Superstition has it that whatever you do on New Year's Day sets the tone for the year to come. It follows, then, that the perfume you wear tonight, New Year's Eve, will officially be the first perfume of the year as long as it persists through midnight. Now that's some pressure. Choose something too obvious — say, Beckham Signature for Her — and you might have a year without mystery. Choose something too complex and engulfing — for instance Frédéric Malle Une Fleur de Cassie — and you risk being misunderstood or even alienating for the entire year. Have you thought about which perfume you'll reach for tonight?
Before selecting a fragrance that just might set the year's agenda, maybe we should step back and look at some common goals for the year to come.
If your top goal for 2009 is to lose weight and get in shape, perhaps wearing a big, gourmand fragrance is not a good idea. Smelling of rich vanilla and almonds first thing the new year might lead to twelve months of taunting by delicious aromas. On the other hand, a sexy, taut vetiver like Chanel Sycomore might be just the ticket for getting you back to your fighting weight…
Lorenzo Siena has launched Palio, a new fragrance for men:
Shower gels named after famous warriors? Well…okay, but why can’t we use another type of person to promote products, a type that didn’t thrive on warfare, a type that doesn’t make me feel so “adolescent” as I buy a WARRIOR shower gel? I’d even risk appearing pretentious over appearing adolescent, so maybe I’ll develop a Poet Series of scented products myself: Haiku (Bashō) bath gel fragranced with pine needles, lotus, green tea leaf, kyara wood, smoke and bamboo, or a Leaves of Grass candle (Whitman) with sap, lilac, birch, cumin and musk. What about a fragrance honoring a poetess: Marianne Moore; she liked apricots and baseball, so osmanthus and ‘baseball glove leather’ would do the trick for Tricorne Eau de Parfum. 
