ifconfig
Well-known member
- Sep 25, 2006
- 1,035
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What a long, strange trip. Well, strictly speaking, it's not been long per se as I've only been a "perfume patient" for a few weeks, but it's been strange all right.
It began innocently enough: I was listening to NPR's Talk of The Nation one afternoon when I heard the story of how Chandler Burr happened on Luca Turin waiting for a late train; one thing led to another and Burr ended up writing The Emperor of Scent. I was intrigued! Off to the library, driver, quick I say!
A few days after, as I put down the book, I realize I am hooked. I begin to rummage through my paltry fragrance collection, snatching at the caps and drawing them to my nose. Do I smell those illusory "notes"? My wife's collection was next. I sprayed, dabbed, splashed, and sniffed, oh boy, did I sniff! Yards of test paper strips soaked with fragrance, the detritus of an olfactory Battle Supreme, lay scattered around my desk.
My nose started rebelling badly and went on strike for a while, two days into my "illness". After I realized the need to calm "the hell down" as my lovely wife put it, I started prowling the Internet as I waited for my anosmia to subside. I needed to know if I was the only one, if I was "normal", and as usual, like a soon-to-be-terrified hypochondriac feverishly typing his symptoms in to WebMD, I started typing in terms like "fragrance", "perfume", "reviews" into Google and milliseconds later, the great Googlebot spat out the results which were going to determine my quality of life for the next few weeks.
Atop the list of results was basenotes.net
It's been several weeks now and I've spent an obscene amount on various and sundry perfumes, fragrances, scents, salves, balms, potions, etc., etc. The stars aligned and started showering me with samples, first from my sister-in-law who worked the Estee Lauder counter at the local mall then from various others. Like my work colleague whose wife, he said, had a ton of perfume samples and he hated all of them. Bring them on down, Sam! And when he did, I found delicious A*men, B*men, Black Cashmere, and others.
Ebay, that most evil of websites, proferred Jicky and Caron's Le Troisieme Homme. I blundered and bought D&G's Light Blue for full price at a department store, then found a 1.7oz Burberry Brit on clearance for less than $10! Fresh's wonderful Cannabis Santal I obtained from NoNonScents who included free samples of Bond no.9's Bleeker Street and Chez Bond (you bastard! I love you!); a trip to Las Vegas had me getting a bottle of The Dreamer that blew me off the Strip. Recently, Macy's had a Fragrance Festival that caused Pavlovian salivation and my wife and I walked out several hours later with the cutest double-bottle of Gaultier^2.
Just this weekend, I bought (blind, mind you) Parfums de Nicolai's New York and I can't wait to try it. I'm currently wearing L'Instant de Guerlain and I'm estatic. The worm stirs still: I'm itching to get a bottle of Dior Homme, a bigger bottle of Chinatown, New Haarlem, and more, more, more (Chergui, Creed MI, Knize Ten, Chanel PM)
Sorry, got lost in the moment there. Sigh.
So, what should I get next?
It began innocently enough: I was listening to NPR's Talk of The Nation one afternoon when I heard the story of how Chandler Burr happened on Luca Turin waiting for a late train; one thing led to another and Burr ended up writing The Emperor of Scent. I was intrigued! Off to the library, driver, quick I say!
A few days after, as I put down the book, I realize I am hooked. I begin to rummage through my paltry fragrance collection, snatching at the caps and drawing them to my nose. Do I smell those illusory "notes"? My wife's collection was next. I sprayed, dabbed, splashed, and sniffed, oh boy, did I sniff! Yards of test paper strips soaked with fragrance, the detritus of an olfactory Battle Supreme, lay scattered around my desk.
My nose started rebelling badly and went on strike for a while, two days into my "illness". After I realized the need to calm "the hell down" as my lovely wife put it, I started prowling the Internet as I waited for my anosmia to subside. I needed to know if I was the only one, if I was "normal", and as usual, like a soon-to-be-terrified hypochondriac feverishly typing his symptoms in to WebMD, I started typing in terms like "fragrance", "perfume", "reviews" into Google and milliseconds later, the great Googlebot spat out the results which were going to determine my quality of life for the next few weeks.
Atop the list of results was basenotes.net
It's been several weeks now and I've spent an obscene amount on various and sundry perfumes, fragrances, scents, salves, balms, potions, etc., etc. The stars aligned and started showering me with samples, first from my sister-in-law who worked the Estee Lauder counter at the local mall then from various others. Like my work colleague whose wife, he said, had a ton of perfume samples and he hated all of them. Bring them on down, Sam! And when he did, I found delicious A*men, B*men, Black Cashmere, and others.
Ebay, that most evil of websites, proferred Jicky and Caron's Le Troisieme Homme. I blundered and bought D&G's Light Blue for full price at a department store, then found a 1.7oz Burberry Brit on clearance for less than $10! Fresh's wonderful Cannabis Santal I obtained from NoNonScents who included free samples of Bond no.9's Bleeker Street and Chez Bond (you bastard! I love you!); a trip to Las Vegas had me getting a bottle of The Dreamer that blew me off the Strip. Recently, Macy's had a Fragrance Festival that caused Pavlovian salivation and my wife and I walked out several hours later with the cutest double-bottle of Gaultier^2.
Just this weekend, I bought (blind, mind you) Parfums de Nicolai's New York and I can't wait to try it. I'm currently wearing L'Instant de Guerlain and I'm estatic. The worm stirs still: I'm itching to get a bottle of Dior Homme, a bigger bottle of Chinatown, New Haarlem, and more, more, more (Chergui, Creed MI, Knize Ten, Chanel PM)
Sorry, got lost in the moment there. Sigh.
So, what should I get next?