Imagine seeing a friend in person after almost fifteen years apart — perhaps gray hair and wrinkles will startle you, or you’ll be amazed at how unchanged he is, or how your friend has finally learned to dress (no more neon colors, chicken-sized athletic shoes, or gym pants).

I’ve not “seen” (or smelled) my old flame Etro Magot¹ since 1998 — back in the day we were very close, in fact, Magot was once all over me. After an affair that lasted a good two years, Magot went his way, I went mine, and I never thought of revisiting that “relationship” till now.

"Original" Magot’s fragrance notes² were lime, lemon, tuberose, jasmine, iris, lavender, clove, peach, vanilla, cedar, patchouli and musk. I remember Magot as a dark, intense Oriental perfume — a fragrance that went from a syrupy brew of flowers and spice to a rich, opulent powder-house of peach-saturated patchouli, amber and oak moss.

My old “beau” has changed...

They like jasmine over at Lush. Whenever I'm feeling particularly wealthy (a rare, and entirely delusional state) I pick up some of their Jasmine & Henna Fluff Ease hair pre-treatment (about $22 for 220g). My hair most certainly needs some pre-treatment, followed by some treatment and then perhaps some post-treatment, but I buy it for the (massive) wallop of jasmine, which lasts right through a shampoo (or two). Once, and only once, I bought a very small travel size of their Flying Fox shower gel ($10 for 100 ml, which mind you doesn't look like nearly so much product in shower gel as it does in perfume) — another decent wallop of jasmine. And then there's the Lust fragrance, which arguably out-jasmines both the Fluff Ease and the Flying Fox, and adds a hefty dose of candy to boot.

But their best known jasmine product is probably the Silky Underwear dusting powder. I love the smell,¹ but I'm not a big user of dusting powder so I've never bought it. I was tempted when they released the same fragrance in a solid perfume,² but I still didn't bite...

The archetypal image of Valentine’s Day is a heart-shaped box of chocolates. Done right, the box is wrapped in lightly padded vermillion satin, and the chocolates are rich and silky smooth — no grainy cherry filling here. Of course, next to the box is a lush bouquet of fragrant flowers. It’s romantic, timeless, and sure to melt the coldest heart. To me, its perfume equivalent could only be Guerlain Attrape-Cœur.

In 1999, Guerlain released Guet-Apens Eau de Parfum as a limited edition and named Mathilde Laurent as its nose. The fragrance was reissued in 2005 as Attrape-Cœur, this time credited to Jean-Paul Guerlain. (I’ve also seen Maurice Roucel’s name tossed in as a contributor to Attrape-Cœur.) In 2007, Guerlain released an Eau de Toilette formulation in duty free shops and named it, oddly, Vol de Nuit Evasion. (To make it even stranger, Vol de Nuit Evasion was packaged in a L’Heure Bleue/Mitsouko bottle, but labeled with the classic Vol de Nuit parfum logo.)

In French, guet-apens means “ambush.” I think Attrape-Cœur (“heart catcher”) is a more fitting name for the fragrance...

Today we're helping Linda, who wants to find two new perfumes. One should be a daily "signature" scent, and she'd like the other to be a romantic fragrance for special occasions. She can pay up to $100 each. She'd prefer perfumes that aren't too popular or mainstream, although that's not a deal-breaker, and she'd like them to be pretty but interesting — they don't have to be complicated scents. She has good access to perfume stores. Here is what we know about Linda:

She's in her mid-20s and lives in San Francisco, where she works as a pharmacist.

She says she is slow to catch on to new trends — she prefers simple and classic, with feminine touches. Her favorite piece of clothing is a grey draped cashmere sweater from J. Crew.

Linda is shy when meeting new people, but can be bright and goofy once she gets to know them better.

Linda likes notes of osmanthus, champaca, white musk, sandalwood, orange blossom and cedar...

It's time for the weekend poll — Aunt Violet: "What's a weekend?" — and this weekend, we're scenting the cast of Downton Abbey. Scent as many or as few as you like, and please, there is no need for historical accuracy — Julian Fellowes has not been stifled by such considerations, so neither will we.

If you don’t watch Downton Abbey, feel free to scent a character from your favorite TV show.

I've been thinking about Aunt Violet...

Every February, we consumers are reminded in many not-so-subtle ways that the rose is the flower of romance, and that we should be buying roses, giving roses, and wearing roses in all their forms. I happen to believe that rose fragrance is a perfect choice for any day of the year, not just Valentine's Day, but I've decided to wear and review some recent and new rose releases all the same. One is a 2011 launch from the classic house of Caron, and the other is the latest offering from A Dozen Roses, a new niche collection that was itself founded in 2011.

