For the Love of Perfume: A Reflection on Favorite Perfumes

Love, Infatuation, and Perfume, Part 4

My favorite scents, and thoughts on who they might make good gifts for.

L’Artisan Iris Pallida LE 2007. Everybody’s got an iris. This one is mine. I once described it as smelling the feeling of having a sob caught in one’s throat, as hearing the sound of Roy Orbison’s "Crying" sung in a heart-wrenching Italian. It moves me to tears, the opposite of DSH Sweet Honey because it plucks my heartstrings in a way I find unavoidable. Easily the most expensive perfume I’ve purchased (it was my law school graduation present to myself) and I never regret it, though I do keep metally chastising myself for not wearing it more. I keep leaving it in the beauitful wooden box, forgetting that perfume is made to be worn. This week I promised myself to whip out that exquisite tragedy and spray it on, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Maybe this weekend. I'd say that meant it wasn't a favorite, but I know that's not true, because every time I smell it, there's magic all over again.

Price: $$$.
Recommended for: the hipster, the coffee lover.

Worth Je Reviens. I like Worth perfumes for so many reasons, not the least of which being that the house was founded by a man who eschewed his family's traditional vocation of calling -- lawyering. Je Reviens is, in my opinion, the best scent gem hiding in the roughs of your local drug store, bar none. Yeah, that's right. I said it. Bar none. You want to walk into the drug store and for less than $20 buy a scent that is, to this day, unique and wonderful and well-made? You cannot go wrong with Je Reviens. The scent itself is hard to describe, because it's a little bit sweet and a little bit floral and a little bit salty, and yet comes together in a terrific mingling.


Price: $.
Recommended for: the eclectic friend; the lover of an excellent bargain.

By Kilian Back to Black. I truly love many tobacco scents, but I admit to loving this one the best.  I tried not to.  It's so expensive.  But i keep coming back to that tiny sprayer.  Not overly sweet, delicately spicy, lucious and warm, Back to Black is wonderful and sexy and reminds me of the slightly bitter yet undeniably passionate Amy Winehouse song of the same name.

"We only said goodbye with words. I died a hundred times. You go back to her, and I go back to...." I can easily imagine loathing this scent after loving someone who wore it. It is so beautifully elegant. I want not to love it.  I want not to love the entire line.  I want to side with all the other perfume bloggers who are like, "Yeah! By Kilian is not poorly made and way overpriced!" But I can't. I like a lot of the scents, and this one in particular.  So I will pony up the immense cost because, frankly, it's beautiful and I want it.

Price: $$$$.
Recommended for: The humidor collector, the person who loves a warm, snuggly sweater.

Part 1   ~    Part 2   ~    Part 3   ~   Part 4   ~   Part 5

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$ - $1-$75.

$$ - $76-$130.

$$$ - $131-$200.

$$$$ - $200-$300.

$$$$$ - $300+.

For the Love of Perfume: A Reflection on Favorite Perfumes

Love, Infatuation, and Perfume, Part 3

My favorite scents, and thoughts on who they might make good gifts for.

L'Artisan Vanilia. Every time I sniff Vanilia, I can't believe it got discontinued. I love vanillas and I am always game to try new ones, but this one remains one of my singular favorites. It's so unusually green and sappy, not foodie sweet or liquored like vanilla extract. It has a lovely structure and drydown. I managed to grab a bottle after the discontinue about two months ago for a reasonable price, but I had to hunt for it. I recommend getting your hands on some while it can still be found.

Price: $$-$$$$, depending on size and deal you find. My almost full bottle after d/c was still only $$.
Recommended for: the quirky vanilla fiend, the collector.

Demeter Perfumes Salt Air. I know, it's a $6 bottle of perfume. So why can't I quit putting it on? I'll be the first person to admit that Demeter scents have a tendency to run the gamut from too-on-the-nose to trying-so-hard-they-are-harsh, but this one is right on the money for me. If you asked me to name the best thing I own for less than $10, this would win. Even if we ratcheted the amount to $20, which would include things like Coty Sand & Sable and Worth Je Reviens, this might still win. It's completely neutral and smells like the smell that hits me every time I get close enough to the ocean to feel my constant yearning to return to the sea unclench. I'd pay a whole lot more than $6 for that experience, but I'm really glad I don't have to.

Price: $.
Recommended for: the beach lover, the eclectic DIY fashionista who will enjoy the low price and unusual scent.

Bond No. 9 New Haarlem. My first Bond love still remains the strongest. There's something about the blend of coffee, patchouli, and vanilla that can't go wrong, and not because I live in Portlandia, where the air is virtually suffuse with those scents. The combination works effortlessly, and not only do I deeply enjoy smelling it throughout the day, but I get tons of compliments on it. Yes, it's on the sweet and foodie end, but if you can deal with that (or like me, love it) then you can't go wrong with this one.

Price: $$$.
Recommended for: the hipster, the coffee lover.

Part 1   ~    Part 2   ~    Part 3   ~   Part 4   ~   Part 5

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$ - $1-$75.

$$ - $76-$130.

$$$ - $131-$200.

$$$$ - $200-$300.

$$$$$ - $300+.

For the Love of Perfume: A Reflection on Favorite Perfumes

Love, Infatuation, and Perfume, Part 2

And now we begin a week of my most beloved scents, in no particular order.

