I am scentsorially challenged and yes, I know I made that word up. Anyone who has an allergy to fragrances is welcome to borrow it and everyone else can consider themselves lucky they don’t have to. There are very few perfumes I can wear or even be around without my throat closing like a sphincter. Husband will contest as to how often we’ve changed seats in movie theatres and restaurants because some dowager submerged herself in enough Estee Lauder to make our calamari taste like Youth Dew.
Going back to school has certainly been an education. I’ve learned that elderly ladies trying to hide the mothball smell in their wool cardigans aren’t the only ones abusing fragrances. Bath and Body Works has released several scents adored by young women at my school and one of the favorites smells like roasted vanilla drenched in syrup. I don’t know the formal name the company has given this scent but I call it Migraine.
The irony is that I LOVE perfume and wish I could wear all of them. The woman in me thinks there is nothing more sensuous and alluring than smoothing scented lotion all over my body. The allergy sufferer in me fears a result similar to rolling on a rug made of cat hair. When I test out a potential new cologne in a department store, I spray some on a fragrance card and walk around the store with it. If I hit Housewares without feeling like a furball is lodged in my throat, I celebrate that I may have found a winner.
There aren’t many winners. To date, I wear Obsession and Chanel No. 5 (sparingly), Oscar de la Renta and Lovely (bring ’em on), and the evocative fragrance Husband favors that I wrote about in The Pipeman Cometh. Design by Paul Sebastian had a brief run but started showing up on everyone else smelling like cotton candy. Germaine Monteil’s Royal Secret, a comforting old standby, began to remind me of dead queens.
I was on line at a health food market recently and the cashier told the woman ahead of me that her fragrance was heavenly. And it was. I realized I was standing there just sucking in her air. The woman thanked her and said it was Prada Iris. I heard it as Prada Iri$ but I kept breathing deeply in case I would never smell it again. I went home and Googled where I could get it at a discount.
It’s interesting that one of the common threads among women who are also mothers is that we don’t hesitate to buy our kids the hundred dollar sneakers they long for but we go into standby mode when it comes to splurging on ourselves. L’Oreal made a fortune telling us we’re worth it. Why do we need convincing? Since my recent infatuation with eBay, Husband likes to say I don’t buy things anymore; I win them. It somehow fits with my noble veil of self-denial. Well, I wasn’t winning any Prada Infusion d’Iris and I also wasn’t getting it wholesale. The lingering scent inside my head haunted me.
Soon it convinced me. The gift set from Nordstrom.com arrived today in its sage green box and feathery tissue wrap. As you read this, I am gliding through the rooms of my house on a soft cloud of fragrance only the mother of hundred dollar sneakers could know.
Daughter’s Featured Fotos provide a glimpse of Montego Bay, site of her friends’ recent destination wedding
local wildlife
underwater life
still life
the good life