From The Archives: Three from the Mass Market, at random

I'm taking a couple of weeks off to work on another project. In the meantime, here's another post from Year One. Back with an original, next week!



Today I went to the dentist, where I was told that I'll need several root canals soon, oh, joy. So I decided to go to a nearby Ulta  for some perfume therapy, and to check out the scents of the mass-market world.


I'm no niche snob, at least not yet. I think most perfumes, when you get right down to it, smell pretty good. (I mean, what’s not to like?) But now, I'm a budding perfuminista. I've wondered lately how my own attitudes toward all these focus-grouped, product-managed, M.B.A.-analyzed fragrances might have changed.


So I walked up and down the aisle, picking up bottles, spraying and labeling those handy little strips. (I wanted to collect some samples, too, for skin testing later on. But even though I had the vials with me, the lone SA acted as though I had asked to leave a vial of, oh, anthrax, with her.) So no go on that, missy! ) These scents were tested, as is the modern custom, on paper.


Came home, threw the dozen or so strips like the I Ching (see picture,) closed my eyes and picked up three of them. The lucky winners were:



L’Eau de Issey by Issey Miyake. Nice. Floral. Safe, wouldn’t offend anybody. Hmmm, tuberose and…is that freesia? Or gardenia? Maybe violet?


So off I go to the blogs and discount sites, only to find the most maddening array of sound-alike shelf-space taker-uppers…ever. I mean there’s Summer and L’Eau Bleue d’Issey Eau Fraiche (andpour Homme) and L’Eau de Issey Pour Homme, and, ok, now I’m confused. I guess they do this because, if you like one of them, you’ll simply have to have them all…and also for your spouse or partner or whatever? And there won’t be room on the shelf for anybody else’s product? Yeah, that could be it.


“L'Eau d'Issey for Women has notes of green leaves, rose water, freesia, neroli, blackcurrant, lily of the valley, peony, tuberose, and parma violet.” – Now Smell This. 


White Linen by Estee Lauder. I’ve heard this described as “clean sheets and money.” It’s got that perfume-y Estee Lauder quality, for sure. Certainly, it’s the most challenging of the three. Lots of aldehydes, and I can smell a little rose and some greens and violets, but it reminds me, more than anything else, of a really first-rate laundry detergent. Well-named.


The notes include: Bulgarian rose, jasmine, mugnet, violet, orris, vetiver, and moss.


Voile de Jasmin by Bulgari. By the time I got this home, it was gone. (And we are talking maybe one hour.) I remember a bit of an undertone characteristic of the other Bulgari scents I have. WTF?

Well, I’m pretty sure it had some jasmine in it anyway. Notes (from Now Smell This) include: “living jasmine sambac, bergamot, orange blossom, rosewood, ylang ylang, living mimosa and living rose.” (Italics mine.)

Hunh? What’s this mean, “living” jasmine sambac, rose, mimosa? More marketing? I give up.

Conclusion: all the ranting and raving about the way perfumes are marketed in the U.S. now is perfectly illustrated in this one twenty-minute stop I made. Think I’ll stick with online for now.

And you know what? Yatagan’s not so bad.

A Risky Business

Recently, I’ve been looking for a small “bat” bottle of vintage Shalimar perfume. I guess this means I’ve become a collector, as I seem to need it. I have a pretty good vintage perfume collection now. Not having Shalimar is sort of like not having “Blonde on Blonde” in any respectable vinyl collection. But these prices!

So I’ve been going to estate and garage sales. My utter lack of success at these has made me wonder. How often do good perfumes really turn up?

I posted the question on a couple of fragrance forums. I asked readers if they had ever “scored” big at a tag sale, and, if so, how many sales did they attend before that, as a number or as a percentage. Perhaps naively, I expected lots of responses.

The answers -- and there have been few so far -- were enlightening. People listed in detail the perfumes they had found. Other forum members oohed and ahhed over the treasures listed. Some suggested asking the host of the sale. Although there were vague references to going to sales “for years,” no one got specific about how many such sales they’d attended. 

While certainly not a scientific sample, I thought these results were interesting. I began to wonder if people who frequent estate sales regularly just don’t want to admit it. Kind of like playing the lottery: the big winners tend to be the daily ticket-buyers, reflecting simple laws of probability. But you’d be hard-pressed to get anyone to admit that they’d spent the milk money that way.

My own experience with estate sales has been gloomy. Some old lady dies, and leaves behind a house full of stuff. Once the heirs have taken what they want, an estate sale company comes in and picks over what’s left. After pigeonholing the valuable items, or so I’ve heard, they put the bleached bones on sale to the public. Nothing, it seems, is sacred. The first time I saw used lipsticks with price tags on them, I started calling this “the vulture culture.”

The estate-sale proprietors here in the South are unfailingly well-groomed and well-spoken, polite even to the gentlemen coming through asking if there are any guns to be had -- I saw that twice in one day last week. And I know that you can't take it with you. This is where much of the merchandise in flea markets, antique stores and  ebay comes from. In a way, by paying their markups, I’m paying for the privilege of not having to do this myself.

