from 2 to 4 so the staff can go out for lunch.
No wonder Feu is still there after all these years–they’re never open!
Hey Kaos: I’ll take some of those cakes right now! Yum!
Dear AnnS.. this is the real – life place on which I based my fantasy.
The place is in Mar Del Plata, an atlantic coastal city here in argentina, in a very small forest a couple of miles off the sea…
http://elcuerpodecristo.com/wiki/La+Caba%C3%B1a+Del+Bosque
This is the review I did of the place some years ago, it is in spanish, but it has quite a few pictures, specially of the food!! 🙂
Hey, how did those pictures of my house get online? 😉 Wow.
A good enough reason to go to Argentina which I have always wanted to do!!!
Fabulous pictures, Kaos! I too loved your Alice in W’land description – even better to have illustrations.
Idyllic!
Am about six years scent-subterranean. I think the signpost at the entrance of the rabbit hole read “Google.” Visited countless links in the past, but MUA, Basenotes, Now Smell This, and Lucky Scent remain regular thumping grounds.
Now I’m always going to be thinking of perfume blogs as “thumping grounds”!
Maybe I’m the only one who thought of “thumping grounds” as that thumping a rabbit does with it’s foot to warn other rabbits of danger. In this case, the thumping of a foot, warning perfume lovers of the rabbit hole that awaits. Thump! Thump! Thump!: Don’t enter the blogs unless you’re content with spending all your money on perfume!
I’m sure I’m not the only “rabbit” that got wild-eyed with excitement at the prospect of the whole world of perfume out there that awaited me. Money? I don’t need no stinkin’ money!
Right–we can always live off of puffed rice and powdered milk! Is that thumping I hear in the distance? No, couldn’t be.
I think it was 2 years ago, when I picked up a bottle of Bvlgari Omnia and realized that I could wear perfume that was beautiful but didn’t make me smell like flowers. That led to Bvlgari Black and that led to SL Ambre Sultan, and a trip to London gave me OJ Woman and suddenly I had a full blown perfume obsession. Now I have around 40 bottles and hundreds of samples and have come back around to loving florals (today I’m wearing Fracas!) . I googled my new obsession and found your blog and others which have been indespensible. Everything I know I have learned online, and I still trust you for recommendations on new releases and descriptions of classics. Thanks!
I love OJ Woman. I was just thinking about its truffly goodness yesterday.
Isn’t it funny how you can think you’ll never love big florals, then BOOM you’re all over them? It happened to me, too.
That was me in the 80s (a good time to learn to love florals). Aliage was my “signature scent”, then my mother gave me a bottle of Chloe edp that someone had given her; she preferred Youth Dew and Norell. At first it was “whoa, WAY too girly”, then it was– oddly compelling. I wore it for years!
The Youth Dew and Norell sound pretty good, too!
My mother was well-scented, that’s for sure. And her sister wore Shalimar! A night on the town with them was delicious.
…as does the Alliage! And KJ’s OJWoman, which started this thread-fork. 🙂
I came back from Hawaii 7 years ago and went in search for the perfect Plumeria scent (which 7 years later I realize doesn’t exist). I found Perfume of Life during a search, and that was my rabbit hole. At POL, I heard about MUA, and then the hole turned into a gaping chasm from which I would never return!
At least we have lots of company in the chasm! (Also, I have a ziplock bag of samples of naturals I’ve been saving for you. I add to the Trish bag regularly.)
So true, our family of perfume-o-philes is wonderful! Can’t wait to see what’s in the zip-lock bag! Let’s plan a walk-about town soon now that the weather is nice!
~T
Perfect!
oh, when I saw rabbit hole title, the picture, and Guerlain. I thought they’d released a perfume for the new Alice In Wonderland film. but thats on DVD now so that would be a bit late.
what does the rabbit hole mean ? that your new to the vast crazy world of perfume ?
I think the first bottle of perfume I ever smelled was Britney Spears Fantasy abroad. btw it smells nothing like it did when it first launched, me and my cousin were both fascinated by the sweets and cake in it. we both wanted a bottle.
but my first ever fragrance purchase I think was Azzaro Chrome whilst abroad, or Lacoste Essential. I don’t know WHY I bought Chrome though, it’s awful. eurgh what was I thinking, should of got the fantasy LOL.
and I first came across Now Smell This looking at images on Google at Viktor & Rolf eau mega after it had launched and obv NST has a review of it so it took me to that. and I was like oh, this site does loads of great reviews of perfumes I’d like to try, so I became a member or commenter or whatever. 🙂
It was about 2006 in Majorca, I was 13 lol
It sounds you’re relatively new–welcome!
The rabbit hole is the portal to the alternative universe Alice stumbled into. Everything down here is crazy, from Cheshire Cats to live playing cards to spending outrageous amounts of time (and sometimes money) on fragrance.
ehe, yeah and thanks 🙂
I’m learning to pick out the notes in perfume. like stage one
( I read the “becoming a perfumista” post that you wrote )
but I know that the four seasons smell differantly 🙂 and I know when they change. no where near stage four tho 😛
You’ll be there soon enough, I bet.
I discovered NST after a truly horrific experience w/ Fresh Sake. It sounded so intriguing; I love lychee (I see they’re now calling it langsat fruit.) and fully expected it to be light and, well, rice-y. I’d not worn any scent in years and, thinking that I should dive back in, asked for a bottle for Christmas. A full bottle. Unsniffed. And my sweet hubby thought “well, why just get the 50 mL; I should get the 100!” And it was, handily, the worst thing I’d had on skin up to that point, including baby poo.
I HAD to find out why it didn’t work. I scoured the ‘net for info, and thankfully stumbled upon NST where I learned about notes and skin chemistry and families and houses and HURRAY! niche scents. That was the beginning of the end, really. Because En Passent came next, and we all know how that ends..doubled over in sobs as it reminds me of the lilac tree by my childhood home after a strong thunderstorm, the house my mother sold after my father died peacefully within it. Which is to say that we’re all here because there is a deep connection to memory and place, and we’re all trying to find out “why.”
Isn’t Fresh Sake one of the fragrances Chandler Burr raves about? Doesn’t hold a candle to En Passant. I’m glad you kept looking!
I love your story!
Great descriptions, Hikerchick. 🙂
I was also reading a magazine one day a few years ago, and I came upon an article about Carnal Flower. I sought it out, but was appalled at the price. I ended up buying a very nice dupe for about $4. I actuay don’t remember exaclu how things progressed after that, but I assume that I serendipitously found MUA, and you know what happened after that! Thank goodness, since I’ve been able to experience so many wonderful scents and get to know some lovely people. 🙂
Wow–a nice dupe of Carnal Flower for $4! You saved yourself a pretty penny.
Several years ago I wondered why I could no longer find my onetime signature scent, the original Chloe, in anything but an edt which lacked the beauty and depth I once found in the scent. I played the dept store game for a while, not finding anything I liked well enough to replace Chloe in my affections (notice I still thought one had to have a “signature”), then finally turned to searching the internet. Soon I found blogs which sadly explained the marketing decisions that kill so many once-great perfumes, but also opened a whole new world down that rabbit-hole filled with decant and sample sellers, vintage buys on *bay, perfumers’ own retail websites, and best of all good writing about the subject of scent from a smart and lively community of fellow aficionados. It’s been great fun. If I can discover new (to me) wonderful fragrances at a rate that exceeds the cancellation/reformulation of existing greats, I’ll be happy. If the gorgeous scents remain available, I’ll be even happier!
I bet a lot of people share your story of finding NST after trying to track down a discontinued scent. I share your feeling that as long as good ones keep coming, it’s a lot easier to let go of (some) of the gorgeous discontinued scents.
I’ve always been perfume- crazy, going back to childhood. (I made my mom buy me a new perfume-related trinket whenever she ordered from Avon.) In the past if I got over ten bottles I would start giving them away to make myself feel better about buying more. Anyone who knows me knows that’s changed. The friends I used to give my cast-offs to are now whining at my door, only to receive a snarl from me in response, as I block them from my perfume cabinet. Sometimes giving them decants at least fends them off temporarily.
My rabbit hole arrived when I was on medical leave and on bedrest for three months several years ago. Allure had a three or four-page spread on the Chanel Les Exclusifs, and I became obsessed with finding them. I’d make my partner bring me the laptop so I could search for them, and not finding them only made me crazier. I stumbled upon the blogs at that time, but was too dense to read any of them, as all I cared about was whether or not someone could tell me where to get the LE’s. (Amazingly, during this time I did not wear perfume at all, as I was in bed all day and figured it was silly to put something on just to sit in bed.) Years went by, and I found the Guide and then TPC and then NST, and about 90 bottles later, here I am. I think I might still be in my 10-bottle rotation if I didn’t have the enablement (not a word) of my fellow perfumistas. Other bottle-a-month-habit buyers have made me able to rationalize my habit. And I did start amassing more niche fragrances, just so I’d have something worthwhile in sample swaps. So I guess my whole point is, I’m very susceptible to peer pressure.
Maybe rather than peer pressure it’s that you love beauty! Nothing wrong with that.
I bet you’d have a few fragrances picked out for bed rest now.
I suppose it would have been more accurate to say that I *seek out* peer pressure. 🙂 I gravitate toward anyone who can help me justify my addiction.
I really can’t believe that I didn’t wear perfume while I was on bed rest. Especially considering that I obsessed over it so during those three months, and even sprayed Chanel No. 5 on the Ugly Doll I took into the hospital with me since they didn’t allow me to wear anything myself. I was, however, really happy about going back to work and starting to wear perfume again at that time.
At least you don’t now associate any fragrance with being ill. That’s why I don’t wear any scent at all when I’m sick.
Good point.
Peer pressure as to perfume is a far better thing than so many other activities/actions we are subjected to during our lives. Perfume is so much prettier than, for example, meth… Kidding aside, I love the willingness of you all to share your experience and recommendations.
I agree!
Oh Miss Kitty, don’t we all succumb to peer pressure here? Someone says, “must smell…” and we’re all googling to find out more!
I guess lemmings are all about peers…
All there is a fine line between just beeing a lemming succombing to peer pressure and finding like minded people to share ideas, samples, swaps & splits! One person’s lemming is another person’s opportunity to sample and make a friend.
(And, BTW, I regularly now wear your rec about layering Joy and Apres L’Ondee. It is like I discovered a whole entirely new fragrance. Thanks to you!)
I’m so glad the combination works for you!
Kitty – your story is so much like mine! I used to get those little Avon solid perfume things when I was little. I remember one that was shaped like a basket full of flowers and smelled something like LOTV.
My grandmother used to buy me fragrance when I was little, too – I had that solid worm-in-the-apple thing, and Sweet Honesty in a Rapunzel tower on a string…
Yes! Exactly! The little solids in cute containers. I think I even had the same worm in the apple one as Mals. I wish I’d kept all of them.
Oh, I had worm and apple too!
I’ve seen some on ebay. I used to have the little skunk!
A skunk full of perfume! That cracks me up.
I don’t know… pink rhinestone cat’s eye glasses sound pretty fabulous to me 😉
I… I was just looking for some ideas for a new perfume for me to try and look where it got me! *cries* LOL
I was thinking the same thing about the glasses.
The glasses have been retired now that I need new lenses for them and have been too lazy to have them replaced.
Umm… should you ever wish to find a new home for them… you know where to find me.
I’ll have to dig around and see if I still have them or if they went to the Lion’s Club! They still might be tucked away in my vanity, I’ll check.
Such an innocent wish, and BAM comes the rabbit hole!
I bet it got you *plenty* of ideas… 😉
Good morning Angela,
I agree that the rabbit hole exists.
I have been in my own ‘ Tamara in Perfumeland’ and it’s all been online.
I have yet to see Paris or even The Perfume House in Oregon or The Perfume Shoppe in Canada.
And I’m here in the P.N. for crying out loud.
In a lil’ town called Snohomish, you’d really like it, they penned it ‘ The antique capitol of the world’ and I reside right off of 1st.St. where they all are, rows and rows of these antique shops.
I have yet to score something like you but I think of you as search. 🙂
My journey started in earnest and to me that means spending $ on samples, decants and FB online in May, I’ve always loved perfume and had several good ol’ stand bys but when I found blogs about it in Dec. it took me to a whole new level.
I am full blown in it now and at times dream about it ,
I love to talk about it, read about it,
I have a perfume pen pal I met through her blog.
Even now I cannot really convey what this all means to me ,
I’m just a stay @home mama, I have 4 daughters and now that they are older , I’m ready to face the world in a way I’ve never done.
My obsession and love of perfume knows no bounds!
Angela, I’m the one that wrote in your post a couple weeks ago
“People who like perfume and people who love it.” about my dad and how I was considering taking him some fragrances to try even though I was estranged from him.
Well I did.
And I was scared shitless.
He looked like death warmed over,
the mini strokes had made him a lil’ ol’ man.
I made awkward small talk and then I proceeded to try different things on him.
As I began to do so, his face lit up as he put his nose to his hands, and then arms.
He told me “No you have to put it on my neck, my face, .” and made the motion of splashing it on his face.
The stale room was already filling up with fragrance, the headiness of it mixed with the smell of medicine, bodies and cleaning supplies along with the fact I was there was making me dizzy .
My mind raced, I didn’t know if I wanted to touch him so closely..
It was hard to understand him as his speech was affected by the strokes, but his motions to do this were undeniable.
and so..
