Posted by Robin
on
4 February 2011
Fall? Bah, humbug. I’m a summer person. The best thing I can say about fall is that at least it isn’t winter yet.
That’s me a couple of years ago, opening the Top 10 of Fall by complaining that it wasn’t summer. Imagine how I feel now. There is nothing good I can say about winter except that at least it’s already part of the way over. So, let’s move on to the perfume, shall we?
Citrus. Angie recommends avoiding citrus in winter; instead, she says you should find a good tropical fragrance to psych yourself out of the winter doldrums. She’s right that citrus doesn’t really have the same effect when you’re wearing several layers of warm clothing, but it cheers me up all the same — some winters, I wear an awful lot of citrus. I’m including two in this category. Dawn Spencer Hurwitz Pamplemousse is cheerful, reasonably long-lasting, and it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. As an added bonus, it layers nicely with just about anything. Aftelier’s Candide costs more (and is perhaps more accurately termed a citrusy floral), but it’s so happy, it makes me smile just to think about it…
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Posted by Angela
on
27 December 2010
Search through past “Best of Winter” perfume posts and you’ll find lots of suggestions for perfume to wear when it’s cold out. Most of those suggestions assume you’re looking at the cold from inside your toasty living room. Or at least from the warmth of a thick coat and gloves. When my furnace broke down a few weeks ago I faced a different question about cold weather perfumes: what perfume is good not only when it’s cold out, but cold inside, too?
I came up with a strategy for perfume to wear when you’re cold:
Try amber and spice. Amber is warming, if a little sweet and sometimes cloying. I burned myself out on Lorenzo Villoresi Alamut during my furnace’s downtime and don’t think I’ll be able to wear it again…
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Posted by Kevin
on
29 January 2010
I take advantage of the cold-weather months and pour on amber-rich, resinous, incense-y, musky, and powdery perfumes (known as “gasp-inducers” in hot weather) but I also use perfumes to help me forget winter woes — my flowerless garden, chill-induced headaches, spark-filled hair, and dry-as-bone skin (citrus and florals…come hither). My top-ten list of winter fragrances is, of course, personal, and far from definitive; these are simply perfumes I’m enjoying this winter.
I usually wear “sharp”/herbal amber fragrances such as Serge Lutens Ambre Sultan and Tom Ford Amber Absolute, but it’s nice to have a classic amber scent handy as well. Enter Histoires de Parfums Ambre 114 (with notes of patchouli, cedar, sandalwood, tonka bean, vanilla, benzoin, and musk). Like many amber perfumes of its type, Ambre 114’s soft and sweet aromas transport me to a particular “scene” (a snowy twilight landscape viewed from inside a warm, dim room) and state of mind (contented…but nostalgic too). I suppose that means amber scents make me feel safe and comfortable and, perhaps, remind me of someone time has erased from my life.
Aesop Mystra is bold — and a bit severe…
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Posted by Erin
on
16 January 2009
Being an indoor sort of person, I appreciate winter only inasmuch as I can glance out the frost-feathered windows and admire the perfect pillowed hummocks of snow I won’t have to shovel. (We rent.) To heartier types I leave the joys of those first cleansing breaths of cold air, the silvery light and quiet walks in forest wonderlands. I shall stay right here, thank you, with my double scotch, my copy of A Child’s Christmas in Wales and my winter fragrance favorites, dug from the back of the perfume closet.
Serge Lutens Arabie: Say you made a Christmas pudding from dates, sugared citrus peel, cardamom, bay, a spike of cumin and some exotic, thick liquor that tastes like flowers and looks like Mountain Dew. You’d have: a) Christmas pudding I’d actually eat; and b) something darn close to Arabie. Winter is the only time it is even remotely polite to wear this scent. If the sweetness of Arabie bothers you, then, heaven help you, Diptyque’s L’Autre or Clinique’s Aromatics Elixir might be good choices.
CB I Hate Perfume Gingerbread: Bless Christopher Brosius. He writes that the 2007 version of his holiday fragrance, re-released last year, is an olfactory interpretation of “the slightly burnt edges” of gingerbread…
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Posted by Erin
on
29 January 2008
Perfume blog newbies often comment that some of the regulars have a language of their own, and indeed we even have our own dirty words, the f- and s-bombs: “fruit” and “sweet”. I must admit to being among the contingent that usually gives a snobbish shiver of repulsion when I read a note list that includes grape, litchi or coconut. Unfortunately, sales assistants flogging candy cocktails are attracted to my chubby cheeks, decade-old sweatshirts and general lack of bearing. I notice this most often in big city, higher-end department stores: salespeople ignored by the older, impeccably groomed customers going by zero in on me as being the only person in the area who could conceivably be within the age range for their fragrance. Since I was a child, I've had a particular fear of situations in which somebody is giving an embarrassing or futile speech and I am obliged to stand there, smiling politely. I feel this fear as a pain in my chest, as heartburn, while I stand there with my frozen grin, waving around a testing strip or ribbon sprayed with something that is attracting flying insects.
On a day when it's sleeting, however, there is nothing more cheering to me than a big, euphoric burst of fruit…
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