Hello APJ, Welcome to our small scale collaboration project. Old Herbaceous (OH) of Serenity Now Scents and Sensibilities and I will be doing a monthly post on different perfume notes. We are not perfumers but aficionados of fragrance. So lots of our information will come with links for further reading or text references. We are learning as you are learning, or refreshing.
Hello APJ, Welcome to our small scale collaboration project. Old Herbaceous (OH) of Serenity Now Scents and Sensibilities and I will be doing a monthly post on different perfume notes. We are not perfumers but aficionados of fragrance. So lots of our information will come with links for further reading or text references. We are learning as you are learning, or refreshing.
Hello APJ, Welcome to our small scale collaboration project. Old Herbaceous (OH) of Serenity Now Scents and Sensibilities and I will be doing a monthly post on different perfume notes. We are not perfumers but aficionados of fragrance. So lots of our information will come with links for further reading or text references. We are learning as you are learning, or refreshing.
Hello APJ, It has been years. Sorry for the radio silence but after the double hackings and the rigmarole to get APJ back up the steam had left my will to continue. We had lost all our followers TWICE! The first time saw a reasonable rejoin but the second time took us months to fix the problem and people stayed away in droves. Considering the work that went into seven days a week content it was easier to continue Guest Posting elsewhere and leaving APJ as historic content. With A Bottled Rose on hiatus APJ will be the home of a new, small scale collaboration project. Old Herbaceous of Serenity Now Scents and Sensibilities and I will be doing a monthly post on different perfume notes.
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Portia
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Hi APJ,
A SOTD (Scent Of The Day) thread is a really good conversation generator. The idea is you’ll chime in through the week with whatever scent you are wearing. You don’t need to be super knowledgable, have high faluting tastes or be a published author to comment. Just tell us what fragrance you’re wearing, smelling, buying etc. and how it makes you feel and/or anything else about it that tickles your fancy.
You can also comment on everyone else choices too. It’s great to tell someone how much you love their choice, ask for more info about it, the house or perfumer. There’s someone here from around the world 24/7 and perfume people love to chat.
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Portia
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Hi APJ,
I see these SOTD (Scent Of The Day) threads all the time on Facebook and they are really good conversation generators.
The idea is you’ll chime in through the week with whatever scent you are wearing. You don’t need to be super knowledgable, have high faluting tastes or be a published author to comment. Just tell us what fragrance you’re wearing, smelling, buying etc. Continue reading
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Post by BlondesWunder
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BOOM! Suddenly a little something hits you. Whether it’s getting into the elevator and you know exactly who was in it last, or your mother`s favourite perfume sneaking through from the master bedroom. Maybe it’s a person in a store or on the street that just smells incredible, but you, for heaven`s sake cannot identify the fragrance they are wearing!!! It can remind you of a past moment or maybe a certain trip. Or just something you can freaking not remember. In the hope of smelling it again you frantically suck as much air in as possible, making yourself look like a total idiot. Following the person around the place with your nostrils nearly shut from sucking in so much air all at once to catch the smell. Hoping nobody around notices the forceful smelling noises you are making. Just picture that. I can’t help it. It just happens. Hahaha. I know I do it! And I sure as hell hope that you know what I am talking about, because I do not want to be the only one doing this.
Anyways, sometimes I smell something around me. Being like my mother, it makes me wanna burst out into tears. Why? Hell, I don’t know why. And that, Perfume Junkies is the power of smell. It can set off emotions and feelings you didn’t even know existed. I know the way I shut my eyes and smell something. It takes me exactly to a place in my mind and memory.
Photo Stolen Wikipedia
Today, I walked past a magazine store. The smell of paper crept up my nose. It reminded me of an airport, summer holidays, and vacation. Just that split second made my day nice. To know that after all my exams are finished and I am done with this chapter of my life, I am planning on traveling around the world smelling all those magazine stores. 🙂
For me, the most satisfying “smelly experience” is when an overdressed lady is walking towards me, and I just know what she is going to smell like. Mostly I am right. As you know my Mum and I have played this game for years.
Photo Stolen Wikipedia
I feel that we should use our nose maybe even more than our eyes or ears sometimes. For me, watching a movie or looking at pictures can not do what a smell does to me. I hardly remember what my Nana looked like, BUT I still can exactly pinpoint, when I smell something, if she smelled like that or not. That’s happened when I sniffed Lutens Fille de Berlin, and it made me cry. Weird huh?! (I had the priviledge of knowing her for 7 years of my life before she passed away.)
