Take two perfumes: both are made by luxury perfume houses, they smell very similar, and they come packaged in equally attractive bottles. One costs $75, and the other, which is discontinued, costs twice that. Which one will I buy? Assuming that my budget is up to it, chances are I'll go for the discontinued scent. What is that all about?

There's something about a discontinued perfume that makes me crazy to smell it and maybe own it, even if I never would have bought the scent were it still in production. Thanks to this illogical urge, I have enough discontinued perfume that had I saved my money instead I could have replaced my living room windows. I have bottles that I can't swap away (hello vanilla fruit of Lagerfeld Sun Moon Stars), bottles that I like well enough but wouldn't have bought otherwise (that means you, “smoking in a cafe with roses and a spicy plum tart” Guerlain Parure), and bottles that I adore (witness my lifetime supply of vintage Miss Dior, the skanky variety). And, of course, there are all the bottles I can only dream of…

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