Slumberhouse Flou. I think I might be the person most in love with this little scent in the whole world. I want to explain to you what it is about Flou that makes it one of my all-time favorite scents after only five months together, but it’s so hard to explain that affection if you don’t feel it yourself. I think it’s strange and beautiful. I think it’s sad and sweet and lively and poignant. It manages to conquer a lot of different moods, and that’s part of the trick to be sure, because it means I pick it up often and yet never find myself disappointed. I’m pleased it was made here in Portland, and I hope this tiny new perfume house continues to get the attention I think it deserves for making terrific scents.

Price: $.
Recommended for: the eclectic friend, the friend who has everything, the friend who is loves modern art.

CB I Hate Perfume Black March. I have almost completely used up my 100ml bottle. Personally I find that fact alone astonishing. If you had asked me five years ago if the thing I’d be mostly like to smell like on any given day was rain splattered dirt and fallen greenery, I’d have laughed. It’s a sign how much this place has gotten inside me. I don’t think I’ll ever stop thinking of myself as a Texan in some ways, but I realized this weekend standing in front of the only Studebaker stage coach that made the journey across the Oregon Trail available for public viewing (the other three are in private collections) and listening to a lovely woman talk about the incredible difficulty and hardship those original pioneers had to overcome to get here that I am very proud to consider myself an Oregonian.


There is something about getting here from another place to start a new life despite incredible obstacles that resonates, not only for me personally, but for so many Oregon transplants I know. Exiles, drifters, the lost, and the damned – the came here to start over. I’m one of them. When I smell Black March, I think about that, and how this place has changed me, about who I am now that I never expected to be. The west may be closed, but the idea that you can come to Oregon and find a new life remains. Here among the rain and dark earth and tall pines that were there before I was born and, I hope, will be here when I am gone, I was not born anew, but unexpectedly healed. If someone hands you a bottle of that, it’s hard not to love it.

Price: $-$$.
Recommended for: the outdoorsy friend, the friend who thinks they hate perfume.

DSH Perfumes Sweet Honey. Here’s how much I loved Sweet Honey. I bought one on a whim because it was on clearance. A week later I bought a second bottle for fear it was going to would disappear when Dawn launched her new site (very nice, I might add) and consolidated some of the offerings from her line. A lot of people would probably find Sweet Honey sickeningly so; not me. I find its overwhelming sweetness so thoroughly fantastic that I cannot get enough of it. I can close my eyes and actually see strings of think honey yawning between my fingers when I smell the scent. Life can be brutal and ugly and sometimes there is something so perfect about a golden sweetness that overcomes the bitter it literally drowns out the ashes in your mouth, the grim on your heart. To me, this scent does that.

Price: $-$$.
Recommended for: the friend who stops at every bakery.

Part 1   ~    Part 2   ~    Part 3   ~   Part 4   ~   Part 5

_______________________________________

$ - $1-$75.

$$ - $76-$130.

$$$ - $131-$200.

$$$$ - $200-$300.

$$$$$ - $300+.

For the Love of Perfume: A Reflection on Favorite Perfumes

Love, Infatuation, and Perfume, Part 1

Dear reader, let me talk to you about love and infatuation and perfume.

It’s a funny thing, love. The crazy rollercoaster emotions that typically come with it are usually sufficient to make even the sanest person loses all sense of proportion, propriety, and reason. It is hard to imagine anything that makes people act quite as crazy.

The problem with love, of course, is that in its incipient stages it look an awful lot like infatuation, a far more fickle and fleeting emotion. It’s got the same overwhelming, synapse exploding, gut wrenching potential in its early moments, but much like Romeo and his discarded Rosalyns, it tends to have a short shelf life.

I cannot tell you how many scents I have loved, or thought I loved, when I first sniffed them. How lovely! How wonderful! How singular and magical! A week later, I sniff again and think "ho-hum" or worse "eek." It is in these moments I feel glad I am forced to be judicious in my scent purchases, or I fear my collection would be overrun with Rosalyns, and the Juliette would be lost among them in the proverbial weeds.

Occasionally I will keep something on my "To be purchased" list a long time, sometimes for over a year or two. When I finally get together the money to buy the long sought after scent, I find I always have a moment’s pause. I cannot help it. After loving something for so long, I canot help but stop and wonder – do I really love it, or was I just kidding myself?

I will sniff and resniff, moving scents up and down the priority shopping list, sometimes removing them completely, as I think about what my collection is missing, what I’m most likely to war over the next three months or so, and I seem not to be able to live without. That’s why it sometimes takes me weeks or months longer to get around to reviewing a new release compared to my blogging cohort. I am stingy with my love, and I only want to promise you something is good if I feel sure it is, and that I wasn’t just moved in the moment to thoughtless oaths like fickle Romeo.

With that in mind, dear reader, I provide you the following list, which wil be posted over several daily posts this week. These are not necessarily the releases I think you should buy for yourself and another, for I am far too much of the mind that scent is singular to be able to cobble together a Gift Guide of Scently Proportions (though I might do one for other things because that seems like it might be a fun project if I have a little time this week). Instead these are the nicest perfumes I have found in a while, some of which I own already because their beauty demanded immediate acquisition and some which seem to constantly haunt my "To Be Purchased" list because they represent not that fleeting glance of infatuation that can turn one’s nose and heart for a few minutes or even a few months, but those scents I have loved for well on a year or more.

In the following days, I will post about scents I love, scents that make this list...

Part 1   ~    Part 2   ~    Part 3   ~   Part 4   ~   Part 5

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$ - $1-$75.

$$ - $76-$130.

$$$ - $131-$200.

$$$$ - $200-$300.

$$$$$ - $300+.