In which I smell divine

I have been on a quest most of my life for the perfect perfume. I blame Coco Chanel. I started reading about her during those formative teenage years, and even now I tend to give her opinions the same weight as a papal decree. She once said, "A woman who doesn't wear perfume has no future", and I couldn't agree more. (A woman who doesn't wear perfume cannot have an interesting past either, but that's another subject entirely.)

As a teenager, I wore Lauren and Anais Anais, mistakes, both of them. (I smelled Lauren the other day and didn't recognize it at ALL. Have they reformulated it?) In my twenties, I dabbled with some of the Laura Ashley fragrances, but by the end of that decade, it finally occurred to me that "sweet" just isn't me. I needed something darker and more complex, lush and rich and slightly decadent--intoxication in a pretty glass bottle.

That's when I started wearing Chanel No. 5. It's complicated, certainly, and with an impressive pedigree. It tends to wear the user, but I don't seem to have a problem with that. (Sweet florals turn overripe on my skin. I need something heavier to anchor the scent and give it some body.) I have worn No. 5 off and on since my 30th birthday, and it was my fallback fragrance, although I sometimes flirt with Guerlain and Bulgari. I do admit to having a fickle streak when it comes to perfume. I always wonder if there is something headier on the other side of the fence.

And I finally found it. Last year, I was perusing a counter of Annick Goutal scents when I discovered Grand Amour. It seems unthreatening at first, in its fluted glass bottle and plain gold stopper. Don't be deceived. It is dangerous. It starts off with lush, over the top florals--hyacinth and heliotrope. It passes through roses and lilies and settles into a base of vanilla and musk. I put it on my collarbones--people always say pulse points, but this is in fact wrong. Perfume only smells intoxicating; it tastes disgusting. It should never be applied anyplace you would like to be kissed. So, collarbones rather than behind the ears, forearms rather than wrists or the delicate skin inside your elbows--a secondary erogenous zone, did you know that? The effect is startling. I thought it was just a lovely smell. It turns out, it is an invitation. I try to wear it subtly because it is quite potent, but still I notice that once someone who knows me gets a whiff of it, I get followed and very often hugged. It's a pretense. I can hear them sniffing me, and I know it's Annick Goutal's fault.

I love reading about perfume almost as much as I enjoy wearing it. There is a lovely website, Basenotes where fragrance aficionados write reviews of their favorite perfumes. Their entries read like poetry. Someone named "helg" wrote this about Grand Amour, and it is a perfect tribute:

A sexy actress in her boudoir after her performance. Pensive, smiling hazily to herself as she lifts her hair off her forehead and gazes at her image in the mirror. Her most enthousiastic fan has sent her armfulls of liles, bunches of honeysucle and posies of hyacinth to fill the room and her lacy clothes with an initially fresh and sweet fragrance, with a penetrating aroma that becomes deeper and slightly decaying as time passes. The whole concoction is intoxicating somehow, yet it makes her think of him with nostalgia. She thinks she's falling in love... It's a Grand Amour. It has to be.
That's my impression of this rich floral with hyacinth, lily, honeysuckle, rose, amber, vanilla, balsam musk and myrrh. Mature and rather heavy...to be used sparingly...Extra feminine, both in scent and presentation. A little decadent...It is intriguing.

So what are you wearing today?

Revision update: 411 pages finished. As an antidote to all the feminine period detail, I've started watching testosterone films. This weekend it was "Casino Royale"--Daniel Craig, enough said. Yesterday I began "A Bridge Too Far"--best war movie EVER. (If I start drinking beer straight out of the bottle, you'll know I'm in trouble.) Last night I dreamed about Eva Peron and the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, who happens to be one of the Mitford girls.