I stepped forward and with my cupped hands filled with a decant I had emptied in them I started to try to apply it to his face and neck.
He had his eyes closed but mine were taking in all I was registering at that moment. My nose burned from the alchohol that was rising in waves from my hands.
The room was awash in fragrance now,
his face needed to be shaved.
I stood up and saw that his eyes were still closed.
It shook me. “Do you like it?’ I asked , waiting.
He just answered “Do I smell good?” and beckoned me to see, even though I’m sure the whole adult nursing home could smell us there.
“Yes. You do very much.”
And he started to cry and told me thank you through his tears, it made him cough and I worried I put too much, worried about a scene, wondered what I doing there, my heart was racing.
He grabbed my hands and told me I was pretty and a good girl.
And there we were ,
smells swirling all around,
and I stared at him and felt the fire in my eyes too.
He liked ‘ A Taste of Heaven’ from By Kilian.
That’s a beautiful story, Tamara – reminded me of my own dad. He loved perfume, too. I had bought him, over the years while he was still alive, Halston Z-14 in the ’80s and Cool water in the ’90s. They were what my budget could afford back then. He loved them and wore them faithfully. So nice to see you had a chance to re-connect through fragrance!
Thank you, he left my family when we were very small and I never had a relationship with him. But my mama mentioned that I got my perfumemania from him and it made me curious and sad.
I felt bad that he wanted to smell good and couldn’t,
isn’t this a horrible thought?
To not apply your lovies everyday?
It hurt my heart. I cannot imagine..
So I had to see what it was all about I guess.
I don’t know if I will start visiting more but that whole experiance made me feel better about things.
I left him samples and decants and asked the nurses if they would kindly put them on him when they bathe him.
My mama visits every week but loathes fragrance and wouldn’t be able to help that department.
(in a adult nursing home they only can do that twice a week)
I don’t know if they will . I hope so.
I’m glad you told me about your papa too, it’s funny isn’t it , how fragrace connects us?
Oh my gosh! It sounds like a movie. Your dad has good taste, too.
It was like damn movie , it was very surreal.
Thank God for NST and that I can explain it to people that understand the emotion behind it.
Your story about your father made me–literally–cry.
I cried too. Bawled my head off.
It permeated my car and I went home to shower ,
I still smelled all the samples we had tried on my skin for days.
It felt nice to help him smell good, it was a powerful thing.
Thanks for saying something, I was shaking writing such a personal story, but what better people to share it with than other perfumistas?
Only you guys get it.
What a moving situation! Tell us what you put on him?
Ann, I tried Yatagan,
Tauer’s Vetiver Dance, Guerlain Vetiver, Terre d’ Hermes, L’ Anarchiste , Infusion d Iris Pour Homme
and By Kilian’s Taste of Heaven.
In the end he like T.of Heaven best.
Of course he would like the one I can only get him a decant of!
I think it was the lavender and how it smelled kinda like Old Spice? He’s 70 you know. I didn’t know what he would have liked, my mama couldn’t remember what he loved to wear.
I wonder what he wore in his man -whorin hey day,
he was quite the Don Juan! ha.
Did I do good?
Tamara, I’m so glad you did decided to share this. Such a heart-breakingly beautiful story. I hope it was therapeutic to be able to write about it. Just reading it helped me connect a little more to my heart today.
Miss K, thank you for that , really.
I do feel better for sharing with you.
It did hurt me to do it but better in the end.
I know it sounds simple but I feel connected to all of you because I can share something like this.
He is someone I don’t know and it felt odd to do such a personal thing cause fragrance is so intimate but it made him happy.
Thank goodness the Tonga family that takes care of my dad and a few others was so understanding that I stunk up the whole bedroom hallway with scent. Thank you for writing to me.
Your story is heart-wrenching. I admire your bravery and think you should feel damned good about yourself and what you acheived. I don’t think there is anything more powerful than scent for evoking emotion and memory. Right now I am smelling my grandmother by wearing her vintage Arpege and I am smiling and feel warm inside! Hopefully, ‘A Taste of Heaven’ will do something similar for you.
Yes ,your right.
Nothing else is stronger, really nothing.
We take scents and feel them all the way to our souls.
I love how you think of her that way. My mama doesn’t like perfume so I don’t associate anything with her like that but now with my dad, I know I will always remember how he loved T.of Heaven best.
The look on his face , you could see it made him feel confident.
Beautiful story, Tamara! Thank you for having the courage to share it 🙂
Thanks D, it felt really good to tell you all what happaned.
Who else would understand?
Yes – a beautiful story! I wish that I had thought to bring my grandmother something nice to smell when she was in the hospital a few years ago. She’d had another mini-stroke and was recovering well, but then contracted pneumonia and died within a few days. I did spend several hours with her, holding her hand and reading from her Bible to her, but how I wish I could have given her a lovely scent. At the time, I wasn’t wearing any perfume at all, so it just didn’t occur to me.
She would have loved Hanae Mori, I think. Or Fracas.
I’m sorry about that, at least you were there for her.
Hospitals are scary and intimidating and it just feels wrong to wear something there in a way huh?
I didn’t wear anything strong when I went to see him, just some lavender/geranium body cream.
It feels intrusive somehow,
nothing fits with that kind of situation I think.
I bet she would have liked Hanae Mori , so sweet and Fracas is it’s own medicine, beautiful and heady and would have carried away any smells of that place.
Have you tried the Hanae Mori parfum?
I like it that way the best.
I love your blog BTW.<3
I haven’t tried the Hanae Mori parfum – the edp is plenty strong… She liked sweet things and big flowers and just about anything sparkly; I doubt any fragrance would have been too sweet or too girly for her.
My grandmother was almost 92, and had the usual health troubles that come with age but was still living with my parents before the stroke. She was still well enough, the day I took my kids and my sister’s little boy to see her, to sit up straighter in the bed and exclaim, “Oh, my babies are here!” She did die at home four days after that, but I’ll never forget how happy she was to see all her great-grandchildren.
thank you so much Tamara for sharing it with us. your story was like seeing an angel. you must be very special.
Ami , stop it! I’m crying cause no I am not.
You all are the angels!
Perfume people are the most sensitive, artistic and loving kind of people, we are inspired everyday by what we smell in the world.
Thank you for reading what I wrote
and proving in my mind that it did matter.
I didn’t tell anyone but my daughters what I did for him.
Thanks to everybody that said something, it means so much .
It feels like I have kindred spirits all around me.
I am in Wonderland with you <3<3
Thank you for feeling the magic that perfume brings us.
big big big hug to you
And to you bebe, thank you , muuuah<3<3<3
Tamara,
What a beautiful and moving story. Thank you so much for sharing with us. You will never regret opening up your heart to him.
~Donna
Thank you Donna.
I don’t think I will either, how could I?
Opening my heart to this stranger was like uncorking a antique vintage perfume bottle and all that wafted out to him had been hidden and aging but still very ,very beautiful, more beautiful than I thought.
Thank you Tamara for sharing your story with us.
I am really happy you got to share that moment with your dad!
🙂
Cheers!
P
And it was perfume that gave me those moments!
Thank you for reading it,
it makes me feel touched that so many of you thought it special too.
Hello Tamara. Your sweet [bittersweet] story was touching and beautifully written with such emotion and honesty. I am also grateful that you shared that experience with us. [And BTW – love your pretty Gravatar.]
Your welcome RD,
it’s me who wants to say thank you to all who said it meant something to them.
I only wrote what I felt and put it out there because you guys would understand how much it mattered.
I love NST and the chance to speak from my heart.
Tamara, I know I am not the only reader wiping away tears….thank you for sharing such an amazing story with us; it will stay with me forever, I think!
How sweet to say!
Thank you , I know for sure it will stay with me too,
I’ll never be able to smell any of those scents I chose to take over that day without thinking of how happy it made my dad.
Oh Tamara! what an amazing story — especially the part when he asks, “do you like it?” I just cried. The connection made by scent is beyond words. What a precious moment for the two of you, made possible by your generosity of spirit.
Thank you GG , I love that name BTW!
It was a time I will hold dear to my heart always, it was precious and sad at the same time. I think once one falls in love with perfume you are always in love with it, it was surely evident in how my dad responded to the scents I took over.
It must have brought him much swagger back in the day.
I was glad I played a small part in bringing that back to him.
You have me crying a little at my desk. When my much-beloved granny was dying at our home of brain cancer (I was an older teen), I got the idea one day to do her nails, as she’d always been a very put-together, ladylike woman, never a hair out of place. I filed her nails, painted them with her dusky rosy varnish, then got some perfume out. The bottle was still full, a Christmas present some years ago . . . from someone who obviously did not know just how committed, how dedicated, my granny was to Royal Secret. As I brought the Youth Dew into her line of sight, I saw her eyes grow almost fearful (and this at a point when she should not, the doctors said, have been responding to much). I think at this point my mom mentioned how much my granny hated Youth Dew, and I desisted. But that stayed with me, the horror of almost scenting my gran with something she detested, and this while she lay helpless! I don’t remember now, but I hope I got out her Royal Secret; I hope she still had some left. Royal Secret (and patchouli incense), to this day, makes me feel my granny’s presence.
Thank you L, I’m touched it mattered to you guys<3<3
Oh your granny!
How she was afraid you'd put on that dreaded juice! 🙁
I'm glad you paid attention to her response and didn't.
Of course it stayed with you, how would we feel if our loved ones mistakenly applied something we loathed at the end of our days?
(shudder!) I think it's beautiful that to this day you still feel pulled towards her when you smell patchouli,
fragrance is wonderful in that it has that power over us.
I’ve always been interested in smells and fragrances since I was a little girl. I’ve always had a parcel of bottles over the years, mostly Coco, Dune, Jardins de Bagatelle, Tea Rose, and some other ones I really liked. My brief stint living near the Nordstrom Washington Square revealed to me that there was more out there that I’d not ever smelled. I recall they had an extraordinary collection of Guerlains at that time. But I had little money to spend on things like MItsouko or Sublime when I was nearby Nordies. By the time I fell down the rabbit hole, I did have about 28 bottles of perfume I garned over the course of my adult life. But I was really extremely bored with standard department store fare which had diminished significantly in the 90s. I figured NEW interesting fragrances was no longer part of my life.
It was my profound and extreme frustration that No 5 eau Premier was GONE from the market just as the ads and fragrant magazine folds came out. That sent me down the hole. I was obsessed for weeks trying to find one single bottle for sale online. I was prime for wanting something new, and it smelled pretty darned good. I was pretty annoyed that it was just gone. And scores and scores of google searches just pointed me to NST which was one of the only websites with any info on EP, and then the Perfumed Court that sold samples. You could buy sampls online?! That was it for me. The rest of many enjoyable hours of online blog research and fragrance hunting is history. And my ennui is gone forever as I know between online sources and my ragrance friends, I can now get my hands on ANYTHING my heart desires to smell!!!
Great story! Isn’t it crazy to think there was a time when we didn’t know we could buy samples online or swap for them? It’s such a part of my life now.
SWAPPIEEEEEEES!
All Hail the Swap!!! 😉
Just got my very first swap package today! Whoo hoo!!!
Isn’t it exciting and wonderful to receive them?
It’s so much fun 🙂
I defiantely bow down to them 😉
I’d say it was the combination of discovering MUA, picking up Susan Irvine’s Perfume Guide from a bargain table in Chapters (which was probably my introduction to the existence of perfumes apart from the big designer names), and realizing that I could order or swap decants of many fragrances. I’m not sure if there was a specific scent or event that did it – but I’d say that ordering that complete set of Serge Lutens samples after sampling Datura Noir placed me firmly in the hole. Before I was strictly a Body Shop perfume oil kind of girl.
I bet Serge has held the door open to the Hole for many a perfume lover.
I’ve always LIKED perfume, my French grandmother gave me that. After 15 years of wearing Je Reviens I went looking for more and found out it had been reformulated! I hated the new scent. I went online trying to find an old bottle and stumbled across this site and fell in love! What an eye opener and joy to read each day. I am now officailly a perfume LOVER and no longer wear my old signature scent, now it’s several Guerlains, Idole, several SLs. including Daim Blonde and Amber Sultan. I tend now towards ambers and vanillas, stronger Oriental types, very few florals. I credit NST for opening my eyes to new things that frankly suited me better than Je Reviens.
The old Je Reviens was beautiful, but it sounds like at heart you really are an Oriental girl!
I remember when I was an early teen in the 80s smelling Je Reviens at the local department store. I always loved the way it smelled. Not only was I tut-tutted by the ladies who worked there who could hardly imagine a 13 year old wanting to smell like JR (testers are not a toy young lady), but there was no way on earth that my Mom was going to buy an expensive bottle like that for me when I was little. All these years I wished somehow I’d got a bottle back then. It holds strong memories for me of the intrigue of fragrance – I still remember how wonderful I thought it was. And how elegant I imagined it would be to wear it.
Ann – see below… I had no idea until I began reading blogs and boards that there would be any reason in the world for JR not to be appropriate for a 12 year old! lol!
Oh, you need some Je Reviens!
Kelly – My uncle sent me a bottle of Je Reviens in the parfum from France when I was only 12. I loved it beyond reason, and wore it until just a few years ago. And I too love all of the Guerlains and Orientals. We may just be scent twins! 😉
How nice!! 😉 I think we are nearly as close to scent twins as I have got to anyone.
