When the Going Gets Tough . . .

. . . Some folks do drugs or drink. Over eat. Have inappropriate sex with strangers in Eastern European train stations.

Moi? I help out the economy.

Two recent purchases.

Numero Uno:

Normally, I am not a sweater. In fact, so little do I sweat regardless of exertion level or outside temperature, I'm sure I would be considered a genetic freak by any number of scientists who study these things. But it's been one hell of a rainy summer, with moisture hanging thick as snot in the air, and so I now schwitz copiously whenever I venture outside. Run a few miles or hit a bucket of balls, the result is the same. Yew. So I figure, this will keep the sweat out of my eyes for my race this weekend. And, I think it looks kinda über cool.

Two:

Remember how everyone in the universe thinks one of our fifty is missing? Well, the advantage to THAT is that I got away Scot Free in the Duty Free, scoring both some deeply discounted Clinique SPF 15 gloss and one of my fave perfumes of all time. I love, love, love, this cherry pie meets Bulgarian rose meets vanilla and musk perfume. It's deeeeeeeelightful, but, alas, MIA in this part o' the country.

"Gracias, Señorita" is what the sales girl said after handing me my shiny new purchases. Oh, no. Thank you. And your obvious lack of geographical savvy.

Mute Monday: Aroma/Scent

Me trying to remain mute on the topic of aroma/scent is like me refusing a second helping of cake. Or a third. Near impossible. But I'll try.

MY FAVORITE AROMAS:

EMBODIED IN MY FAVORITE PERFUMES:

I know. It's getting out of hand.

Until You Walk a Mile in Another Man's Moccasins You Can't Imagine the Smell

I know, I've been lagging in my posts lately. That's because I'm glued to this computer 24/7 and not in a good way, i.e. to blog, comment and/or check the myriad of crap celebrity gossip sites I have to visit in one day just to attain that right level of smugness about Moi's own life.

And when I'm not working, I'm reading. Specifically, this:


Those who know me well know I am totally scent-obsessed. It started when I was a little girl. Because I had a habit of constantly wandering off on my own, when out and about my mother kept me near to her at all times by holding tight to my hand. A move that put me right in line with her own hand and wrist. (And by the way, helped my mother to develop some freakishly ambidextrous skills).

But other than keeping me safe, my mother's grip also introduced me to something else: her perfume. For years, she doused herself each morning with Ma Griffe, and for years I associated that smell with my mother. In fact, it would be a long time before I realized that her smell actually came from a bottle and not, as I'd assumed, out of the pores of her own skin. Which meant I could smell that way, too. Only I wasn't allowed. Perfume, she said, was not for little girls. To this day, I cannot smell Ma Griffe without being instantly reminded of my mother. Sometimes, if I'm really missing her, I'll drop by our city's local perfume shop and have the sales assistant spritz me some Ma Griffe on a scent card.

I'm sure you all have had similar experiences. Because, male or female, scent is one of our most powerful senses. And yet, our most profoundly mysterious. I never realized how much until I started reading The Emperor of Scent, which is, in a nutshell, the story of a man who tries to come up with the first scientific explanation for how and why we smell. Seriously. No one's ever been able to do it before. It's our greatest molecular biology mystery.

So, if you do nothing else within the next couple weeks, expand your brain by going to the library and reading the first chapter of this book. I don't know about you, but I love being reminded on a daily basis what complex, freakish organisms we human beings really are.

That's all. Go. Read. I'll be back.

Scent and Sensibility

I'm a sucker for certain scents. Flowers, fresh fruit, linen off the clothes line, pine trees after rain, baking bread, sweaty guys. And, naturally, perfume. Anything in the citrus/floral family. On occasion, maybe a well-crafted spicy oriental. But for goodness sake, no patchouli. I'm sorry, but patchouli always makes me think of unwashed hippies trying to get by until their next encounter with running water.

I have had many, many perfumes in my life, starting with my discovery, as a very young girl, of 4711's brisk lemony sting. Lufthansa used to pass out handi-wipes soaked in the stuff on their transatlantic flights. My family made the journey from NYC to Frankfurt every summer for years and I hoarded those packets like a squirrel hoards nuts before winter's first snow. After that, I could count on a bottle tucked in between the marzipan and chocolates sent by my Oma each year at Christmas until her death twelve years ago. Today, I buy my own.

After 4711, there was Jean Nate – even MORE lemony! – and then even MORE of Revlon's classic 1970s drugstore perfumes: Charlie, Enjoli, Jontue – a veritable French whorehouse of scent. Then when I was 16, my boss bought me my first-ever grown up perfume, Ralph Lauren's Lauren. Desperately in love with the man, for one short moment I considered it a token of his similar affections. But, alas. His garden gate swung most decidedly the other way. He was simply helping me develop a sense of fashion. I still have the bottle, though. All I need to do to bring back the memory of those prickly, hot-cheeked years is uncap the bottle and whiff.

My next favorite perfume I also discovered in an airport, in the duty free kiosk at JFK enroute to Europe during my senior year. It was Balenciaga's Michelle, one of the most perfectly gorgeous scents ever and one which, unfortunately, has long been discontinued. I don't know why. None of Balenciaga's perfumes in my opinion even come close. Not even Le Dix, that cunning little homage to - or is it rip off of? - Chanel's No. 5.

After exhausting my last precious bottle of Michelle, I settled into an affable, five year relationship with Chloe. I'm surprised I didn't stick with it, it's so wearable and pretty. But then came the Divorce, and as a newly swinging single, I felt like I needed something more exotic. Something that broad casted "I'm available!", like a big neon sign singed onto my forehead. Only smellier. Enter Givenchy's Amarige. A whopper of a floral, heavily laden with peach, plum, mimosa, and melon, a friend called it, "Sex in a bottle." I quit wearing it after I met S.B.

I've been in a perfume slump ever since, flitting from scent to scent, trying in vain to find something even half as captivating as Michelle or Amarige. I weaned myself off Amarige with another Givenchy, the spicy floral Ysatis and then bounced to the ever-reliable and much-more-my style Eau De Givenchy. L'Eau D'Issey did it for me for a while as well. Then one day, it didn't. I discovered an almost near perfect tuberose scent by makeup artist Sonia Kashuk and wore that for a couple years. Then one day, I spritzed it on and, whoa, it no longer smelled subtle and sweet, just cheap and tarty. At the beginning of the year, I talked a Dillard's sales girl out of a half dozen free samples of Juicy Couture's new perfume. It boasts a watermelon base – pure genius. But on me, not so much.

Right now, I'm holding out hope for Clinique's Happy Heart, a fresh, sunny floral with hints of melon. But in a very un-Juicy-like way.

And the other day, during a visit to the Body Shop, I bought a tub of their new pink grapefruit body butter. Yum. Maybe what I need these days is to smell less exotic and mysterious and more like . . . breakfast.