"Wow, get me out of this lift." I don’t say that, obviously. But it’s what I think as soon as the two magazine executives enter, bringing with them their perfume-doused coats, collars and wrists. It’s not the smell that’s the issue. Honestly, that’s the only enjoyable part: thorny fruits, an overdose of Turkish rose, the contradiction of adolescent patchouli and potent sandalwood, then almost-vanilla. Bark. Musk. Olfactory morse code for power and sex. I’d recognise this unrepentant showpiece anywhere – these days, anyway.
— Can you guess? Read more in When did we all start smelling... the same? at Cosmopolitan via Yahoo News.
I am stunned that there are still people crowding into elevators. If you are close enough to trace sillage to a detail of suit, you are way within six feet.
I make no assumptions about the author’s covid-safety habits or even when this happened to her…
I’ll try my best to NOT take this personally,seeing my love for Portrait of a lady is neverending.
Ha, also I was thinking I would drop dead from surprise if I walked into an elevator with 2 people wearing ANY Frederic Malle scent.
This is a geographically-confined problem, specific to certain urban areas — it would never happen near me.
Now this I totally agree with.It will also most likely not happen here very often.
That’s exactly what I was thinking!
Hmm. I guess you folks were able to find the full article. I could not and based upon the squib, they seemed to be talking about something dark and fruity, along the lines of any number of Serge Lutens.
I agree, the chances of encountering multiple wearers of any expensive scent in an elevator seem remote. Perhaps the woman worked at a building with beauty writers, or an office of firmatech consultants. I have met exactly one fume head, outside of fragrance shops and Sniffapoolza. He was not an elegant financier in a fine suit He was a cable installation guy, who noticed my Zoology box. He was, unsurprisingly dressed in the kind of jeans one would wear when installing cable systems and a shirt with his company’s emblem. We chatted about Zoology’s offerings and he had high praise for Imaginary Authors. The next time he came back (because cable systems, of course, are problematic , I gave him some samples.
So sorry, link should be fixed now!
Oh don’t apologize. Heaven knows, I often enough err in my attempts to post. I had assumed that the problem was on Yahoo’s end.
Now that I read the article, it is just weird. It seems to be complaining that even in this era of “niche scents” people sometimes meet someone else wearing the same scent. Obviously, more than one person will own a fragrance, except for the few people who commission a personal scent. How on earth could a company survive otherwise? Do people think that they are the only purchaser at the department store?
This hardly new. USO dances must have had
plenty of WACS and army wives wearing Channel No. 5 when the brand was discounted at military base stores. Large swaths of the clean shaved men once smelled of Burma Shave
Well, the way in which this makes sense to me is that if you assume you live in Manhattan or LA or London, and you have plenty of money to spare for niche fragrance, it’s not weird that you’d meet 2 people wearing the same scent so much as it’s weird that so many people would smell the same (a couple years ago, Le Labo Santal, this year apparently Frederic Malle POAL — and see Jessica’s comment below).
Nearly every time I smell fragrance on a human, it smells like La Vie Est Belle (or a flanker, or a copy, or a relative, etc), and that makes sense…I do not live in a wealthy area with good access to niche fragrance. So there is something sort of funny imagining that even in wealthy areas with good access, people still all smell the same
And meant to add, when free movement was still possible and I went to DC every so often, in fact, yes, the scent on the street in nice neighborhoods was frequently Le Labo Santal, and that did seem sort of sad — they make all these great scents and everyone was just wearing the one they smelled on someone else, and in DC of course they were wearing it after it was already “over” in NY.
This article is basically saying the same thing as the one I posted today:
https://fashionista.com/2019/01/le-labo-santal-33-perfume-trend-over
She wrote about Portrait of a Lady.I took it personally,mainly because of her choice of words describing it.#SorryNotSorry.
Who cares anyway if 100 people in the same elevator wears the same thing?At least it”s not smelling of feet and sweat.🤭✌🏻
Was it PoaL? That one was getting ridiculously popular with a certain subset of the Manhattan population (or ppl who work in Manhattan, at least) before Covid…! I can be purchased at so many counters around Manhattan now (thanks to the Lauder takeover) and I’ve noticed it has strong word-of-mouth. I’m sure it’s been recommended to me by some cosmetics-or-fashion-adjacent person at some point when they’ve learned that I’m “into perfume.” lol
Yes.I’ll take my PoaL now and leave for my deserted island,thanks.Haha.
Seriously, you probably can wear it without irony anywhere but New York, London or LA.
What Robin said! It’s a very locale-specific issue!
Though it’s not “me”, I think Portrait of a Lady is beautiful and would be happy to smell it in an elevator! (If I ever get in an elevator again…)
The author seems to come around to the idea that perhaps we ought not to be so possessive of scents as “ours”, but then I’m not sure why she derides PoaL so strongly in her anecdote!
I for one am so grateful for all the shared perfume love. I do get jealous when something that was “meh” on me is fantastic on someone else, but I get over that pretty quickly since there’s so much to love.
ok, so am I the only one who googled “Maison Louis Marie”? And it’s available at Sephora, which makes it pretty accessible (maybe not in the UK)? Never heard of that one, though.
I think if overall more people were into fragrance, that would be neat – I have two local friends who are into fragrance. Most of my friends barely own any scent at all.