We can be ‘scent tripletts” !! I find the people on this site so interesting and informed, helpful and fun. I do still have a small amount of vintage Je Reviens and occasionally wear it. My newest love is Back to Black and a sample of Pure Oud.
I’ll be sure to try both of them!
I found this blog when searching for what else but Santa Maria Novella Melograno. I first came across the perfume while reading a beauty interview with Eva Green in which she stated the perfume was one of her signatures — I quickly learned that it was also the signature scent of her character Vesper Lynd — which began my hunt for this fragrance and subsequently this blog. I lurked for several years while my own inner perfumista blossomed.
Before finding this blog Chanel No 5 was my signature go-to scent, and while I have recently rekindled my love for it, NST introduced me to so many fragrances that I may have never thought to experience.
It’s Melagrano weather at last! A great scent.
I’ve always loved perfumes; from my grandmother’s signature scent (Youth Dew) to my mother’ fabulous collection given to her by her former airline co-workers when they came back from Paris flights to my highschool discovery of Diorella. But somewhere in the 80s it went wrong. Perhaps it was that the perfumes of that era were BIG and my personality was quiet. In any case, there didn’t seem to be anything out there for me.
Fast forward to a few years ago. The soliflores I’d been wearing were starting to bore me. I wondered if there was any website devoted to perfume? My first search brought me to a NY Times article by Chandler Burr that talked about how bloggers were affecting the perfume industry. And in that article he mentioned a blog called Now Smell This. Like SuddenlyInexplicably, I wondered about all those interesting perfumes that NST commenters were talking about. Once I had read the How to Get Samples article, I was off and running. One perfume that I had seen mentioned many times, L’air du desert marocain was one of the first I sampled. Before that , I had only looked down the rabbit hole – L’air sent me tumbling right down it.
Thanks to the miracle of the interwebs, a person in middle-of-nowhere Florida could read about a perfume made by a Swiss independent perfumer and buy a bottle. Amazing. And how wonderful that we have this community of people with a love of and passion for perfume!
That really is amazing. The internet must be a tremendous boon to Tauer (and to all of us who love his scents and wouldn’t be able to try them otherwise.) L’air is a great way to fall down the rabbit hole!
Funny you should mention reading about Malle just prior to a trip to Paris! That happened to me about 8 years ago with Le Parfum de Therese. I read an article about it in Town and Country, and how the beauty editor visited the shop in Paris, found herself “connecting” with the photo of Roudniska, and smelling the perfume which reminded her of her mother’s Femme. Well, I visited the store, and of all the scent chambers I stuck my head into for blind sniffs, it was LPdT that I liked the best! Unfortunately, I did not have the budget to purchase it – but did go home and found the (what I didn’t know then) reformulated Femme edp on the internet from Parfum1, which turned out to be my first of eventually countless internet fragrance purchases. So there’s my rabbit hole connection.
I had already owned nearly a dozen bottles of mostly AG and Guerlain scents by then, and was collecting vintage glass-stoppered perfume bottles at antique shops and fairs. I had to stop after being laid off from work, then followed by marriage, stepchildren and a baby. Finding Kevin’s post in NST in the Fall of 2008 while doing some price checking on Jicky opened up the world of fragrance blogging and mass collecting, and life and my budget has not been the same since. It’s been a great ride and I’m still enjoying it!
Wouldn’t it be funny if we passed each other on the street on the way to the boutique?
Oh, Angela, that WOULD be funny! I’ll bet I’d recognize you, too.
In those glasses, yes.
I’ve always worn fragrance, but usually only had 1 or 2 bottles at a time of dept store or Marshall’s type stuff. Then I read an interview with Luca and Tania, years ago and remember one of them raving about Missoni and I was so intrigued by the idea of chocolate in a fragrance. So I decided to track some down – couldn’t find it in stores, started looking ebay and discounters for it. Finally got some mini’s on ebay and that was my first taste of searching things out online. After that, I started taking more notice of mentions of perfumes in magazines and elsewhere. I can’t recall how I found NST specifically, but recall that Le Chevrefeuille was one of the first reviews I read. That inspired me to track down a sample of it since I couldn’t t find that one in stores either – I didn’t even know you could buy samples from places like Luckyscent and TPC, or do swaps or splits. I’ve continued following NST daily, where I’ve learned about all those wonderful things – I posted here about Naked Honey on an open thread and miss kitty v offered me to send me a sample, which is how I found out about MUA. That led to swaps and one day someone here mentioned the split wiki and group, and we all know how that ends!
Yes, it ends in gorgeously scented poverty! Those splits are such a great way to wear a lot of different fragrances for a good price, though.
It was some years ago. I discovered Osmoz website and I noticed that there were lots of perfume brands I didn’t know at all.
Then it came all the on line research and the finding of forums and blogs, and here I am. Now Smell This was the first one I started to read every day.
All these discoveries have been wonderful and, although I live in Spain and I haven’t swapped anything abroad, I have lots of samples (mainstream and niche) and I share them with some friends inside my country.
But I’m happy to say that I’m not buying a lot. I love to try many perfumes but I think twice before buying. I just receive a perfume as a gift for my birthday every year. This year so far I haven’t bought anything, and last year the same.
It sounds like you have lots of self control, which is great. I’ve also slowed down quite a bit in my buying. Outside of thrift stores, where I’ll pick up something if I’m interested and it’s cheap, I might only buy four bottles a year.
you will be my role model 🙂
I started collecting about 25 years ago. I was happy with 5 to 10 bottles per year–more on good release years (some years are for perfume like wine better than other)
One year I went to university in Nice and bought a bottle of Héros from Didier Calvo, and a bottle of Chanel’s Bois Noir.
I stupidly gave away my bottle of Bois Noir upon coming back to Canada thinking that I could buy another bottle here. Bois Noir was discontinued. (I don’t care what people say, Egoïste does NOT smell quite like Bois Noir!)
My internet search for Bois Noir (and also for Héros–often called Uomo) let me to NST. This, in turn, led me to Lutens and online discounters. The rest is….. a 10 to 20 bottle a year history!
PS I still can’t quite get around to the concept of the decant. I need the full bottle in the original box or nothing.
I do love having the bottles, too! There’s something so nice about the complete package. But decants have saved my pocketbook many a time.
I have that same problem. I don’t care much about the boxes, but there’s nothing like having The Bottle.
See, as much as I love nice bottles, my thrifty side would prevail and prejudice me in favor of splits. However, after a certain point, it’s really hard to tell one decant from the next without digging through them all. Don’t have that problem with real bottles.
Eighteen months ago I found “Perfumes The Guide” on a remaindered cart at Borders in Nashville. My long dormant perfumista was awakened. TS thanked Robin and NST in the acknowledgements. That’s how I found the site, which lead to finding more blogs, on line retailers, etc.
The good old days were not so great. Decades ago the budding perfumista had to sit in the library with The Reader’s Guide to Periodic Literature, write citations out by hand and then go into the stacks to find articles in bound periodicals. That was the extent of topical information. My university was in a small town, so smelling the scents I’d researched was limited to big city trips. I remember it as a lonely time, too, as no one else was as obsessed as I was. I am so grateful that this time time around I can be part of this great community of women and men from all over the globe who share a similar passion.
So true–although many mainstream perfumes were still made with good ingredients back in the day, knowing that and finding them was a lot more difficult!
I’ve always been a lover of scents (burying my nose in flowers, snffing the air after a good rainstorm) and thus a lover of perfume. I thought I was the only one it affected this way – my sister kept telling me I was “weird” – but now that I’ve discovered others like myself, I find the rabbit hole a lovely place. Full of fragrances and friends and fun….I’ve gone from signature scent days to an astonishing (and still growing) collection, one I defend periodically to DH (who fortunately plays golf, a much bigger money-waster). Knowing that others share my passion makes it even more fun for me – thanks to all at NST!
I’m sure many of us can relate to your post, Maggiecat. It sure is nice to know you’re not the only “weirdo” out there!
It really is nice to be part of this greater community. I’ve met so many great people through perfume.
Six years ago, I read about a certain perfume called Miss Dior in In Style. Incredibly, it was recommended as a perfume for “shyer types,” which I am. I tried it in a perfume store in Berlin, where I was living at the time, and I was astounded. I come from a family of heavy floral and oriental perfume wearers (Opium! Angel! Alien! White Diamonds!), and I had never smelled a chypre before. I was hooked. I looked for information on it online, found Basenotes, and the rest is history. 🙂
“Shyer types”! That’s nuts! You are a true perfume lover to have loved a chypre from the get go. It took me a while to like Miss Dior, and now I’m a rabid fan.
I always had perfume in my life. Mom would let me dab on her Madame Rochas when I was 8 or 9, and by the time I was 14, I was wearing my own bottles of Shalimar and No. 19. So I guess you could say I already had a good base in the “classics”. But I was in no way a perfumista, and I took these perfumes for granted, not really appreciating them for the beauties they are.
What led me down the rabbit hole was, surprisingly, SJP Lovely about 4 years ago, when I was still wearing Shalimar, and No. 19 and maybe Allure occasionally. I remember absentmindedly testing Lovely at the counter and thinking “Hey, this is really, really pretty.”
I’d already been an MUA member for ages, but had never ventured onto the Fragrance Board. I was curious about what they might say there about my new Lovely, and BAM, this whole new world opened up to me with it’s strange, strange language and passionate perfume people!
From there I wandered on to NST and half a dozen other blogs, that I still read every single day. In four years I’ve gone from 3 or 4 bottles to about 30, and around eleventy billion samples and decants. And I do not regret a single one 🙂
Eleventy billion is a number I can relate to!
I’m not fully down the rabbit hole yet (I only have one bottle and about 20 samples,) but I found NST last winter while searching for a review of Angel.
Luckily, while I was growing up, everyone around me either over-wore Obsession or Amarige, so I have none of the bad memories or associations that many do with Angel. Though I don’t know if any of that would have stopped me — I like both Obsession and Amarige today.
I got a free sample of Angel during a winter promotion at a perfume counter last December. The city was in the middle of record-breaking weeks of temperatures that dipped bellow zero, killing several homeless. Elderly people complained the city had not been so cold since the 1970s.
I tried the sample when I got home and it was like liquid warmth. And though I’m not one for fuzzy sentimentality, it was the first perfume that made me smile, and the first I felt I could wear like it was my own skin — it was me, and I was immediately comfortable wearing it. It felt like I had been wearing it for years.
It was the first perfume that made me realize I could wear something to make my own self happy, and not to smell like roses or powder for the sake of boyfriends, coworkers or friends. I wore it to bed, and around the house, and it made me feel comfortable, myself, at home.
I think I’m here because I’m restless by nature, and I want another perfume that I can love as much as Angel… but more. I don’t want to close the chapter and make Angel my signature scent, but I want to find others that are maybe not as warm and comforting, but better or more interesting in other ways.
Angel is a good one. Some of its flankers are marvelous, too. Have fun on your search!
Before my jump into the rabbit hole, I had thought that a woman/man should have one perfume, the dreaded ‘signature scent’ (how foolish of me!). I’ve always been into perfume but limited my discoveries to regular mall perfume. A few years ago I started to look around the Internet for some fashion blogs and discovered that there are plenty and what more, there are even blogs writing about perfume. I think it was basenotes that handed me the ‘eat me, drink me’ potion when they sent me 3 free samples of Les Nez and Andy Tauer offered a free sample of Reverie au Jardin. They both did it for me, I was smitten. And the ‘signature scent’ is nonsense, I’ve never been able to pick just one anyway 🙂
Les Nez and Tauer are an irresistible potion! I’m with you–forget about all this signature scent nonsense.
Until six months ago I was a one signature scent kind of woman. When I tired of it, I’d find a new scent, wear it to death and then start the process over. At the end of last year I was hunting for a new signature scent and decided I’d like a vanilla fragrance. That lead to doing some online research, reading some MUA reviews and eventually to NST and my bottle of Annick Goutal Vanille Exquise. What a revelation that a vanilla scent didn’t have to be sweet and simple!
The more I read on blogs the further down the rabbit hole I went. I learned about niche vs mainstream and about swaps and splits. I’ve still got a lot to learn about individual notes though so I sniff everything I can.
Tackling perfume by starting with one dominant note, like vanilla, is a great way to get started!
Sadly, I didn’t stay with just the vanilla. I’ve discovered that I have the scent attention span of a gnat – maybe making up for all of those single fragrance years? I’ve dabbled in musk, and citrus and now patchouli is calling my name! Let’s not even talk about incense!
Oh, I think you should enjoy your exploring and not feel bad about it – it’s all life research, right?
Absolutely, Mals!
Don’t forget tuberose and aldehydes! And iris and leather!
” Every perfume lover, and most perfumers, dreams of owning/composing a leather, an iris and an incense fragrance. ”
a quote from Luca Turin’s blog – 2005
there is a point in every budding perfumista’s search for ever better, ever rarer where they come across these notes and think they are on the brink of finiding fragrnace holy grail… lol
here is what (inevitably) happens next:
“The Devil, as always, grants our wishes, and most are disappointing failures. The reason is simple: these raw materials fascinate because they are perfumes in themselves, which means they are in no mood to share the confines of a bottle with other smells.”
To which I reply: DelRae Mythique. It’s a divine salty iris suede–perfection!
