The wait, redux

In my mail, and now posing for a picture on my table:

Allow me to introduce you to my latest.  As I get ready to tell you about them, it occurs to me that, like my friends, there is quite a variety of personalities and how/why they have a place in my life.  This quintet did arrive as a clique, erm, lot, so it was all or nothing when it came to bidding on them.

You may recall how I described them in my previous post.  There is Vivara, the former formula.  Chypre, but not brash like YSL "Y."  Easy to get to know.  Quickly entered the realm of "I'd call it a staple if I had enough."  I have enough now.  That, right there, made the lot worth the cost to me.  But wait...there's more....

Giorgio.  Giorgio, Giorgio, wherefore art thou Giorgio?  A blast by any other name...would scream '80's.  But this one, THIS one, was what formed a cloud around the escalators in the Hudson's where I sold shoes for three years.  Ladies going up, ladies going down.  The perfume counter wasn't far from my department.  I usually ran by, because a colleague was always going over and grabbing a few spritzes of Poison, so I associated that glass with potential asphyxiation.  Except for the day I stopped for KL.  But that's another story.  ANYWAY, I never once applied Giorgio to my skin.  And then it was gone.  Until now.

Tuscany per Donna.  You spend enough time with perfume blogs, books, and banter, and you can develop impressions of scents you don't really pay attention to.  Like this one.  I saw the name and vague memories of love/hate came to mind.  Was it lauded in The Guide?  Turin for sure tends to extol the virtues of Lauder.  But might it not be a big screamer?  Look, it comes with friends like Giorgio and Knowing, not my bag.  But there's Vivara...and there's The One...aw, heck, give it a try.

Knowing.  Had it already.  Same miniature came in an Estee Lauder sample collection I got a while back.  (See this post.)  This one will probably be set aside for gift or swap.  'Sokay.  Need a little quiet like that for a moment before I turn my full attention to the next one.  'Cause it's a doozy.

I'm not even going to call it by name.  You can read the label.  What if I fall head over heels in love?  What if that one encounter, an evening with me, some friends, and the lovely smell behind the ear of one of my lovely companions, ends up being my downfall?  I never expected to even get this far.  But here it is.  My own bottle.  You can see by the picture that it is a "partial bottle," which is to say that the bottle is fully intact but the contents are not at full volume.  I could see that in the listing pic, too.  What I could not see in the listing is that the bottle IS STILL SEALED.

Still sealed.  That brings an extra layer of "oooh, special" to the equation.  Could be nearly perfect, the juice inside.  Or, the fact that so much evaporated off might show just how faulty the seal is.  Maybe it smells like Froot Loops.  Or a litter box.  Or my nail polish.  Or...nothing.  This still being sealed business means only one thing for sure.  I'm going to stare at and gently handle that little bottle for weeks before I attempt to open it.

Back to finding the joy in the waiting.

And so I shall.  Me, with a new Steady Eddie, and blast from the past, a novelty to explore, a gift to share, and a passionate obsession.

Kinda cool.

Small pleasures

Ah, beauty thing.

You know how you read about a scent and have that "oh, that one I've GOT to try" feeling?  And the sad variation on that is a vintage scent?  Worse yet, a long ago discontinued vintage scent?

Okay, take that.  Now...meet a perfume person who is wearing that scent.  Take a good huff.  Because, as perfume creatures do, it won't matter if you've known each other a minute or a decade.  She'll offer up the skin, and you'll...inhale.  Okay, gently at first, if this is your first time.  But...if you are captured...you ask and put your nose in for more...just a little more...

And then it's gone.  Because the social agenda says it's probably not appropriate for you to proceed with the evening with your nose stuck in your new friend's neck.  And you do enjoy the conversation, after all.  And probably wish to not be shunned.

But the perfume.  It haunts you.  And now, it's under your skin.  Because, of course, it's the one you can't have.

You're a reasonable person.  You know from obsession.  So, sure, you rekindle your online trolling habit.  'Cause what's the harm in just...looking?  And you start paying attention to pictures.  Because every now and then, the key word won't pick up on a listing.  You ride the line of "just how much time should I spend looking through collections and lots, anyway?"  You decide to give yourself a limit.

You listen to your limit.  Mostly.  And just as you think you've settled down...

...there it is.

Really?  Seriously?  ZOMG, says your teenage text reading mind.  Could it be?  You click on the listing.  Enlarge the picture.  Because it's clearly the house, but is it The One?  Because you are oddly superstitious (a baseball player in another life?), you don't look directly at that bottle first.  You force yourself to identify the other bottles first.  Hey, perfumista point!  You know just what "?" is.  ("?" is Estee Lauder Knowing, your mind flashes on the Turin review, the image of Paulina Poriskova, you hear a few bars of The Cars.)  You think, holy cow, Giorgio?!?  And you rest on the bottle on the left.  The easy chypre from a previous generation.  It's on your "if it comes up for $x, get it" list.  And there is a bottle of parfum, for heaven's sake.  When it's parfum, the bottle is small-ish.  You can see how it's been grouped with some miniatures.  You don't believe your freakin' luck.

