oakmoss

The "year-in-review" type of posts have been absent on this blog for several years. Mostly because I'm lazy and don't want to spend the effort to reflect in a structured fashion & to put those thoughts into words. This year in particular I feel relatively content with myself and is even less motivated to reflect. But I did sign up for a goal setting course along with Jeff so I'll probably write some reflections / resolutions down in the next couple of weeks (before Atlanta for sure! or maybe even on the plane).

...

Instead today's post is going to be on fragrances. It's the rabbit hole that I've been stumbling down the past three days.

Let's start at the very beginning.
I've had in my possession two bottles of perfumes before. One is a turquoise bottle from Gucci that I bought at a Olreal warehouse sale (??) in early high school...which I've recently discovered that my mom is actually using, and another is Guerlain's Aqua Allegoria in jasmine that I asked for a gift from Jason. I've also recently dug it out and gave it to my mom.

I'm not sure why I never regularly worn those two perfumes, perhaps because they were impulse buys without much understanding, but I don't wear any scents now is because they tend to give me headaches. And that it's bad for IAQ, but that I'm willing to overlook, just no burning candles inside ever. In short, me smelling fragrances is like me drinking, I always regret doing so.

Buuuut, recently I think I'm more resistant. Two of my UK friends are into fragrances and they gave me several recommendations, which I sampled in London and at the airport before my flight back. Surprisingly I felt fine both times. Fingers crossing for the future.

At this point, I can only theorize about what types of fragrances that I like, probably more masculine /  unisex scents. Particularly chypres (would never guess it's pronounced sheep-ray, thought it'd be qi-pree), vetivers, and iris. It's somewhat surprising since I expected myself to be super in florals. The only certainty is that I love Penhaligon's Lord George, and really like Hermes' Terre d'Hermes intense vetiver edp. I have to admit that the perfume's bottle is actually the most important criterion, because I want it to function as decor and because I trust my visual taste more than my just-developing olfactory taste.

Two more parallels that I'd like to draw to my other hobbies: 1) I expect the development of my interest in fragrances to go down the same path as my interest in watches, both are luxurious and unnecessary haha; 2) perfume reviews are like tea reviews, there's some objective properties but vastly more personal preferences.

Back to reading Perfume Shrine, the posts are quite scholarly (see author's background) rather than just news / reviews which make for a good read.