I have a lot of scent memories from childhood(my father is the organist at our Catholic church, for instance, so the smell of incense immediately makes me think of that), but it all started with ‘Laura’s Violets’ from Laniappe Oaks.
I used it all up, and then happened to stumbled on ‘Perfume’ by Patrick Susskind. The way he described scents as erotic encounters caught my eye, and I decided to investigate. I got very into BPAL for a while, but got sick of the fandom and left.
I didn’t find the blogs until this year, strangely, and am steeling myself to start investigate Lutens and the other high end perfumers. Wish me luck 🙂
Perfume is a fabulous book. It’s time for me to reread it.
Good luck with Serge! You’re in for a wild and satisfying ride.
until some six years ago, I was a serial perfume monogamist.. French friends started me off with Diptyque, and since then I discovered Luca Turin’s NZZ contributions (whcih lead me to check out Tauers and L’Artisan Parfumeur) , somewhat later I completely fortuitiously found NST and since then there has been no stopping!
NZZ–That’s a way down the rabbit hole no one else has named yet.
Somehow I went down the rabbit hole in 2006 — I can’t remember exactly how it happened, but Jo Malone’s Pomegranate Noir was involved. I somehow found my way to a lovely review of it on PST, and then I started reading at that site and discovered Serge Lutens, and then I was hooked and led to NST. It’s so fun reading everyone’s “rabbit hole” stories, including yours, Angela! Thanks for the fun article today.
Pomegranate Noir! I forgot about that scent. I’ll have to get out my sample of it.
JM Pomegranate Noir was involved in my recent discoveries of new perfumes as well. I had always liked perfume and as a teenager/early twenties wore Bal a Versailles, Arpege and Je Revien amongst others although probably didn’t really appreciate them fully at the time. I then tried JM PN last year and then read on line reviews and that lead me to NST and the Perfume Court, samples and decants and so on and so on. The whole on line world is wonderful as I don’t have to rely on Australian department stores for perfume purchases. I have gone from being a one or two bottle person to about a dozen at the moment and that is only going to increase!
You were wearing some pretty mature fragrances as a young person–I could see craving the fun of Pomegranate Noir. Anyone who can pull of Bal a Versailles in her 20s is definitely destined to be a perfumista, if you ask me.
Not sure if I pulled it off! Like I said I probably didn’t really appreciate those scents fully at the time. I have just received my decant of Bal a Versailles today from TPC so I will be interested to try it again. I can’t really remember much about it but it was well over twenty years ago!
It will be interesting to what memories it brings back.
I’m a dancer, and I remember when I was younger reading in an autobiography of Darci Kistler that the great choreographer George Balanchine chose a “signature” perfume for each of his prima ballerinas, and if he got on an elevator, he could tell if one had just stepped off. I don’t know if this is true, but at age 14 I was spellbound by the idea of it and always wanted to find my “signature” scent. When I first discovered NST, I was hooked, and now I have about 12 “signatures!” : )
I did ballet for years, up until high school. Still love watching it…
I had read that Balanchine bought perfumes for his ballerinas as presents, but now that I’m more ‘into’ perfume I had to google and see which dancer got what 😉
According to a bio by Bernard Taper: “When (Balanchine) returned from Europe, like a good father he brought back presents, often perfume for the ballerinas — L’Origan for Karin Von Aroldingen, Via Lanvin for Patricia Neary, Caline for Colleen Neary, Narcisse Noir for Carol Sumner. They were convinced that he knew exactly which perfume was right for each of them. And he would say that for him this was a practical kind of gift; he was able to tell as soon as he entered the State Theater’s elevator which or his ballerinas had already arrived. He liked being able to keep track.”
Fascinating! If the scents matched the personalities, he had quite a collection of ballerinas going.
Then that makes the story I got from my Guerlain SA (back in the ’90s) that Nijinski used to buy Apres L’Ondee for the ballerinas at the Ballet Russe seem more believable. Those lucky girls!
I’d believe it… Diaghilev sprayed the curtains with Mitsuoko, so maybe that love for Guerlain rubbed off on Nijinsky.
I’d heard that story, too, and sprayed my velvet curtains with Mitsouko, and it was kind of overwhelming, to tell the truth. But romantic.
A cousin of mine trained with Balanchine; I’m going to ask her about it.
Please report back if you learn anything!
Nice story! I love the detail about Balanchine, too.
Jekkah, did you know that Darci Kistler just danced her farewell with the NYC Ballet?
The very best birthday present I have ever gotten came from my now ex-father in law when I lived in N. Va. He took us to the Paris Opera Ballet’s performance of Swan Lake in which Nureyev danced. We had fantastic seats too. It was a night to remember.
Ohhhhhhh. Bet that was a wonderful experience.
Fantastic! An evening to tell your grandchildren about.
How exquisite! I think that is beyond special,
I’ve never been to a ballet but I bet I would cry from the beauty of it.
Wow! This thread is bringing up some wonderful memories for some of you.
Isn’t it though? I felt very nostalgic (in a good way) reading all of these comments last night and this a.m. What a wonderful family NST is.
Rappleyea, I went to see the Paris Opera Ballet on my last trip to Paris as well! My performance was Balanchine’s Jewels and my seat was in the orchestra section. Unfortunately, I arrived too late for curtain time and the usher was nice enough to direct me to a curtained side box until the first intermission and I was so glad it happened that way. It was like seeing ballet through Degas’ eyes.
No Nureyev at my performance, though, and I was probably wearing a Guerlain or Annick Goutal…
I distinctly remember wearing Bal a Versailles that night. It was always a nice, gentle floral on my skin – not its usual reputation. We too had orchestra seats, and the performance was delayed as the President was there, and he entered after everyone else was seated. They only did that one performance in D. C. and then one in NYC. It was very, very special to be able to see them.
Fabulous! I’m so jealous.
The first perfume I bought for myself was Antonia’s Flowers Tiempe Passat, buying it unsniffed simply because it sounded interesting (I bought it unsniffed!) and sophisticated. Not because I was a perfume lover — I’d never worn any or sought it out, just sniffed some of my mother’s and followed around any good-smelling man 🙂 But I felt like I needed a small luxury and I could afford it, and voila. I loved it (and still do). Then a few years ago, I bought a bottle of Hermes Un Jardin en Mediteranee, and loved that one too (and still do!). It was so wonderful, and so different from the only other perfume I really knew, I went online to read reviews, etc. I don’t remember the details — I know there was Chandler Burr along the way, and getting interested in the business and artistry of perfume as well — but I wound up on NST that first time I sat down to find out about perfume, and never looked back! And, whoops, rabbit hole!
I think my discoveries on the internet and all the perfume blogs, seeing how many people are really interested in all dimensions of fragrance and the world of perfume really opened my eyes to how much I have always loved, scent generally. It made me remember all the times I didn’t feel like I knew something until I smelled it, and realize just how evocative certain scents are, how a mood can be heightened or changed by a deep inhalation of fragrance. Once I kind of got honest with myself about this and picked up the enthusiasm of the boards, the samples, decants and occasional FB just couldn’t come fast enough!
I haven’t bought a new handbag since 🙂
Great story! Well, if something’s got to go, handbags are as good a choice as any.
Like dominika, I am not fully down the rabbit hole yet but it looms larger and larger. I have always loved fragrance and my mom and grandmother always were big on perfume as well. My mom loves KL, Opium (she smells FAHABULOUS in it), Paloma, No.22, Dioressence (which she struggles to find in the US but buys when she visits me in the UK) and NR Essence. My grandmother wore No.5. Arpege ( and was peeved at the reformulation), Ma Griffe, Norell, Allure, Dolce and Gabbana Pour Femme, O de Lancome.
My first loves of fragrance were of Jovan Musk, then Emeraude and then at 15 I discovered Shalimar – love at first sniff! Shalimar has always been the staple, joined later by Chaos, Black Cashmere, Chamade and L’Heure Bleue. Now, however, my list of long and whenever I am out I am spraying and dabbing away and am awaiting my first samples from SSS. Hurray!
I’m betting you’ll love SSS! Lots of wonderful scents and reasonable prices too.
You had some deliciously fragrant women in your family! Enjoy those SSS samples.
SSS is amazing, I have loved Voile de Violette this past spring and into summer but I gotta say my fav. is Opal.
I’m on pins and needles waiting for Laurie to bring it back.<3
Oh, is Opal not in the current line-up? I love it too and want a bottle. Also a bottle of Rose Musc.
Opal is no longer in production due to issues with availability of key ingredient(s). Laurie is not sure right now whether she can reproduce with substitutions or re-work into something more distinct. She might have mentioned it in her blog (or via email – I can’t recall).
Thanks OperaFan. Wish I’d bought some earlier. 🙁
I was born into a perfumista family so there was no rabbit hole for me, per se. My grandmother, her sisters, my mother and her two cousins didn’t consider themselves dressed if they weren’t appropriately scented. Even a day of housework required scented talc. No purse was ever put into the closet without a scented handkerchief inside, nor was a coat hung in the closet without a scented hanger. My very first memories are scent memories…..a curious blend of fresh flowers on the table, scented women bustling about in the kitchen, and wonderful things baking and cooking. I’m sure that’s why I always draw such warmth from gourmand perfumes.
My grandfather went to France twice each year for business and always came back with a treasure trove of fragances…both those his womenfolk requested and others the sales women convinced him to try (my grandfather was a true bon vivant and was putty in the hands of a pretty sales clerk). My grandmother favored Lucien Lelong scents, my mother Chanel, and one of her cousins wore Shalimar. There was always swag for me, too. I can still remember my first bottle of scent. I don’t recall the maker, but the scent was Fleur de Pommier (Apple Blossom).
When my grandfather passed, my “French Connection” was gone, but I made it a point to try any new scents I could find on shopping trips to Chicago. The enabler was gone, but the fascination remained.
I remember picking up Jan Moran’s first book back in the mid-80s, I think it was. I literally wore that paperback out! I made it a bit of a mission to try as many of the scents she wrote about as I possibly could.
I discovered the perfume possibilities of the internet purely by accident. I distinctly remember one day puzzling over the notes in a fragrance, I searched it. In a ‘light bulb’ moment, I saw the glories of a perfume etherworld spread out before me. I never looked back.
I don’t recall exactly what I was searching when I stumbled onto NST, but I was so charmed by the cute name that I followed the link. Then I was so intrigued by the site itself that I began coming by daily.
So while my human enabler has passed, my electronic enabler is still going strong (and with any luck, for many many years to come).
The electronic enabler is very powerful, too! I have that Jan Moran book, and I can imagine carrying it to department stores to try every scent in it.
We’re not your beloved grandfather, but we certainly try to carry the Enabler’s banner high!
…and proud!
You’re all doing a fabulous job, I can assure you! 🙂
How lucky you are to have grown up in a scent-loving family! My mother only had a bottle of Chanel #5 perfume she received as a gift somewhere in the ’60s and only wore it on special occassions. I am now the owner of about the remaining quarter bottle which she gave me when she saw what a serious bottle collector I had become.
My mother was into Jontue and Charlie, so count yourself lucky.
Well, back in those days, I recall that Jontou was among my favorite scents. Of course, my knowledge of fragrances were limited to Avon and the local drug store. I only knew about No.5 thanks to those TV commercials w/Catherine Deneuve.
What fun it is to read all the stories!
I always liked perfume, but it was seen as a luxury item in my family – I could receive it as a gift, but a girl didn’t buy her own. When I was twelve, one of my grandmothers gave me a bottle of Chloe, so I suppose you could say my love of big open-hearted florals began early. I wore Chloe all through high school, moving on to a tiny bottle of Emeraude (still my dear love), Xia Xi’ang, and Aspen for Women. At one point I bought myself a bottle of Sand & Sable, but my mother made me take it back, saying it was “too old for me.” (And she let me wear CHLOE?? Go figure.)
Those were gone shortly after I married, and I didn’t wear perfume again until my husband bought me a bottle of Eliz. Arden True Love – the sentiment was sweet, but I didn’t care much for the scent. Later, I bought myself Victoria’s Secret Pink, but when it too was nearly gone, I ran across Velvet Tuberose in Bath & Body Works, where I’d gone to buy my sister her favorite Lavender & Vanilla lotion. I wore VT for several months, and then my sister asked for a bottle of Coco Mlle for Christmas, and my husband had gotten a new job so that cash was a little more free-flowing than it had been… as a devoted Consumer Reports reader, I google searched for “coco mademoiselle perfume review,” and found NST.
The rest, as they say, is history.
A great story! From gifts to the mall to the department store to NST!
Mals, I wore Chloe in high school too — we had a family friend who was in his 90s at the time, and he gave me a bottle of it! I also wore Sand & Sable in h.s. — your post brought back the memories!
Mals – It’s easy to see why you’re such a white flower lover when your first perfume was (the original) Chloe! I never owned it, but have always loved the smell and would swear I can identify it even today. I’ve never smelled the reformulated version, but don’t really want to spoil my memory of the original either.
Up above the world so high,
Like a tea tray in the sky …
A sniff of my mother’s bottle of Un Jardin Sur Le Nil which begat
The purchase of “The Perfect Scent”, which begat
Purchasing “The Guide”, which begat
A Google search for “Now Smell This” which begat
Hundreds of happy hours of reading some of the best writing I’ve ever read, and the company of the world’s most wonderful perfumistas, which begat
The purchase of many bottles from online sources, starting with fragrancenet and parfum1, and then progressing to luckyscent, which begat
A startlingly large collection of bottles, that I can look at and say “Kevin/Robin/Angela recommended this and I’m so glad I tried it because I love it”, which begat
A slight infatuation with perfumers I have never met (I’m looking at you, cher Andy Tauer), which begat
A love affair that will never end.