Caron's Délire de Roses Eau de Parfum is described as "an exquisite concoction...redolent of a spring garden in full bloom," with top notes of blended rose petals and lotus flowers, a heart of lily of the valley and rosebush leaves, and a base of jasmine and lychee. It opens with a sheer cluster of rosebuds and lily of the valley, and it eventually dries down to a soft, fruity rose that stays close to the skin. Between these two floral phases, the fragrance's mid-development is warmed by an unexpected salty-amber aquatic note. Since Délire de Roses has a transparent feeling and light staying power, it would work well as a rose fragrance for warmer weather. Other than that salt-breeze heart, it reminds me a bit of Crabtree & Evelyn's Evelyn (now Evelyn Rose), one of my favorites during the early 1990s.

Overall, Délire de Roses is pretty and girlish and bright...

Way back in 2007, Angie wrote a great post called Becoming a perfumista, in which she identified four stages of perfumista-hood. Many of you will recognize the symptoms: strong interest (stage one), beginning perfume mania (stage two), full-blown perfume mania (this is stage 3, and for many of us, it's when we drain our bank accounts) and connoisseurship (stage four).

A bit later that same year, while reviewing Gucci by Gucci, I added a stage five, which I called rampant cynicism:

This comes, I think, of already owning enough perfume to scent a small town for the foreseeable future, and then not only looking for more fragrances that you might conceivably love and want to own, but also trying (in vain) to keep track of all the new perfume releases and to smell as many of them as you can possibly manage. You can tell you’ve reached stage five when almost everything you read about a new fragrance makes you either laugh out loud or roll your eyes, depending on your mood.

In other words, it's when you start to get jaded, and I think it's a natural reaction to trying to search out the gems among the ongoing lunacy of 1500+ new fragrance releases a year. Perhaps it's also a natural byproduct of blogging, and especially of blogging about new fragrances...

Olivier Durbano’s Citrine fragrance has been on my mind since I first smelled it last fall, and it’s in the running as a candidate for my first full-bottle purchase of 2012 (that is, if treating myself to a Frederic Malle candle, $95!, does not win out).

Citrine is in the Durbano “Parfum de Pierre Poèmes” line, and it includes fragrance notes of lemon, orange, mimosa “buds”, ginger, pink pepper, incense, myrrh, carrot seeds (“sprouting” in many scents lately), musk, rosewood, gaiac wood, beeswax and amber.

Citrine opens with pungent, “hot” citrus, as if the heat of ginger root and peppercorns has been added to lemon juice (don't wear this if you have a sore throat!) There is a floral sweetness in the opening...

When looking for a perfume, many people say they want something “sexy” or something “fresh.” Perfume houses are hip to that, and tend to market their wares with smoldering starlets or oceans and dew-tipped garden flowers. (That is, unless they can play both sides and put the starlet on the beach.)

The popular sexy fragrance is easy to define. Start with a friendly fruit note, add amber, vanilla, and maybe patchouli, toss in a shot of jasmine and the obligatory rare jungle orchid, and presto: sexy perfume. A clean fragrance can take a few different approaches. It can be citrusy (many colognes), ocean-like (Issey Miyake Eau d’Issey), fizzing with steamy aldehydes (Narciso Rodriguez Essence), or soapy (take your pick of the Clean line). It can finish with cool wood or vetiver, or — more likely these days, it seems — a wave of laundry musk.

Giorgio Armani has raked in good money selling fresh fragrances. Acqua di Giò, both the feminine and masculine versions, have been best sellers since the mid-1990s. Acqua di Gioia is the brand's latest try for the “fresh” vote, and it plays up both the ocean and laundry musk angles of clean...

Today we're helping Kate, a regular commenter (as KateReed) here at Now Smell This. Kate wants to find a nice bedtime /downtime scent — not too loud, not too quiet. It would be great if it was a natural fragrance, or at least, not "heavily chemical". She says she has less than $90 of wiggle room in her budget every month, so it has to be reasonably priced. She usually shops online. Here is what we know about Kate:

She's in her mid-30s, single, and works in insurance sales. She says she can sometimes be perverse simply to be perverse.

For fun, she reads and writes. She loves sci-fi and sci-fantasy books, and for movies, westerns.

She says she has little if any sense of style.

She hates being cooped up, and likes the windows open.

Kate likes dry and powdery fragrances, but she also likes many other kinds of fragrances...