Monday, August 31, 2009

smelly


Today I felt like wearing perfume. I used to wear perfume all the time, but I am currently out of perfume. My sister gave me something recently, but it ended up smelling like baby powder on me. It was decent in the bottle, but as sometimes happens... your body chemistry may wreck havoc with a scent.

I used to have two scents I would use regularly. The first was one of those that you used to be able to mix up yourself in the Body Shop (I think it was the Body Shop). It was two parts vanilla to one part peppermint. It made me smell like cookies and spice, which was fun when I was in my early 20s, but I wouldn't wear it now. I'm a little too old to smell like cookies.

The second was my all-time, absolute favorite scent, which I would wear again in a heartbeat. Le feu d'Issey by Issey Miyake. It was spicy and fresh, delicious and complicated and enticing, all at the same time. This gent describes it as follows on his blog post, "Miyake lent heat to this composition with sichuan pepper, amber and benzoin - yet with a delicate hand, he reduced the volume on the combustible warmth with golden Japanese lily, bulgarian rose and milk accords."

I bought my first (full size) bottle in the summer of 2000, at the end of my trip to Switzerland. I adored it immediately. Turns out, not many people liked it besides me. (Which kinda makes sense, as I don't like most perfumes.) It was released in 1998 and discontinued three years later. I did not realize this in time to get any more full size bottles. When I ran out several years later, I could only find the wee 1.6 oz bottles, and they were selling for around $30. I bought one, and was frustrated with the expense and the smallness of the amount. Now, two years later... it's gone. I am so sad. I did a brief search tonight, and found that the wee 1.6 oz bottles are selling for $50 or higher, and the full size bottle that I originally purchased is now going for $250. I am not fancy enough nor crazy enough to buy perfume that expensive.

They still make the "light" version of the scent, but it really doesn't hold a candle to the original. I've been hunting for information on something that might be similar, but have only found a couple names. I think I might have to take my list of possible substitutes and head off to a perfume counter someday for some sniff tests.

I miss my perfume.

2 comments:

Placeholder said...

I love it when girls wear perfume.

thetravellor said...

The other option is to go to a swanky department store (find a saleslady/man who knows her perfumes) and ask what they'd recommend. You don't have to buy it there, but you can always use their knowledge.