I am a perfume nerd. If you are a perfume nerd too, giving background on perfume is redundant, if you are not, then you probably don’t care anyway! Fragrantica is where perfume nerds go to hang out and discuss perfume nerd stuff, I can recommend it.
This is going to be at least two posts on my current perfume collection, with some notes on what I think about the perfumes I have. In my last ‘I did social stuff’ post in March (oh how the world has changed), I mentioned I went to a perfume workshop at Paint and Powder – that was the most perfume night I ever perfumed and I tried heaps of stuff I wouldn’t have before. It was great!
I have grouped them into my own classifications that may or may not reflect what other people think. Perfume is very personal : in both how one perceives it and what it smells like on one.
Here they are in no particular order. Please forgive the dusty bottles. They are out on my dressing table and I dust them a lot but it builds up pretty fast.
Rose 4 Riene, L’Occtaine. This is pure tea rose to me, the rose you get when you sniff a really good rose blooming in a garden. It’s very much a comfort scent.
Paris, Yves Saint Laurent. I had a bottle of this for some reason when I was a teenager and I loved it. This is a newer reformulation and I still get that blast of rose and violet. I am not often in the mood to wear this and I always am surprised by how much I like it when I do and I think “I should wear this more” but then other things distract me.
Roma – Body Shop. 1990s oils from the body shop were powerhouses. I also had a bottle of this, and rebought this second had recently-ish. I realise it’s actually probably just a copy of Paris: it’s just got the two main notes (rose/violet) without the other subtle stuff. I almost never wear it.
Old Spice – Shulton. I have no idea why this is not marketed as unisex and why the ingredients don’t include rose. I get rose and spice in waves when I wear this. It’s a beautiful fragrance! We had a dude come repair our fridge once who was wearing it and he was delighted when I recognised it.
I didn’t know how to classify these. I think of them all in the same part of my head.
Sublime – Jean Patou – strong old lady style orange without being orange. Sharp and dirty.
Montainge – Caron – kind of ditto? I wear these top two interchangeably
L’Origin – Coty. One of those weirdly cheap but really good fragrances; a ‘drugstore fragrance’ that is almost impossible to find on the shelves, but it’s this intense, dirty, orange, civitty smell. Swims in and out of being a favorite. It’s sharp and incredibly pleasant.
Eau Arpage – Lanvin. I have a love-hate relationship with Arpege. Used to love it, then hated it. Have given away two bottles of it and then regretted it. Bought this second hand – seems to be a splash lighter version of Arpege which is actually good because Arpege gets intense and this bottle tends to not last long on me. Arpege is a classic old lady scent. You’ve smelled it at a funeral, I swear. Sort of like it’s trying to be chanel 5 maybe? Of that style of scents.
Miss Dior (original formulation) – Dior. The difference between this bottle and the travesty they sell new as Miss Dior is insane. Miss Dior is fabulousness in a bottle, rather than generic-angel-wannabe. Urgh. The modern stuff. I got this second hand and I don’t wear it often as it’s overpowering but it’s utterly beautiful.
Tabu (original formulation) – Dana. Another dimestore fragrance that I sniffed in Chemist Warehouse and it took me back to being a child at my older cousins’ house in the 1970s (Charlie did the same). I had a recent bottle but then found the older formulation for sale and this dacks all over it. Again, intense so I don’t wear it often.
Dioressence – Dior. An old bottle, second hand, that has largely ‘turned’ so it’s very piney but the original smell wafts through. I had thought this was the one I had a small bottle of in the 80s but nope. I also tried a vial of reformulated Dioressence and it’s gone full patchouli yuckness.
Bal a Versailles – Jean Despres. I wish I’d not gotten rid of my early bottle of this. I bought a big new bottle and hated it, it was too…something. I ended up with this small sample randomly. It’s again too much of something. I want to like it more than I do. it’s so civetty that some people only smell cat pee – I tend to like civet in a perfume though.
1000 – Jean Patou. I thought I’d try a tiny bottle of this I bought online and it’s great. They actually gave us this to try in the perfume workshop and I immediately liked it and I was ‘oh, yeah this one’. I like it but I can’t remember what it smells like when I’m not wearing it, so it’s in the ‘I never remember to put it on’ category, hence the tiny bottle will probably see me out.
Yep, my classification for this category is ‘these bowl me over if i get even half a full squirt on me’
Vetiver Extreme – Guerlain. I wish I’d gotten the non extreme. This is too extreme! I think of this as the scent equivalent of sucking on a lemon. It sends sharp feelings all up and down one. My perfume buddy at work has the normal version and whenever I smelled it on her it smelled oakmossy but also almost creamy; to quote her: ‘my skin eats the sharp notes’. My skin does not and so it’s almost too much for me.
Bois Dore – Van Cleef and Arpels. I would NEVER have tried something by this brand if I hadn’t been at the perfume shop. I don’t know what, I think maybe I thought it sounded too hippy dippy. Turns out to be a very old perfume house! This smells like burned rubber and vanilla on me – sounds terrible I know but trust me, it’s amazing – but so strong that I have to hold one arm out and spray from afar and try to only get a tiny bit on my arm, or it overpowers me. Almost everything I’ve smelled from VC and A is fucking delectable and stupidly expensive.
Agent Provocateur – Agent Provocateur. This is another I wouldn’t have tried unless it was something like a perfume workshop, because frankly I found the pink bomb bottle a bit off putting. But its wonderful to hold in reality, really tactile. This smell, if you’ve not tried it, is frankly indescribable because it’s all over the place and seems to be coming from literally everywhere. It smacks you in the face and shoves itself into your nose. A tiny touch is all I can handle and i have to scrub it off at night or it keeps me awake.
Dewberry – Body shop. Ah the 1990s again. You can smell this one coming. At one point it was everywhere and a tiny application is as good as a deluge. When I was a tram conductor, my trainer, Kylie, used to spend all day reapplying this. I assume it had utterly deadened her nose as she certainly didn’t need more of it. You could smell a tram Kylie had been on a day later. I don’t wear this often but when I do, people who were adults in the 1990s will start to look weirded out. Fucking hilarious.
White Musk – body shop. Again, 1990s, again, body shop, you really knew how to make an oil that SCREAMED WHAT IT WAS. Intense and strong and in ya face. a teeny blip is all you need.
4711 – 4711. My Grandmother gave me the bottom of a bit of a bottle of this when I was a child and I wore it all up. It’s a nostalgia scent for me. Apparently it’s known as as old-person fragrance: that they used to bathe their temples with on a hot day, or something like that. I’ve always had a bottle. I don’t wear it much but i often just sniff at it.
Eau de Courreges – Correges. I sniffed this one in the workshop and to me it’s a sophisticated warmer version of 4711. Powerful and citrissy. Yummy.
Leap – body shop. I wore this regularly when I had my first boyfriend in 1990s so it kind of reminds me of him. He was a good guy, mind, not like the second one who was a cheating lying douchebag. I wouldn’t wear anything that reminded me of HIM – isn’t it enough he destroyed Souxie and the Banshees for me???? LOL. Lemony limey fresh and watery. Not the boyfriend, the fragrance, I got distracted. Again, almost never wear it but I like to sniff it sometimes.
I think that’s enough for part one. I’ve got many to come. How did I get so many fragrances???? Well, the bulk of them are second hand or cheap. I sometimes go on ebay and look for second hand fragrances, then look the ones that seem interesting up on Fragrancia, and blind buy them. This is also how come I get to sell on perfumes because some turn up and they are just Nope but I’ve had a number of wins too.
