Posted by Angela
on
25 January 2013
Over the years I’ve built a stable of favorite cold-weather fragrances and have only added and dropped off a few each year. To spare you a recap of perfumes I mention all the time, I’m grouping ten perfumes I like into ten winter-activity categories. I hope you’ll chime in with your own favorites, and be sure to check out more winter favorites at Bois de Jasmin :: Grain de Musc :: Perfume Posse :: Perfume Smellin’ Things.
Après-ski
This category is kind of a joke since I don’t know how to ski, and, frankly, the whole deal sounds like a good excuse for a broken collar bone. But après ski? Sign me up. When I picture après ski, I think of an early 1960s lodge in Gstaad — like the one in the Pink Panther movie — with women in sweaters and bulbous mink hats and men in turtlenecks and dark glasses. Everyone drinks from brandy snifters and speaks several languages. It’s glamorously ridiculous. Serge Lutens Santal de Mysore is my après-ski perfume choice. It’s boozy, woody, and warm, and would be a terrific accompaniment to a shoulder-high fireplace and a copy of Valley of the Dolls…
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Posted by Jessica
on
14 February 2012
This winter has been an unpredictable one, so far, in the Mid-Atlantic region: no snow, mild temperatures, weirdly fluctuating humidity. It happens to suit my current state of mind: for me, the year opened on several notes of personal and professional disappointment, when nothing turned out quite as I expected it to.
However, wearing (and writing about!) perfume is always a reassurance to me. And over the past week or two, the temperature has finally dropped (and stayed low); we even received a light (if fleeting) layer of snow one night. Maybe something, even if it’s just the weather, will get back on track. Here, then, is my highly subjective list of ten fragrances that have been keeping me company during this season.
In the past I’ve thought of Guerlain Après l’Ondée as a springtime fragrance, but this year I realized that it’s also a good fit for where-is-winter days that alternate between chilly rain and pale sunlight…
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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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