Although I’m still waiting for the Eau de Kitteh Bref, my favorite smell (as opposed to scent) in the whole wide world. With a closeup of pink kitteh nostrils on the label.
I like your begats much better than what they cooked up in the Old Testament.
When you find that kitty breath scent, sign me up for a couple of gallons of it!
I kind of suspect anyone who’s run across Andy Tauer has at least a slight infatuation, don’t you?
Undoubtedly.
Pink kitteh toze, too.
One of the best smells of all!
I think a whim took me out on the internet to investigate some long gone favourite scents. NST was one of the places my investigation took me, and before I knew it, the poetic and exciting reviews opened my eyes and nostrils to a world I apparently was ready for but never had dreamed of entering. Almost the next day I went into town and tried Mitsouko. And a couple of days later I went back to try Egoiste. And i still remember Kevin’s reviews ;), though it’s now 18 months ago. I am poorer now but smells better and enjoys life in a new, olfactory way (SOTD: Cuir de Lancome).
Great story! (I love Cuir de Lancome.)
What a striking avatar you have, petronellacj!
Think of the flanker possibilities! Endless …
Eau de Tuna Bref
Mom, I Just Eated Sum Grass Bref
Kitteh Barf Bref
I could go on for hours!
Oh yes!
LOL!
And don’t forget Hairball Bref!
For me perfume and fragrances have always been a love love relationship. I have always surrounded myself with bottle after bottle of perfume from the moment I started working. What led me to perfume was a moment in my childhood where I had not seen my mother for years. The moment that we reunited again was one that for obvious reasons I will never forget but one thing that has always remained with me is the way she smelled when she hugged me.
She smelled amazing, beautiful, clean and feminine to me. I will never forget that moment. This is when I started my love affair with perfume.
The scent she wore on that day was Worth’s Je Reviens.
I found NST while I was looking for like minded individuals that understood what a fragrance does to the spirit. For me it’s not just picking up a bottle and putting on perfume because I want to “smell” fresh, seductive, sensual and so on. To me the fragrance becomes an extension of who I am at that moment that I pick up that bottle and scent myself with its fragrance.
I am very grateful to have found this amazing community and although I don’t comment often, I always read everyone’s comments. Right now I am learning from you all, and hopefully one day I can call myself a true and true perfumista.
~Alexandra~
Marvelous! It sounds like you already are a perfumista.
“To me the fragrance becomes an extension of who I am at that moment that I pick up that bottle and scent myself with its fragrance.”
Oh, well put! I never thought about it that way, but I think I know exactly what you mean. And every once in awhile I choose the “wrong” fragrance of a morning, and experience such cognitive dissonance.
What a beautiful story Alexandra, and I love it that your mother’s perfume was Je Reviens (I Will Return – appropriate, yes?), my first and deepest perfume love.
Hmmm… I had always like perfume when I was younger and begged my mom to buy the standard Avon-type stuff when I was a kid. My mom didn’t really wear perfume, but my grandma did and I always loved her stash – Youth Dew, Emeraude, and Shalimar.
I really started to get into perfume during the 80s and had a few in rotation – Obsession, Xia X’iang, Giorgio Red, and Rafinee (I’m terrified to smell the reformulation of the last two). Even in college, I would pick up this and that – loved Estee Lauder’s Spellbound and would pick up a few other things at Marshalls or TJMaxx and then I kind of stopped for awhile.
I got interested in wearing scent again and decided to revisit Obsession and then was suckered in by a spritz of DKNY Be Delicious (which I went through 3 bottles of and now can’t wear).
Then – the rabbit hole beckoned. I bought one of those Sephora samplers for myself around Christmas a few years ago and fell in love with Pink Sugar (another scent that I can’t stand anymore) and then bought another one the next year and couldn’t decide between two scents – Nina Ricci Nina and Pucci Vivara, so I started looking for more information and found NST. Eventually, I decided to get the Vivara (partially because of the bottle). Then I bought Perfumes: The Guide and picked up a few more bottle here and there. Then I found the discounters and TPC – I could BUY SAMPLES!
So… I grabbed a Guerlain and Chanel gateway pack and started delving into those and discovered that I love aldehydes and white florals (two things that I never thought that I’d say). I was still doing okay and then I mentioned on NST that I didn’t know where to get started with niche fragrances and a kind enabler offered to send me a few and then I fell straight down the rabbit hole and haven’t surfaced yet.
Wow–a good story! It sounds like you teetered at the edge of the rabbit hole for a while before that NSTer gave you the final push.
A “kind enabler” – LOL! Maybe she IS the rabbit!
It’s always fun to discuss how we all became obsessed with this crazy hobby. It’s so true what you say about the internet! When people ask me how I became so involved in this hobby, I always start by saying something like: “Well, the internet has made all these communities of wonderful wingnuts with niche interests possible…” In the end, this answer doesn’t really satisfy most people – I think they want to know “Why perfume?” or “What is it about you and you sense of smell?”, which are questions I find harder to answer – but, in truth, I think the internet answer is the most honest. Speaking of which, I think my first three rapidly-purchased bottles of post-rabbit-hole perfume were Angel, Bvlgari Omnia (I’m wearing it today!) and OJ Champaca. I had ordered the OJ sample set – what a great idea! – and then took the FM quiz and just like you, I got recommended PdT and Noir Epices. (I’d love to compare our answers on the quiz…..)
That’s a good point about “why perfume”. I’ve read food blogs, but as much as I love to cook (and eat), I laugh at people who have more than three knives. But perfume is somehow different.
It would be interesting to see what we answered on the Malle quiz!
My husband didn’t get it *at all* until I explained that perfume is an art form and I’m collecting and experiencing great art. I still don’t know if he truly gets it, but at least my collecting it and discussing it makes sense to him.
My husband totally gets it, once I started comparing perfume love to wine appreciation. Lots of useful parallels…
(totally GOT it)
Wine is a great parallel, H.
Exactly–and you’re not collecting Monets, so he should be happy!
Angela – Thanks for another great topic!
My Mum always loved perfume – No 5 and Caleche were her favorites, but she bought (and wore) many different fragrances, so perfume was always on my radar to some extent. The first fragrance that I fell in love with was Chaos. At that time (mid ’90’s) the concept of a fragrance being discontinued (or reformulated) was totally foreign to me, so I assumed that I would be able to easily buy it all my life. I was crushed when it went off the market.
For years afterwards I tried to find another fragrance that I liked as much. I only had access to the most mainstream department store fragrances so this was a real challenge! But I just couldn’t forget about Chaos. Finally I thought – “I wonder what will happen if I look for it on the internet?” Well! The rabbit hole appeared and swallowed me whole! My head started to swim with all these names and brands I’d never heard of – Serge Lutens, Frederic Malle, L’Artisan … and onward. And worse yet, the technology exists to send samples (and decants, and worst of all full bottles) directly to your door, even if you live in the middle of nowhere (fragrantly-speaking).
Like several of the posters above, I don’t comment often, but really enjoy reading the articles and the comments. I’ve particularly enjoyed reading a number of the stories today – thank you everyone who posts and comments!
Barbara
It’s interesting how different Chaos is from the perfumes you grew up smelling on your mother. I can completely imagine how searching for Chaos would lead to Serge would lead to all sorts of financial mischief exploring perfume.
My rabbit hole wasn’t a fragrance- it was The Guide. I picked that book up over and over again in the store and finally told myself to just buy it already because I was clearly interested. It was an avalanche from there. Reading this has made me step back and think of the last few years of my life, and it’s kind of jarring to do so. There is a clear before and after. Even in terms of the clothes I wear, and fragrance is as much a part of wardrobe as clothing, so much has changed so drastically. Maybe it was all part of one complex that was shifting? I don’t recall how I found NST…I know it was related to a Google search. Seems like these last years of the decade have really exploded in terms of perfumery. But I’m thankful- and poorer 🙂 – for it!
I think I was undergoing a style shift at about the time I took the perfume plunge, too. Rather than a style change, though, it really felt more like a rediscovery. That’s true for perfume, too.
I bet the Perfume guide pulled more than a few us down the hole!
A rediscovery– you put it well. Many of us could say the same, I think.
I feel a gateway opened- something latent or in seed form took root and bloomed. And perhaps rediscovery is correct: on some level we have always known it, but it was time to be discovered! I’d love to take a look at people’s journeys and what shift occurred in tandem with the perfume.
That’s beautiful!
Such a great post and comments! Fascinating reading. 🙂
A few yrs ago, for a number of reasons, I had what used to be called a nervous breakdown. I kept checking out mentally as a coping mechanism for severe stress. In an effort to hold on to the present moment, I decided to focus on the fulfillment of the five senses. I’d always loved perfume but hadn’t worn it in a long time. Serendipitously, I read an article in Allure magazine about niche perfumery around that time, which mentioned Serge Lutens and NST. Perfume became as important as music. From there I found other blogs and the swap page on MUA and I’ve never looked back. Thanks everyone, more than y’all know. 🙂
Ta da! Perfume, take a bow! I’m going to start plastering “Perfume Saves Lives” over all those “Art Saves Lives” bumper stickers.
YES!!!!!
Enjoyment of the five senses can be such a beautifully life affirming thing. Thanks for sharing your story Rosarita.
And as an aside, people keep mentioning reading about NST in all sort of places. I had no idea that NST was so famous!
I’ve met a handful of people in the real world who have known about NST, and it always surprises me.
Paris Hilton led me down the rabbit hole. Well, not exactly, but she played some kind of role. I’m not kidding! I found Boisdesjasmin and NST and etc after I read an article at slate.com about perfume noses behind celebrity perfumes (2006). Several days later I walked into Perfumania on a whim (I never set foot there before due to snob tendencies), spent a considerable amount of time there, walked out unsatisfied and wondering why nothing hit the spot. Later I tried Macys, with same effect (and later on, I still avoid this one older SA who valiantly tried to steer me away from Shalimar and towards a Ralph Lauren Romance. Ha! I was undeterred! ) Then I went online and you know how the rest goes 😉
This little adventure reawakened my dormant interest in the art of perfume and the scented world. I was always surrounded by perfume growing up; my first perfume was a heady white floral by Revlon (I still associate it with last year of high school). Sun Moon Stars by Lagerfeld was the first fragrance set I selected and bought on my own. Before that I also wore whatever I liked from gifted sampler boxes (the kind you used to get in duty free stores). Those ran the gamut from heady Gaultiers, Dior, Lancome, various Elizabeth Taylors, to lighter and sweeter Elizabeth Ardens and Calvin Kleins. At one point I was crazy for a Laura Ashley floral. And it definitely wasn’t what everyone my age was wearing at the time (except CK, which I didn’t like). I also wanted to explore more, but was both disappointed and intimidated by standard department store fair. I didn’t want to commit to just one bottle of anything, but couldn’t afford more. So my interest kind of waned.
Also something happened later in college – I almost entirely lost interest in perfume, and only purchased “fresh” bath and body products. And then that article happened and I found perfume blogs. Hallelujah! I read voraciously and late into the night. I felt like I had found and rediscovered something long lost.
I’m so very glad I took the plunge. And thank you, NST and all perfume bloggers, for guiding my way down. Truly, thank you. It’s one constant than never fails to bring me joy and pleasure and lots of fun (and even keeps my heart rate down when I’m stressed).
It really does sound like the internet allowed you to rediscover an important part of who you are! That’s terrific.
I am struggling a bit this afternoon with a migraine, so I can’t read all of the posts here right now & I will have to catch up later. This is a can’t miss topic for me! My thoughts are a little cloudy, but I did want to at least jump in briefly. I also have had a ‘relationship’ with fragrance for most of my life – wearing perfume, making potpourri, an interest in aromatherapy [and collecting books on the subject], burning really good quality candles and incense, etc. But i wasn’t aware of the perfumista universe until I stumbled onto NST – the result of Googling some info regarding a certain fragrance [I wish I could remember which one]. I have been hooked on this site since day one and as I’ve said before, it’s one of my favorite places to hang out. Hope to catch up and participate more later!
Thanks for stopping in, and I hope that migraine goes away soon! They’re so nasty.
I hope by now it has gone away by now Rustic,
migraines are hellish.
Be well<3<3
I hope your headache goes away *really* soon, Dove. 🙁
My trip down the rabbit hole began when my granny used to use a powder puff of Chanel #5 on my after my bath when I was little. I know my mom always smelled like Opium, my one Aunt like Ombre Rose. I used to dig the Yardley Lily of the Valley when I was small, and then Ralph Lauren’s Safari as a teenager. I love scent!
I find I have a few fellow perfume freaks that I really enjoy discussing scents with, and my bottles have totally been breeding in the dark of my bedroom drawer (speaking of rabbit holes!!). I think searching for a new perfume is an adventure, and I am not loyal to any particular scent. I’m really lucky my husband is a fan of most of my perfumes, I find a lot of husbands can be real wet blankets of women who like adventurous scents. My husband bought be Bulgari Black, for instance–he’s the best–so we go down the rabbit hole together.