As I wander through these houses, I wonder about the people who lived in them. At some, like one I went to last year, there are few secrets. At others, there are many. Childrens' rooms, in particular, bother me. What happened to the kids? Why was a little girl living with an obviously older -- you can usually tell by the amount of home-health care stuff for sale -- lady? What happened here? At one particularly disturbing house I saw, it looked as though the whole family had simply evaporated. OK, I know I’ve got a too-fertile imagination, but I kept wondering about that one. Was there a car crash? A plane crash? Or was this house kept as a sad shrine to offspring that had grown up and moved on? A hundred houses, a hundred stories.

Maybe I don’t need that Shalimar after all.

And so I put the question out once more: do you go to estate sales? (You don’t have to say how many.) What have you found at them? Do you end up buying stuff other than what you were looking for? (I bought a nifty brand-new western styled leather daypack for twenty bucks at one last week. See, even me. I “scored.” What is this compulsion to brag all about, anyway?)

Maybe this. Maybe we boast about our finds because it makes walking through these spooky houses easier. Makes the experience less horrifying. It diverts attention from what none of us want to think about, namely this: someday, this could be my stuff.

Perfume Shopping: Los Angeles

I’ve just returned from StyleeCity, where I spent my misspent youth and then some. It wasn’t what you’d call a fun trip, as we were visiting my very ill father-in-law, but I was able to make one trip to the ScentBar, one of those Meccas we all have to make the perfume pilgrimage to sooner or later, no?

I’d like to think Atlanta could support a place like this, but culturally speaking, this is a city of tradition, not innovation. There are two kinds of people here -- the natives and the Not From Heres. The natives, those who can afford good perfume, tend to be somewhat conservative, in everything; my guess is that much fragrance here is bought as gifts, which makes this very much a Chanel town.

The Not From Heres, which comprise about 60% of the population, depending on where you live, well, who cares about them? (Now, c’mon, you know I don’t mean that.) We get the Rust Belt refugees here, lots of Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Buffalo, Detroit. Lots of Boston, an uncomfortably high percentage of whom can’t believe they ever left their beloved Beantown and proclaim that fact often. We get some New York, bicoastals who tend to eat, speak, walk, drive and leave quickly. We get many Twenties from the rest of the South, recent grads of the big state schools for whom Biloxi or Montgomery just wasn’t enough but L.A. or New York would be too much. And we get corporate transplants from all over the place, roaring through our cookie-cutter ‘burbs in their big SUV’s. They don’t make such great neighbors, by the way.

Had I walked into the ScentBar in my pre-perfume days, I might have been intimidated. First, I wouldn’t have recognized well, anything. It’s mostly niche and indie. Kind of like one of those old too-hip record stores, but prettier. It’s small, just a storefront really, with one person behind the counter. Second, I will say that the person that day could’ve been a little more friendly, but, hey, it could be that I’ve gotten used to Southern manners. Finally, there’s that thousand-watt, clear Los Angeles light, which pours into the place like water, making the bottles glow, meanwhile illuminating one’s own imperfections without mercy. (L.A. homes tend to be filled with mirrors, so the Angelenos are used to that.)

But oh, what a perfume paradise it is. There are the Serges, trays of full bottles for testing. And it’s okay to test scents on skin! There’s a tray of Kenzo, and another of Etat Libre scents. More trays and beautiful bottles everywhere. A database the SA can use to tell you what the notes of any scent are, and, best of all, she’s unobtrusive unless engaged. And they have so many scents I’ve been dying to try. Sublime Balkiss, by TDC, was a standout for me; so was Rien, from Etat Libre d’Orange, and Jasmine et Cigarette. I wish I’d had my notebook; I wish my online perfumista pal had been able to meet me there (car problems). I wish I’d been able to spend the afternoon, or week, or month or year, there.

What did I buy? Amouage Lyric for women, 50 mls, the one I’ve been saving my pennies for (many, many pennies, but you knew that). I probably could’ve gotten this elixir of the Gods cheaper somewhere else, online, but we need to support these places. And, since we have no brick’n’mortars like this in Atlanta, I chose to buy my Amouage (Happy Birthday to me, in, oh, a few months) there. And the SA got friendlier -- a lot friendlier -- after that. I asked her, what did she think the new trends would be? She thought awhile. “Natural,” she finally said. “Natural essences.”

Do we hope she’s right? Pure naturals don’t last on me. But we’ll see.

I hope this is the future of perfume retailing, that there will be enough people to keep places like this alive. It’s not exactly in a low-rent neighborhood, right down the street from the Beverly Center. They must have to sell a lot of fragrance to survive. I hope they do.



The photo is of a postcard from the ScentBar.

The ScentBar’s address is 8327 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, or online at LuckyScent.com. (No affiliation, honest!)

Amouage Lyric for Women is a beyond-sumptuous blend of dark rose, spice and frankincense, made in Oman and available at a select few fragrance retailers and online sites.


p.s.: Regarding my vintage Mitsouko drawing: in my haste to leave town, I goofed and made my deadline for hearing from the contest winner April 26 instead of August 26. I still haven’t heard from the winner, but, to be fair, I need to extend that deadline to September 9th. Winner, where are you? You have until September 9th, midnight US EDT; after that I’ll pick another winner (using my old fave random.org, of course.)