And you haven't even turned your attention to The One.

So, in your vaguely superstitious mind, you click bid.  Because you have already purchased some perfume this quarter, and your budget is your budget, and you are going to bid on this lot based on budget and the pre-existing "if you can find vintage Vivara for less than $x, get it."  So you toss in your lot, even as part of an eyeball is staring at that enlarged picture.

You've bid.  And now, the part of your brain that you've let attend to the picture starts shaking your shoulders and laughing and doing a little dance.  The other part of your brain says "cool it, man; you're bringing in bad mojo." (Did I mention a little superstition?)  The image is clear; you can read the label.

Bingo.

Your mind reels...how much would I be willing to pay?  What if it's not good?  It's just a partial bottle, it's a mini; how much could that be worth?  What's it worth to you?  You only smelled it once on one other person; even if it hasn't turned, you don't really know if you'll like it, right??  Your fingers hover over the "increase maximum bid" button.  You put them back down.

You have a budget.  You are in control.  You have enough perfume to spray you and a couple of friends every day for a number of years.  Center.

Another part of your brain comments.  "Oh, pretty bottle."  What? I'm not really a bottle person!  Where did that come from?  But...it is pretty.

You take your hands away from the keyboard.  And you wait.  Because if the stars are right, this will work.  And if they're not...you have a budget.

Time passes.  You're going to have to wait a few days.

And it's not so bad, the waiting.  You look at that picture, you think about why it would make sense to have that particular assortment of scents, why you can survive without them.  How fabulous it would be to win the lot.  Because you'll have such a ridiculous assortment of "types" in one shipment.  The known quantity.  The I've Only Known It as an Inescapable Waft.  The I have no idea, but it would be fun to know what the love-hate is about.  (Didn't mention that one yet.)  The It's Not for Me, But Someone Will Like It.

And...The One.

You wait some more.  The waiting is not so bad.  In the waiting, you think...which is what you do half the time, anyway.  Read about 'em and imagine.  Life will be fine either way.  Okay, it would be "sah-weeet," as teen tweets go, if you won.  But you are already this|close to something you didn't even know existed a month ago.  And the memory of it on your friend's neck would be enough tangible connection to a ghost to last a lifetime.

You wait.

Morning Notes

Ah, the simple pleasures of waking up, preparing a cup of tea, and sitting down to read a few blogs, scan the news, check your e-mail.

Sometimes, I also use this time to run a passel of samples through their paces. To the right, you see notes from this morning's run. Because my synapses don't fire reliably on demand, it helps to keep track of what has been applied where. You can also see jottings of first impressions. Don't believe for a minute that I am always so organized, or that I always follow the same pattern.

A few years ago, a fair amount of my free time was given over to exploring the world of online auctions. What I learned from that experience means I am still comfortable nosing around for various somethings when appropriate, including fragrance. This second picture is of a collection of Estee Lauder fragrances through the years--all minis, all in perfume strength.
These things were ubiquitous at auction for a while; the trick was simply being patient and waiting for your maximum bid to be the winning bid.

A raft of minis like this gives me a chance to experience the manufacturer's range, and peek at historical developments. I can read reviews of Azuree, Youth Dew, Cinnabar, Private Collection, Knowing, White Linen, Aliage, etcetera, and have a schmear on my arm ready to sniff for fuller comprehension. Scent-O-Rama. Samples and minis have been potent enablers in my scent home schooling program. Kind of like those oenophile kits you can get--you know, a bunch of vials of "notes" from wine, to help train your nose and become a better appreciator of the art of the vintner?


I have bunches of sample vials now, thanks to online shops that offer samples (Luckyscent), decanters (The Perfumed Court, the closing but ever fabulous Fishbone), and swaps with friends and posters on MakeUp Alley. It's fun to spend intense phases in exploration mode, with four patches of samples going. Speed dating of a sort; getting to know a small crew all at once. A danger, of course, is over empasis on the top notes, unfortunate (and maybe even unknown) cross-effects, and lack of quality time.

A positive aspect of a sample slam is that you can absorb a lot of information in one go-around, especially if you take some notes and/or read up on what you are wearing while you are wearing it.

Having just spent most of a week enjoying some quality time with Bois des Isles, I was happy to go on a bit of a bender. The work week was distance running; Saturday was sprints. Or, if you will, I went to work listening to a symphony, and Saturday was a playlist of singles. If interval training works for getting your body into shape, maybe this approach will make buff my nose.


Coming up: the middle zone--spending some quality time with variations on a particular note.