That’s so nice that your husband is on your side in this adventure! Bulgari Black is a nice gift.
OMG, Jaimie, your post sparked a long forgotten memory of my mother puffing me with powder after my bath too. I must have only been two or three. I’ll have to ask her if she remembers what it was. I had long forgotten this.
What a great memory!
I’m glad I’m not alone with the powder puff! I’m sure these baths were when I was about 3 or 4, and my grandma used to get out the little chic black box with the powder puff in it, and pat my bottom with it, saying, “pouff, pouff!” I remember laughing like crazy. Kind of embarrassing but it explains a lot (hmmmmm)! It took me a long time to get to like Chanel #5 again, because I associated it exclusively with my granny (whom I love, but did not want to smell exactly like). Now I am more of a Cuir de Russie or 28 La Pausa kind of girl, when I can splurge on Chanel, but I have grown to love #5 too.
And I am proud to say my hubby asked me to start a list of perfumes I like, and now he gets me perfume to celebrate almost everything. I strongly suggest everyone who reads this blog needs to suggest that to their partner–that way everyone is happy!
It’s a great idea, that’s for sure!
I love Cuir de Russie (in the absence of a partner, it was my Christmas present to myself last year), but I haven’t tried La Pausa. I’m a little afraid to love any more of the LE’s. lol!
Except you have to remember to keep it current. Mine got me the OJ sample set, which was fabulous…except that by then, someone had sent me most of the ones I was interested in trying. The packaging is so fun that it almost doesn’t matter, though.
I discovered Joy at the ripe old age of 3….I was visiting an aunt in New Orleans, caught the scent on her wrist, and kept going MMMMMMM MMMMMMM MMMMMMM til she took me to her dressing table and daubed some on me. I promptly latched on to the entire bottle, and refused to turn it loose, even whilst being bathed. My aunt and uncle have kept me supplied in Joy ever since. (Over 40 years now…)
The first perfume I bought myself was Opium, and I also wore Lauren, the original Victoria’s Secret perfume and Fendi.
I went a looooooong stretch of not liking any of the newer deaprtment store perfumes, and the only other perfumes I knew of I didn’t care for at all…Chanel, Lancome, Estee Lauder. I hadn’t bought anything different since the Fendi, because it seemed to me that everything had started to smell the same…either like Sunflowers or Happy, or fruity, and nothing seemed to have any depth or richness…everything smelled rather more like nicely scented chemicals to me than actual perfume, if that makes any sense.
Anyway, in desperation last year, I finally got around to Googling perfume, and voila! Not sure why it took me so long…I had known about Google since it’s Beta stage, it just didn’t occur to me to Google perfume. I think I found Basenotes first, then the Posse, then PST, then here!
The Creed rose drew me down in, but the Caron’s made me a permanent resident, and The Party in Manhattan sealed my Fate.
This rabbit hole is filled with some pretty amazing folks….Daisy and Mals, I’m lookin’ at y’all, especially!
It’s so much fun being around people who “get” me!
Joy at 3! I love that story and can just see you clutching that bottle in your toddler fist. From Joy to The Party in Manhattan–what a ride.
Great story of 3-year old you, so happy with Joy. 🙂 What a nice Aunt you have!
NST, totally. From a random link I can’t remember.
Looking backward, I can see all kinds of ways in which I was primed to love perfume, and like other commenters have mentioned, it was a complex kind of rediscovery for me. But I wouldn’t be here, or who I am today, frankly, without Robin and the NST crew and a few other blogs.
So–many thanks! Loved reading all these stories…
Maybe it shouldn’t be a rabbit hole for you exactly, but an explosion. You’d already set the tinder, and NST supplied the match. I can relate to that!
I don’t really know what started my fall down the Rabbit hole. I love the metaphor, by the way! Nobody in my family was really interested in perfume when I was growing up, so I started my relatively short fragrance journey as a young adult. I remember buying my bottle of Coco Mademoiselle. Then, I am ashamed to admit I wore the stuff exclusively for a couple of years. I stumbled upon Luckyscent by accident while trying to research the notes of a perfume. Since then, I’ve ordered many samples from the site 🙂
NST was the first fragrance blog I discovered a couple of years ago, and it has prompted a lot of perfume sniffing. My rabbit hole was perhaps exemplified best by my recent trip to Paris where I took my poor companion to all the perfume stores I could think of and for which we had time 🙂 Well, there is something to be said about being able to smell samples at the convenience of your own home!!
I am looking forward to discovering some of the Micallef perfumes now. I liked By Kilian Rose Oud, and I am very curious about Micallef’s eponymous version.
This summer, I’ve been wearing Les Parfums de Rosine Rose Praline a lot, which I found to be surprisingly fresh and herby. I’ve been going through a rose phase for a year or so now…
There are so many fabulous roses to smell! Have fun!
Hey sneaky pie ( gotta love that name!)
I just wanted to say that I heart M. Micallef’s Rose Aoud, it’s sweet but not toothache sweet, I find it very lovely, I think Mals said it best- ‘candied roses’ But you can smell the aoud , it’s just not as strong as in other scents, at least on my skin.
I do hate that they only sell in 100 ml. though, that bums me out cause it’s so good but I do not think I’ll get through that thing but I ain’t gonna lie, I want to try .
Such pretty pink juice too,
it’s oozes girliness in the best way.
Hmmm maybe for Christmas? Now you got me thinking…
Les Parfums de Rosine Rose Praline? That sounds divine! Where do you find it?
Oh, yes, I wanted to add (but can’t edit my message above) that even today nobody else around me in real life cares about perfume, so I am very happy to have found online communities who share this passion. I am often surprised to read that people get compliments or comments at all on their fragrances.
It is delightful to find other people who share our mania, isn’t it? Only my neighbor gets my obsession – she is in awe of my collection and I’ve made her a few decants to try and nudge her off the department store ledge, but her husband has pretty much forbidden her to follow in my footsteps, collecting-wise. To be fair, they do have two kids to spend money on, so I see where he’s coming from. 🙂
Yeah, and if she started wearing all those alluring perfumes, who knows how many kids she’d end up having?
lol – every time I spritz something on her or give her a sample and she asks him what he thinks, he always asks “how much is it?” before he answers.
I’d be tempted to bean him on the head with a lamp.
I think that she’s been tempted to do that more than once!
It is nice to know we’re not alone.
First, I read the novel The Perfume by Patrick Suskind. I have since become very interested in perfumes. It’s by typing the name of a perfume that I noticed that Nowsmellthis did a review. That was three years ago. I have since read EVERY reviews written on this website. Continue the good work!
The very first perfume that marked my rabbit-hole was Elixir des Merveilles by Hermès.
I’m so glad you read our reviews! Elixir des Merveilles is wonderful. I bet you still wear it.
I still wear it indeed! It’s perfect for the winters here, in Quebec 😀
Like everyone I seem to have always been into smells, it started with flowers in the garden and even ‘making’ up little composts of mashed up petals. I can still remember my Godmother bringing Banksia heads and the extraordinary dusty honey odour. As a teen I became obsessed with scent long before makeup and clothes, loving things that packed a wallop like Tabu (lived on a farm and could only access our local pharmacy). I do believe I got the perfume gene from my father, as a poster mentioned above…
Art school tended to be oils, but even as a povvo student I was drawn to fine fragrance, discovering Guerlain shortly after commencing work. Mitsouko became my signature scent, but I did fool around on the side with many others, having huge sniffathons whenever I got to the city. (Oh the empty bottles of extrait Mits and L’H that I would put in my lingerie drawer until the scent went, and then toss out! The rosebuds, the umbrellas, the little ionics…)
I bought my girl the brilliant Angel, Lolita Lempicka, Miss Dior Cherie…and would put them on when I did her room!
I kept going with the natural oils, making up mixes to scent my almond oil. Have always loved patchouli. My two gardens have been all about scented plants. ( I even love mowing and slashing up at my bush block as it releases amazing scents from the different vegetation, really herbal, like Ormonde Woman.)
Cut to about four years ago, my latest bottle of Mits smelling a bit funny, sweet or something, and I felt very jaded. I hit the floors of DJs and Myers on a trip and came away with stuff that didn’t smell like all the weird chemical things that had been such a letdown time after time; Stella, Alien, the Michael Kors tuberose ( now I think they are just a different chemical). So they joined Mitsouko, L Heure Bl, a little Shalimar toilette, and a big bottle of duty-free Dolce Vita that DH had bought years ago.
The rabbit hole was a mention of BPAL in Australian Vogue of all places, and that took me online searching (my previous blogging had been about horses, taken up during our outbreak of equine influenza that shut down the industry for six months). I got a few BPALs from Amazon.
But then I stumbled upon the perfume blogs, the online sellers, ‘bay, and then we know what happens….
Someone on a horse blog had as her moniker “I am spending my money and horses and bourbon and just wasting the rest”…
Mine would now be
“I am spending my money on horses and perfume, and just wasting the rest!!”
A great story! What perfumes are nice to wear while riding? It seems like the horse and saddle smells would be so nice with Bal a Versailles.
The one and only drop dead beautiful Iris Silver Mist is PERFECT with horses…maybe its the earthy carrotty thing…maybe because it is so beautiful and matches my feelings for my horses.
You’re making me crave some right now!
Horses and perfume – I can relate as I live in central Ky. and work in the Thoroughbred industry. I can tell you that when I first put on Dzing, I was so surprised as it smelled *exactly* like my skin smells after a long day out at the horse sales at Keeneland.
Fabulous post and I related to every word! I’ve always loved fragrance, but since discovering the online perfume community my love has grown into an obsession need and all encompassing desire. My collection too has grown from a respectable 5 or 6 bottles to a monstrosity that requires several cases to be kept tidy…not to mention a drawer full of decants. But every morning when I sit down with a cup of tea and look at all my perfumes before choosing what to wear; I realise what enjoyment it brings me.
I think my ‘Rabbit Hole’ perfume was Tom Ford Black Orchid Voile de Fleur
My bottle collection is pretty ridiculous, too. I keep it in a glass case with a big, blue cloth over it to keep out the light, so it ends up looking doubly goofy. But I love it.
I love the theme of this post! I feel down the rabbit hole when a friend sent me an extra perfume sample (Versace signature). I had a rollerball of Stella McCartney’s fragrance at the time, but that was it. I went online to try to find a reputable place to buy a new perfume (with the idea that I was going to buy ONE to use, haha) and found the MUA fragrance board, this blog, and many others. I’m still working on my collection but it is growing so, so quickly.
Love your gravatar and username! So perfect.
Haha, thank you! I wish I could find the link to the painting again. It was done by an artist on Etsy.
Is your perfume collection growing like….devil bunnies?
Well, I’ve a perfume lover since I was quite young (see above), but in the 8 to 10 bottle range. Certainly not in a daily obsessed with it kind of way. My fall down the rabbit hole was therefore totally unintentional and innocent! Really!!
My boss had seen some crystal vases at a gift store in Ashville, NC that she wanted to give as client gifts. She asked me to call and order them (I disburse the sales proceeds from the horse sales; I’m not her PA, but that’s another story). She couldn’t really remember the name of the gift shop, and pronounced it Bellodgia, which is what I Googled. (It was actually Bellagio.) You can imagine what the Google search of Bellodgia returned, and as it was my mother’s signature perfume, I clicked on a few links out of curiosity, and fell straight down the rabbit hole.
NST became a favorite as I am somewhat of a research geek and I loved reading all of the archived reviews. While I read about half a dozen blogs, for friends and community, nothing beats NST.
Thanks everyone! 😀
Those archived reviews really are a treasure, aren’t they? 🙂
Wow, it really was by chance you fell in the rabbit hole! Kismet, I say. You were destined to be with us.
Great stories, everyone! Though I’ve always lingered at perfume counters and kept a small collection of favorite fragrances, my journey down the rabbit hole really began in February of 2007. My husband and I were visiting a winery that had a glorious blooming daphne out front. I spent some quality time with that shrub (who cared about wine, at that point?) Sweet daphne is among my very favorite plant smells, and I decided to get online to see if I could find a perfume with that note. So I did, and in the twitch of a bunny whisker NST and Basenotes became part of my life. I never did find the perfect daphne fragrance, but I found all of you, and that is just SO much fun!
It is fun! You followed your nose, and here you are!
My first journey down the rabbit hole began several years ago when I was surfing the net for a particular perfume. The NST site came up and I clicked on it. The rest is history–I was hooked. I don’t always have the time to comment because I am at work when most of the good feedback is happening. By the time I get home from work and am on my computer later in the evening, my comments would be old news. However, I always enjoy reading everyone’s comments and this site is invaluable for any perfumista.
I always enjoy your comments, whether they’re early or late!
In a few past columns, I have related how I came upon my perfumania, so I won’t reiterate those stories here, but having read the above tales, what struck me was that I could list the men in my life in relation to the perfumes they gave me. Since I didn’t marry till I was 51, this could be an interesting read! Or perhaps fodder for a future poll? “What fragrance given to you by a SO made a lasting impression on your perfumed existence?”
Although I have been married (and divorced) twice, and have had numerous men in my life through the years, the only one who ever bought me perfume was my first husband. No man since then has ever bought me fragrance. Everything I now own I purchased myself–and boy have I done a lot of purchasing through these many years!
I have similarly bad luck with jewelry. The only jewelry I’ve received from a man was a pin urging me to spend St Patrick’s Day with Guinness. Not very romantic.
