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January 21, 2007

Baby Steps on the Primrose (Scented) Path

As I mentioned in a previous post, my newest obsession is perfume. But how did I become a fragrance addict?

To be honest, I'm not sure I can tell you exactly how it happened. All I know was that I was looking for Christmas presents at the mall a few weeks ago and somehow found myself at the perfume counter of a major department store. What were all these fragrances? Obviously, I recognized Chanel and some of the Estee Lauder brands, which have been around forever, but where did all these Gucci and Givenchy and Donna Karan fragrances come from? There was some fragrance called Envy Me 2, and I didn't even realize there had been an Envy, and even an Envy Me 1, to precede it. Seriously, it must have been at least 10 years since I had spent any time at the fragrance section - I remember Thierry Mugler's Angel as a relatively new release, and somehow she had given birth to a slew of other angels, Violet, Peony, Lily, and Rose, and even A*men (I'm sorry, with the asterisk, this just looks like Asshole-men to me) among them.

As I wandered through the aisles in a daze, jostled by the huge crowds and mesmerized by all the pretty bottles, some smiling, heavily made-up older Eastern-European woman sprayed me with Vera Wang's Sheer Veil perfume. Look, she said as she smelled my sprayed hand, it smells so beautiful on you - and it leaves a shimmer on the skin!

And perhaps that was all it took - some sweet-smelling sparkly stuff on my hand - to make me open the floodgates of 10 years of fragrance denial - or perhaps it was the addictive drugs in the spray that easily crossed the barrier of my skin to enter my bloodstream and brain to make me completely perfume insane.

Whatever it was, it made me ask my perfume-pusher to recommend another fragrance for me, something light and pretty. She led me to the Dolce & Gabbana counter and sprayed me with something called Light Blue. This is a very pretty fragrance she said, it's one of our bestsellers. I could see why - it was light and pretty, smelling vaguely apple-y.

But here's the thing. Even at my most crazy, I like to look (albeit obsessively) before I leap. I wanted to know more about these perfumes before I bought anything new. And where would I look? Why, the internet, of course! And therein lay my downfall, because I started reading the blogs of perfumistas much more obsessed than I. Light Blue? Forget it! The dull signature smell of silly teenage girls around the globe. Sheer Veil? Another uninspired floral. No, to be part of the cognoscenti, it was to be vintage scents and artisan perfumers all the way, no common department store brands need apply. I started making a list of the perfumes I needed to smell, the ones the blogs raved about, Guerlains from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, vintage Carons, niche perfumers like L'Artisan and Serge Lutens.

Now I just needed to find them.

Posted by oko at 08:49 PM | Comments (0)

January 16, 2007

Brannon Braga Must Die!

Just watch the last episode of the cancelled science-fiction television series Threshold after wasting hours and hours of your life on the previous nine episodes. That's all I'm saying. See how he ties up the storylines. If you don't feel like killing executive producer/writer Braga, you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din.

Posted by oko at 07:49 PM | Comments (0)