Photo Stolen Fragrantica
Scientists say that you choose your partner partly because of their smell. We ain’t all blessed with our armpits smelling like Chanel, Serge, or Vero!!!!! Thank heavens we’ve got perfume. So my dolls I say, perfume, high-heels, push-ups and more perfume!
Isn’t it amazing how a movie begins to take place in your head when you smell? Just for that split second you have a daydream.
Well, for me, That is the power of smell. And it´s incredible. How ’bout you?? What are your day to day or memory smells?
BW xoxoxoxoxox
Hey Ho Gang,
As you can see Jin and I have been doing our bit for the Czech economy. The DUNE Esprit de Parfum and Guerlain Vetiver were our first buys from a wonderful and quite mad perfume lady who reminded us of Sophie from “2 Broke Girls” a total hoot called Evita!!
Next day we went to Yves Rocher because my mate Birgit from Olfactoria’s Travels sent me a Vanilla Noire recently and I am totally loving it. Now it has a sister.
Cartier, another Birgit enable, came as a 4ml sample with some stuff I bought and it’s been rolling around me head awaiting a European tour. Jin is falling in love with VI but no one so far has had a sample for him to live with and I refuse to let him spend that kind of money without a few wears. Even though we are on holiday and he pouted, beautifully, for nearly a whole afternoon. The Cartier crew were fabulous with us coming back 3 days in a row before we bit the bullet.
Jil Sander Sun is a complete impulse buy and I am so happy that I did, it’s full of youthful memories of days spent at the beach with the family.
Lastly, Jin saw Bottega Veneta for 20% off and couldn’t resist. It smells beyond amazing on him and I have loved my 2 large decants to dregs so it will be getting double skin time at Chez Turbo. That was from Sephora at the main Prague Railway Station. The girl there was so friendly that we decided she deserved a sale.
We also spent some sniffing time at a parfumeurie called Madeleine which was awesome fun with Boris but the prices were beyond our ability. it’s a shame.
We are having a great time. Tomorrow we are in Vienna, going to dinner with Birgit and her husband.
I hope you are all really happy and well too.
Portia xx
Since starting a quest to find a ‘signature’ scent, I’ve been probing those close to me about the perfumes they wear and why they wear them, trying to get at what it is that connects someone with a particular scent so decisively.
While I’ve been desperately trying to find some systematic way of finding ‘the one’ – looking to ‘best-of’ lists from the doyennes of perfume criticism, casting around for a ‘genre’ that might gel, trying to nut out which ‘notes’ offend or enchant – I’ve realised that for many (most?) all these things are immaterial and the connection is much more visceral.
Take my sister for example. She has been a committed Chanel No. 5 wearer for some years now. Chanel No. 5 is the scent my mother used to wear when we were kids but my mother and my sister are by no means cut of the same cloth and so I was intrigued as to why she had connected with this perfume. Surely there wasn’t a sentimental attachment?
My sister quickly set me straight. She explained that Chanel No. 5 was a buffer against the daily slings and arrows she encountered in her work as a teacher and some-time security guard. She described how she kept her No. 5 in her glove box and would spritz herself before going in to school. A whiff of No. 5 helped her get through parent-teacher conversations such as the one with the Bandido biker-gang parent who called to complain about his 13-year-old daughter’s classroom tiffs. “Mr. F,” she said elegantly “if you can’t stop yelling expletives, I’m going to have to hang up on you.” With her wrist to her nose and Chanel No. 5 wafting upwards her feet were in Tempe but her head was firmly in Paris. The same technique helped her brave all manner of insults from drunken Saturday-night crowds determined to get past her as she worked security at busy Sydney pubs. It was a little touch of class, she explained, in an otherwise brash and bumpy world.
My sister-in-law, conversely, had a more traditionally sentimental attachment to a scent. On the eve of her mother’s funeral, a friend had called to talk and asked about the perfumes her mother had worn regularly. On the day of the funeral, the friend turned up with a large bottle of Marc Jacobs’ Lola, one of her mother’s favourites, so that my sister-in-law could always have a little sense of her mother close by. Similarly, Portia has a very strong connection to Shalimar, his mother’s favourite. Even as he aims to sample and love every perfume ever released, he will no doubt always come back to Shalimar.
And so, as I continue to work on the world’s most anally-retentive method of finding a signature scent, I live in hope that some defining moment may one day choose it for me. Here’s hoping you all have suitably lovely and distinctive moments in your perfume closets. I would love to hear about them if you feel inclined. Evie C.
Australian Perfume Junkies 