😀
The only man who ever bought me perfume was my husband, back when we were dating in college. I had decided I liked Tabu, and the bottle I had was almost empty, so I suggested it to him when he was asking me what I would like for Christmas.
Tabu! I bet you’d have a different answer now.
Yes, now I would probably ask him to buy me that 31 Rue Cambon I have been wanting for 2 years. It is not so much the price as the commitment to 200 ml of one scent, especially when I already have about 50 bottles. But if my husband gave it to me for Christmas, that is different!
Actually, I usually ask him to get me something that says “Godiva” on it.
Gosh, I think that would make a fascinating novel. You could talk about each man and compare your relationship with the scent he gave you. The final chapter would be the lucky winner–the man you married!
Almost 2 years ago I decided to take the “scientific” approach to finding a new perfume and do some reading on the internet about selecting a personal perfume. I came across NST and was fascinated. I returned night after night. I was surprised to see Mitsouko so highly regarded for I had sniffed it several years ago and was totally repulsed by it. However, I decided I had to resniff, and when I did I was smitten. I fell in deep-especially for chypres.
Ah, chypres. Your scientific approach led you to art. Perfect!
I really want to love Mitsouko, but I find it smells like old books whenever I’ve sprayed it on. . . I wonder if it is my chemistry? Or perhaps my nose just hasn’t evolved yet? I hate that you can’t get samples of the perfume classics so you can get to know them a little better before you make a financial commitment. Sometimes it seems like the salespeople don’t even want you to buy them. The lady at the Guerlain counter told me Mitsouko smelled bad, and had never heard of Vol de Nuit. I was shocked.
Mitsouko does kind of smell like old books! It’s a good one to have a sample vial of and dab on every three or four months. Someday it might really take off on you–or not. Mitsouko is wonderful, but I have to wonder if it’s achieved some sort of impossibly mythic status through hype.
I think it has achieved an impossible mythic status. I love it, and it is a great perfume, but there are plenty of others, and people should never feel bad if they don’t like it. I’d say the oakmoss could very well smell like old books to some people.
I love the smell of old books. Maybe that’s why I liked Mitsouko from the beginning.
Such beautiful stories everyone! I read once that smell is a gateway to memory,and y’all are certainly proving the point!
I wish I could claim some dazzling perfumista in my genealogy but scentfolk, they just aren’t there. My grandmother when she wore perfume, only wore Tabu. In fact, her bathroom was liberally scented with Tabu perfume, lotion, and dusting powder. (I would write my name in the powder on her vanity). And for some reason, Mom was rather averse to the whole concept of perfume.
As a teen all I remember is a bottle of Tatiana, and a large supply of Jean Nate, which Mom felt was okay for a kid. Maybe I was a little too liberal in the application, but every 12 yr.old should over indulge in some things 🙂 The 80’s were a barren desert. But somewhere along the way, I decided that I could have three bottles of perfume at any given time. And then I found “The Guide”. Oh dear.
Based on the reviews, I felt that I should investigate Mitsouko and Serge Lutens. But, to try out SL I’ have to go into Nieman Marcus. Oh help me lord. In I went, like a spy into enemy territory… and the SA couldn’t have been sweeter. Suggested some for me, and loaded me with samples. And when I mentioned the Mitsouko, very kindly pointed me to Saks. Which I’d also never been into. But, I really wanted a sniff. And again, the SA was great. But she must have noticed the look on my face, and she suggested that Mitsouko wasn’t for everyone. perhaps I ‘d like L’Heure Bleue? Oh, really, do ya think? So there I am, having lunch at Boca Towne Center, madly sniffing each wrist, trying to decide between L’Heure Bleue and Ambre Sultan. It was ridiculous. I had innocent bystanders giving their opinions on which was best. So I ended up buying a bottle of each. What else could I do?
I’ve since only acquired about a dozen bottles. My dedication to research has saved my wallet. I think I found NST by way of a NY Times article, but I wouldn’t swear to it. I’ve yet to buy decants, mainly ‘cuz I have to investigate the opinions of folks here on EVERY SINGLE ONE! But at least I’m safer in Nashville than I was in Boca Raton. I still think of the Chanel Boutique and the Cuir de Russe. Which I think I will one day crumble before the awesomeness. Even if the bottle is big enough for three lifetimes. I tell myself I could scent my bedsheets in that stuff.
You certainly could do worse than start down the rabbit hole with L’Heure Bleue and Ambre Sultan! Nice choices.
“I bought a bottle of each. What else could I do?”
You had me literally laughing out loud at that! Classic!
That Boca Towne Center is dangerous. Unfortunately I live in driving distance .
I bought a bottle of Eclat d’Arpege and was instantly curious to think who else was buying this. That Google search brought up an article here on a summer flanker announcement. I’d been fiddling around with the perfume sections for a long time, though. My mom’s friend (apparently a No. 5 devotee) sent her a gift set for Burberry Brit Red, which is amazing still (I have quite a few bottles of the lotion which smells so good and gingery). I grew out of the Ed’A, though. I actually found a sample of Arpege at an estate sale, so I’m curious to see how I like that. Curious how tastes can change….
Oh, I know. Tastes definitely change, but that’s good. That’s what taste is all about.
I have to say though, financial problems (not severe, thankfully) prevent any real plummet down into madness. It feels terrible to be behind on almost every launch but I wonder if it’s actually a good thing. I’m reading about these hundred-bottle collections and that would just boggle my mind. I don’t think I could get out the door trying to decide what to wear.
I’m way behind on launches, too, and wlll never smell some new perfumes just because there are so many!
Like so many others, I’ve always been fascinated by scent… I even tried to make my own as a kid (thanks, Ma, for tolerating my lard-smeared attempts at enfleurage!), and then I started buying my own around age 14 (White Linen, Diorissimo, Paris, No. 5, then on to Cocktail, Royal Bain de Champagne, Joy, Orchidee Blanche, etc. etc. — yes, I was a precocious and spoiled little perfumista!).
Somehow I decided in my early 20s that Diorissimo was my be-all and end-all HG, and that’s all I wore until about age 35, when the big D just didn’t seem to fit me anymore and I began lurking around perfume counters once again. It was La Chasse aux Papillons Extreme that lured me down the Internet rabbit hole (ironically enough, since as soon as I bought a bottle it instantly began smelling like poop on me!) — a Google search for it brought me here about 5 years ago, and the rest is expensive but sweet-smelling history. Darn it, now I’m getting all nostalgic!
I’m smiling at the “lard-smeared attempts at enfleurage”! I tried the same thing myself with Crisco and gardenia petals. It didn’t work!
That’s so funny! Crisco, man oh man.
When I was maybe 8-9, my friends and I mixed things I thought smelled good in some water and sold it by the Dixie cup. Turns out the smell soured hours later, but it sure was fun! :3
Dixie cups of perfumed water! That’s pretty good.
You have quite a distinguished history with perfume!
Well, I would never have gone from four or five bottles at a time to more than one hundred without The Guide, The Perfumed Court, Luckyscent, ebay and blogs, especially NST. I believe I found NST through internet searches for specific perfumes.
Nevertheless, I’ve always been interested in scent. I remember being fascinated by my mother’s perfume: Chanel No. 5, a magnolia perfume from New Orleans and Topaz. I grew up in a small town that had an old-fashioned drug store with a soda fountain AND perfume by Coty, Guerlain and Dana, so my nose had a chance to encounter some decent scents early on. I also used to sniff and buy on periodic trips to the big department store in the closest city. I remember buying a Russian perfume (Layla or Laila) at an eclectic gift shop near my college campus (sadly, this is the only scent from my past that never comes up on ebay). Later, traveling overseas and killing time in duty free shops contributed, as well.
Before the internet, print influences included the classic perfume advertisements (including, of course, the My Sin cat) as far back as I can remember, all those Glamour articles on finding one’s signature scent, an article on Annick Goutal in Connoisseur magazine in the 1990s, and The H&R Book Fragrance Guide Feminine Notes, which introduced me to notes, families and the dazzling array of bottles and scents beyond the usual.
Huge thanks to NST and this wonderful gang of commenters for making the rabbit hole so much fun!
I always loved reading about perfume in magazines, too. Now I read so much about perfume on the internet I give magazine perfume writing the fish eye most times–it seems like a lot of marketing pap. Not all of it, though.
True, anymore, it’s usually just straight from the PR machine. Very glad that Connoisseur article steered me to AG, though!
It is hard to say just when I fell down the rabbit hole. I have always loved perfume. When I was perhaps 3 or 4 I fell in love with the scents of the perfumes on my mother’s dressing table–Chanel no. 5, Arpege, Tabu, My Sin, l’Origan, other things I cannot recall the names of. My mother was a litle bit of a puzzle–she had all these beautiful perfumes, but seldom wore any. It seemed that she considered it important to have perfume, but not to use it. I know many women have a bottle or two they don’t use except for special occasions, but my mother had at least 20 or 30–and probably still has most of them. (I think she has a bottle of–drum roll, please–Roger and Gallet Blue Carnation, probably at least 75% full!) In any case, I was happy to use the perfume for her, and she never seemed to mind me dabbing some on.
My first perfume (of my own) was an Avon roll-on. I don’t even know if it had a name. I received it as a Christmas gift, followed by another a year or two later, then a bottle of Coty Muguet des Bois when I was about 10. I thought it was the most beautiful smell in the world. In junior high, I started buying my own–a Coty Sweet Earth colid perfume compact (the floral, I think), Shulton BLue Jeans (anyone remember that?), Love’s Baby Soft. High school brought more Muguet des Bois, Emeraude, Prince Matchabelli Golden Autumn, and Blue Grass. By college I had my own bottles of no. 5, My Sin, and Arpege, as well as White Shoulders and Pheromone. I had read about Pheromone, which was described as the most expensive perfume in the world (although it wouldn’t be even close today!) I had to smell it, and was able to find it on a family trip to Chicago. I bought a bottle of EdT, and was intrigued by its very different smell. I was used to florals, floral aldehydes, and orientals, and had never smelled a green scent before. My first instant perfume love came in 1986, with a magazine scent strip of Poison. I rubbed it on my wrist, not expecting much, and WHAM! I fell hopelessly in love. I had to order it by mail, as it was excllsive to Bloomingdale’s at that time, and the nearest Bloomie’s was about 100 miles away, and I did not have a car.
At this point, I was still in an 8 to 10 bottle rotation, and probably using perfume as fast as I bought it, but that changed when I received a “junk” mail catalog from Yves Rocher in about 1991 or 1992. I just had to try (and buy) everything they had, and the prices were low enough for me to be able to do so. I finally had more bottles than I could realistically use. Then I bought Jan Moran’s book, and off I went. I read about Feminite du Bois, was intrigues (I love cedar), found it in a department store, and bought it on the spot (my second Instant Perfume Love). Then I discovered that the same store had a Guerlain counter that offered more than just the Shalimar and Samsara in my local store. I fell hard for Vol de Nuit (my third IPL), Parure, and Apres l’Ondee.
About 2 years ago, I bought The Guide, which is where I learned of NST. I also starting googling some of the obscure perfumes in the guide, and found LuckyScent and FragranceNet. I didn’t actually visit NST until a few months ago, when I finally bought my first home computer (yes, I was the person who did not have a computer at home). I currently have about 50 FB’s that I really do intend to use up eventually, and about 10 or 15 others–mistakes that I would like to give or swap away.
I have been sampling like mad. So far this year, I have tried the Ormonde Jayne discovery set, the XerJoff sample set, and a few dozen other assorted frags. I hope this post is not too ridiculously long, but I just love to talk about perfume
Great story! You can always talk about perfume here–that’s what we’re here for! But instead of talking about perfume, you need to hustle over to your mom’s and get your hands on her perfume bottles pronto!
This has been a wonderful page to read. Thanks so much for the great posts, everyone! It has been like reading a petite mini-novel, written by some very creative, obviously well-scented and pleasantly obsessed people (hee hee). I’ve really enjoyed what your wonderful initial post has spawned, Angela–I am usually a lurker, but I just had to join the voices–it is indeed good to hear from people who also love perfume and how they came to be that way. Excellent!
I’m glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for contributing, too.
My Rabbit hole was Armani. I thought his regular fragrances (Armani Mania, Armani Code, Sensi, Emporio Armani She Classic) – were very good. but I wanted to see some reviews – just to be sure. Robin here was not merciful. Armani obviously didn’t agree with her) Then I started reading about Serge Lutens line. because I saw it and liked some fragrances. And I read how Robin described the drydawm of Santal Blanc – pencil shavings and how she loved when a fragrance smells of pencil shavings. I love them too. So I never stopped reading…
I remember loving the first Armani, although It’s been years since I smelled it. I have to admit to not being blown away by what they’ve done recently.
