I was working, doing consumer counseling, the day in autumn, 2008 that Lehman Brothers fell apart. The phones lit up with calls from elderly people begging us to reassure them that their retirement savings would be safe. I went home that day, fixed myself a nice big cocktail, and wrote "Fiddling While Rome Burns" for this blog.
The post was really about my own feelings of guilt, writing and obsessing about a luxury item while it felt like the sky was falling. We don’t talk about money much here. It’s taboo, in a way. We all know perfume is a luxury item, and if you can’t walk the walk, don’t talk the talk. But I’m not much of a spender, myself, especially since I’ve amassed a pretty sizable collection, mostly though bottle splits, fleabay, discounters and the like, and an even larger collection of decants and samples, through purchases and swaps. I laugh now when I think about my sticker shock -- just over 2 years ago -- at the sight of a $150 price tag for a bottle of EDP; that seems quaint now, since Barney’s New York is charging $300 (plus ever-obscene New York taxes, and shipping) -- for 100 mls of Frederic Malle’s “Portrait of a Lady.”
Here’s the thing though. “Portrait” sounds like something I’d love, and I plan to sample it. So a little while ago, I went to my favorite samples/decants site to order some. And saw that their price for a 1 ml sample is (are you ready?) $8.99!
You know, I don’t really think I can spend that on 1 ml -- of anything. I have the $8.99, (plus shipping) but it just doesn’t seem right.
So I did a little price-checking around here and there. “Portrait” can be had in 50 mls, though not at Barney’s, apparently. Les Senteurs, in London, has it. At the equivalent of today’s Euro/dollar exchange rate, the cost would be $181.70, plus overseas shipping, no doubt; my guess would be pretty close to $200 total. LuckyScent doesn’t carry Malle. They do carry “by Killian” though, whose newish “Love & Tears Surrender” will set you back around $225 if you buy it from them and $228 from by Killian’s online site, for 50 mls, plus shipping. Samples on fleabay? None, except for a few of the more popular Malle scents like “Carnal Flower,” which is selling at $19.99 for 2 mls. Courtesy of “Fell Off a Truck, Inc.,” I suspect.
The quandry here, for a perfume collector, is this: it’s increasingly silly for me to buy a full bottle of anything. No matter how much I love it, I have quite a few bottles of things I also love, and I doubt if I’ll ever use up all the decants and samples. If you like perfume, some, and like to wear a “signature” scent, then a $300 bottle might just make sense; at $3/ml, sprayed generously every single day, it’s going to last you nearly a year; with normal use patterns, probably closer to two. The Love & Tears by Kilian -- the one that costs $225-8 plus tax &; shipping -- is an outlay of 75% of the cost of 100 mls of the “Portrait,” for half as much fragrance. OK, so I’m splitting hairs; the point is, do you love it? Say you can’t live without it? Have the means to buy it? Do -- just don’t go into debt over it. Me, I’ll get a decant (probably not this one though!) or wait for a bottle split or manage to procure a bit of it in all the ways I’ve learned...or I’ll just live without it. Sacrilege! I know. Go ahead. Revoke my perfumista card.
It may be that, if in fact we are all writing for each other (“preaching to the choir” as they say down he-ah) the high-end perfume companies know we aren’t the ones out there buying those $300 bottles (or $720 ones, in the case of Clive Christian). We might buy one and -- the horror! -- split it, though. I read somewhere recently that the fragrance market pie will ultimately be divided into a huge slice of cheap, synthetic “designer” and celebuscents for the hoi polloi, a smaller one of outrageously expensive niche fragrances for the tasteful wealthy, and a tiny slice for anyone in between -- a fitting metaphor for the state of things in general, imho. (I hope that the artisanal lines will be able to step in there, but the expense of the raw ingredients makes their product pretty pricey, too.) I see it happening now, when a fine-fragrance line blithely doubles their prices in two years. The price of a piece of cake loaf of bread has gone up, but not that much!
For this reason, I find myself more interested in and writing more about vintage perfume. It can still be found reasonably, although it’s a lot of work. But that's ok. This is still a labor of love. As in any long-term relationship, though, I’m seeing more flaws that I did at first.
How about you?
Pile of money photo by Olfacta. Use it if you like.
Pile of money photo by Olfacta. Use it if you like.
