The perfume business — once a young maiden tripping gaily through a field of flowers, then for a long while a more mature lady navigating determined department-store demonstrators wearing smocks — has over the last 20 years or so gone terribly pear-shaped. Also apple, grapefruit, mushroom and Sichuan pepper-shaped. Some current formulations are indeed indistinguishable from salads.
— Alexandra Jacobs goes shopping at Twisted Lily and Atelier Cologne in Brooklyn. Read more at Notes of Orange, Apple and Brooklyn at the New York Times.
Thanks, Robin, for the link – this really made me chuckle!
My favorite line:
‘In my experience, you don’t discover perfumes in stores so much as covet them on acquaintances, then submit to disappointment as the stuff runs afoul of your own body chemistry.’
No wonder the writer concludes, ‘smell is other people’!
Made me laugh too!