Don’t even think of smelling Armani now. It’s been completely massacred. It was so wonderful. 🙁
Sad…
This is my first comment! So this article really applies perfectly… I’m a recent “tumbler” down the rabbit hole of the perfume world. I’m 18, but I’ve always LOVED perfume, (although my tastes tended to be a bit mainstream as a younger teenager) and I was always on the hunt for the perfect signature scent. However, I could never stick to just one. Each perfume was so different, so unique, it was like meeting different people and forming a special set of memories with each. I couldn’t ever decide, and eventually I gave up trying and just enjoyed everything. My mom is also a huge perfume hoarder- her history is dotted with massive perfume love affairs, with Shalimar, L’Heure Bleu, White Shoulders, Most Precious, and hundreds of others. So I’ve always been familiar with scent, but it took a recent reading of this blog, along with Luca Turin’s book “Perfume”, to really get me hooked. My mom and I started comparing fragrance notes, ordering decanted samples of vintage treasures left and right. It’s been a madhouse scramble the past couple weeks, searching through Ebay and Amazon and weird sketchy sellers, as we eagerly wait for the little samples to arrive in the mail. And this blog is definitely to blame for the extravaganza. Every time I get a new perfume, I look through NST and Bois de Jasmin to see the notes involved, the descriptions, and other opinions. It’s been so much fun. Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth all the fuss, but then I smell my new bottle of Jean Desprez Bal a Versailles, Guerlain Mitsouko, or Frederic Malle Une Rose, and I can’t help but think that great perfume makes life a little better. 🙂
I love it that you and your mom are in this together! It sounds like so much fun that way–plus you can share bottles or at least give each other decants. Welcome!
How wonderful to be sharing this with your mom!
Perfume-wise, I would say it was CD Poison which triggered my passion for perfumes. I was very much into florals before. I tried and enjoyed Estee Lauder Beautiful, YSL Paris, Vanderbilt by Gloria Vanderbilt, Nina by Nina Ricci, Givenchy Fleur D Interdit, etc. Until this one day came my olfactory sense kind of “snapped” and find anything floral cloying. Years have passed and I learned about Serge Lutens (totally hooked on Douce Amere) and Hermes (Kelly Caleche) and those citrus aromatic (Lancome’s Aroma Tonic) and the search for other perfumes continued. But that Poison really was the “key” for me to this interesting world of perfumes.
Web-wise, it was Perfume Emporium. I just had to share my thoughts on some bottles and enjoy reading other peoples’ comments as well. Can’t remember exactly when I bumped into NST but as far as I can recall, the first time I read this blog I was totally hooked.
Someone else commented that Poison was her rabbit hole scent, too. It’s so distinctive, I can imagine it happening. But I can also imagine eventually coming to love more subtle fragrances.
I love NST blog, and your comments, Angela. I am moving and reading the blog is what I reward myself with after packing. I am so stressed that I have been wearing Temple by Anya’s Garden exclusively. I’m looking for a new scent to celebrate my new home. Something joyful, fresh.
Congratulations on your new home! Once you’re settled, you definitely need a joyous fragrance to associate it with.
Well I grew up in a Communist country where true fragrances practically did not exist. There was one kind of shop with foreign goods of all kinds and if you were lucky enough to get inside – as it was not for everyone – they had maybe 3 fragrances at a time. I remember “Je Reviens” by Worth, “Masumi”, Caleche, and later Madame Rochas and O de Lancome. Most young girls like me wore a perfumed deodorant called Impulse (I think it’s German) they still make it these days and I wonder who wears it!
The issue of a fragrance suiting the personality of the wearer was not an issue, you wore what you were lucky enough to receive and left it at that.
But I was always fascinated with frgrances, always able to recognize a fragrance even after one whiff. After communism fell, I started travelling so airport shops became my Mecca. And I always bought at least two fragrances, ideally not the ones you’d find in any shop back home.
NST was a major discovery and a total fascination and it took me about two years to post a comment. Suddenly I felt outstaged, not really able to describe a fragrance the way you guys do. For me the bottom notes count – the head and the heart are nice but ephemeral and can not be the main reason for any purchase. NST is unique! Most other blogs are nice enough but they are not “in the know” like you guys, and the sites simply do not look classy. I also like MakeupAlley – it’s a no-frills, brutally honest feedback of most fragrances out there. And I like Perfume Shrine, the author is a true artist, but again in terms of what’s new and what’s hot and stylish there is no competition. You are the Patricia Field of the fragrance industry!
I grew up in Romania, we had Revlons Charlie, Je reviens and deodorants (Impulse I knew far later when I moved already to Germany). Where did you grow up?
I also buy always stuff in duty free, something I do not get here 🙂 and perfume extraits if I can afford.
In Romania too, as per my e-mail 😀 It’s a small world.
Now I started down the memory lane I remember Romania used to have one beauty brand “Farmec” (Charm) and they made the wise marketing decision of not releasing fragrances but perfumed deodorant. Their top selling product was called “Deo Farmec 16” and it smelled like a cross between German Fa’s lemon-scented deo (a Coty brand I believe, and a classic choice back then) and bug spray. All high schools reeked of it 🙂
My first fragrance at the age of 14 was Madame Rochas. Although too grown-up for me, I treasured it util my Dad got me O de Lancome. Now that was a fragrance ahead of its time.
Wow, comparing NST to Patricia Field is high praise! Thank you! Robin does a terrific job with the blog, and I’m constantly amazed at how she’s always improving it.
I love your story, too. You couldn’t have fallen down the rabbit hole until communism fell.
But you ARE the Patricia Field of fragrance. She charges an arm and a leg for her advice no doubt, and I hope the day will come when fragrance consultants like you will be able to do the same! To quote Eliza Doolitle, wouldn’t it be lovely?
As to your comments, rest assured I more than made up for all those lean years of communism! 😀
And in terms of what started my search for a better fragrance, back in 1998 I had two fragrances I was hooked on: Hypnotic Poison for winter and L’Eau par Kenzo for summer. There have been others before and after, but these were the best and I was intrigued and annoyed of not quite being able to replace them. Well now I replaced L’Eau par Kenzo with Bronze Goddess as my ultimate summer fragrance (Ananas Fizz is a close second but it’s too light) but Hypnotic is still there, maybe on a par with Midnight Poison especially for the evening. The rest come and go. I need to get my hands on a bottle of Tuscan Leather for the fall 🙂
I hope you get a big bottle of Tuscan Leather, then, to sit next to the Hypnotic Poison!
I fell with one and a half.
The tell goes like this: Small Andreea stood in front of her mommys cupboard, saying: Pfff.Pfff. Apparently I wanted something that is Pffff, and my daddy (who is a shoe collecting, perfume loving Don Juan) understood and took out the spray my mom used, some cheap deodorant with musk. Rexona in a red bottle.
I love smell, not only scents – after blogging myself for a while I searched for some description, I do not remember exactly what for, I lacked the words for the smell and was looking for ingredients.
I enjoy very much reading NST and I read often all (!) comments. I force myself to write my very best english, and I improved it also a lot here, as well as I improved my nose.
I do not buy often perfume, but everytime I get in a bigger city I go to the niche-stores and smell, I swap samples and I take my time before an “investition” because I am an “original bottle or nothing” one. I need the bottle as a part of the art-piece, and I do not care if it is nearly empty.
The scent that then truly sent me down was Chasse aux Papillons. I will always rememebr that I felt like I found heaven.
Ever since now I am looking for this kind of scents that keep stories and sceneries in them. To smell is like watching a movie in my head, I imagine people, fashion, adventure or dark secrets with it.
For perfume, I am stucked in the white florals area and rose-y scents. I am wearing rather easy scents that not distract me during the day, but I developed a rather scientific view at perfume: How does my self-apperception together with a certain scent, change with the time (skin chemistry, hormones, mood, life challenges and personal changes) ?
To simplify: Will there be a time when I can wear Guerlains L’Heure Bleue because I have grown-up to feel it does not wear me?
Will there be a time when I am wearing a heavy Serge Lutens to encourage myself without feeling “heavily perfumed”?
Oh, and some other compliment on NST – I think you are a role-model for bloggers. At least mine, and I am a big blogger in Germany. I owe a lot to you!
I wish I knew German so I could read your blog!
White florals and rose perfumes are so nice on certain people, and they do lend a particular mood, I think. Not everyone wants to be weighed down with heavy orientals.
I got hooked on Vol de Nuit when I stumbled on the Guerlain counter on my way out a of a department store one day. (There’s a reason the cosmetics and perfume are near the door). I spent several happy weeks visiting the counter and carefully sampling all the classic Guerlains. I ended up falling in love with VdN and wore it for fall/winter for years – it was when I was first married and my DH bought me the extrait – such a lovely guy. Now I mostly just wear the edp.
Then, a couple of years ago, I decided to look for a more casual fall/winter scent – something to wear to the dog park or to the third grade play – that sort of thing. I started at the perfume counter at my favorite department store, then went online, and then – WHAM! There I was tumbling head over heels down that rabbit hole.
(Just to clarify: I used up the VdN extrait, and while I’m sure DH would buy me another bottle if I asked because he’s that kind of guy, my perfume wish list has grown so very, very long that it will be a while before that comes back up in the rotation. Unless we win the lottery.)
Vol de Nuit is one of my all time favorites! What did you end up with for the dog park?
I love this post, it is great to others stories. I have always loved different scents, I have older sisters and I loved to sniff the perfumes on the dresser, Tabu,Tigresse,Woodhue,Prince Matchabelli and Jicky in the round bottle with the pointed top. The first perfume I bought myself, Love’s Fresh Lemon, then Coty Sweet Earth florals and Love’s Fresh Rain. The first perfume gift I remember was a bottle of Emeraude moisture from my sister because my birthstone is emerald. I loved it, wish I still had the bottle. In high school I had a friend who gave me her old bottles of Chloe and Ombre Rose, she is also the one who helped me find my signature scent for many years,Givenchy L’Interdit edt. It was when I ran out of the bottle in the early 90’s that I tried to find a new scent, everything I tried either smelled wrong or messed with my allergies/asthma. So I gave up looking and stayed unscented til my husband found me a bottle at the outlet mall.So I enjoyed my L’interdit sparingly til I saw an article in Allure magazine about a new summer scent, Happily Ever After from Kohls. It became my everyday scent. Then about 4 years ago, I saw an article in Time Magazine about perfumes and the online community and I was really struck by the description of Poivre Piquant, so I was launched on a sniffing quest, reading blogs. NST is the first place I look every day . I ordered samples on-line,attended a fragrance fair at my local Nordies, a total bust, and finally ordered my first full bottle online from L’artisan New York. Then I read The Emperor of Scent and A Perfect Scent by Chandler Burr, was inspired to try Lovely and UJSLN. That was all she wrote. In 3 years I have gone from 3 bottles to about 30. I am lucky to share this enjoyment with my husband. My first purchase for him was Mechant Loup, his first was L’Eau Por Kenzo Homme. I could go on all but I don’t want my first comment to be too long. Thanks for sharing perfume. Rosie
What a great story! I went to one of those fragrance fairs at Nordstrom, too, and was disappointed. We didn’t even get samples.
Mechant Loup is a great one to share with your husband!
My ticket down the rabbit hole was L’Artisan Premier Figuier. First I saw L’Artisan’s stunning bottles of Premier Figuier Extreme and Mure et Musc Extreme in a magazine. You know the fig and theblackberry shaped flacons? So then I went on the website and reserchead only to find out their prices… which then it sounded just inccredibly expensive for a bottle of perfume to me! So I just bought 50ml of Premier Figuier in a regular bottle… and I liked it. Then I bought some decants from the perfumed court…. then I found makeupalley and swapped it all away for CdG “weird” fragrances, just because I was on a search for something new! Then I started reading nowsmellthis daily… and a thousand perfumes later… here I am!
I remember the first time I tried Premier Figuier. It really was a revelation of what perfume could be. The SA kept telling me it didn’t smell good on me, though, so I passed it up. Who knows? It could have been my rabbit hole, too!
I just don’t want to climb out of the rabbit hole. Not when it smells so good! I fell down it in 2008 after buying a bottle of Nahema (one of my mother’s two favourites, the other being No 5). I had spritzed it at the Guerlain counter to remember her by, she passed a few years ago, and found I could wear it at last. Googled Nahema when I got home, found NST, and subsequently an absorbing interest in perfume. Have reached the stage where I am enjoying what I have, but can still be tempted occasionally.
That’s a good stage–enjoying what you have but still occasionally tempted. Nahema is such a beauty.
Like many others, The Guide turned a nascent interest into what I still like to call a hobby. The Guide is a very good intro but then you must escape its influence and form your own opinions. (I just tried L’Heure Bleue the other day, and it is near heaven!)
L’Heure Bleue is wonderful–and a little strange, which makes it even better!
I find it kind of amazing that when I was much younger and very inexperienced with perfume, I gravitated towards a couple of perfumes that are mentioned here with much frequency; Shiseido Feminite du Bois and Guerlain L’Heure Bleue. Those bottles and also the propensity to wear those scents are long gone, but it made me realize that one major thing I love in life is to wander the department stores and sniff to my heart’s content. I even like to try the ones I know will not work for me, just so I can try to find out what makes them tick.
What brought me into the online world of perfumistas was Tom Ford. When I smelled his perfumes in Sephora a couple of years ago, I could barely comprehend them. How could perfumes be so warm and simple, yet so foreign and distant? I HAD to know more, so I started digging, and quickly found NST. I also found that I know nothing. I am that girl of 20 years ago once more, wandering aimlessly and loving it. I only recently began exploring and sampling some of the perfumes I’ve read about, and I am just so blown away by the below-ground cosmos of the niche and the rare, the beautiful and the nasty, the powerful but small. Kid in a candy store? You bet, and I’m cleaning the place out.
That’s terrific! Your “kid in a candy store” analogy is perfect!