It's Day Way Too Many of the new exercise and diet program, an effort to get rid of the baby weight. Weirdly, over the past couple of days I have developed an intense interest in perfume, something I've never had much time for. I think it must have something to do with sensual deprivation -- food was my go-to for gratification before and now I need something else. (And please don't suggest sex. Clearly, sex can be very fattening -- it is responsible for this baby weight in the first place.)
I've been perusing Now Smell This, a top perfume blog; I've added both Perfumes: The A-Z Guide
and The Emperor of Scent: A True Story of Perfume and Obsession
to my Christmas list; and I've just ordered a bunch of samples from The Posh Peasant, a place that decants expensive and/or hard to find perfumes into smaller (and thus cheaper) bottles. I ordered samples of the Top 10 according to Perfumes: The A-Z Guide, Top Cult Favorites from Style.com, the Maternal Magic set, and the Best for Winter set, as well as teensy tiny samples of Annick Goutal Songes, Diptyque Philosykos, and L'Artisan The Pour Un Ete, three perfumes I now feel compelled to smell, thanks to the descriptions at Now Smell This. I may have officially lost my mind. Now if only I could lose this weight, too.
Oh, I love Perfumes: The A-Z Guide -- and I'm not even particularly interested in perfumes! The descriptions read like prose-poems ... witty, quasi-bitchy prose poems.
Posted by: CAAF | November 27, 2009 at 07:04 PM
p.s. You've read "Perfume" by Patrick Suskind, right? I find stretches of it tedious but the sections in the Parisian perfumerie are catnippy and great.
Posted by: CAAF | November 27, 2009 at 07:07 PM
Yeah, I've read Perfume. You know what, CAAF? It only just occurred to me that it may not be the perfumes themselves I'm intrigued by, but the words used to describe them...
Posted by: Steph | November 27, 2009 at 07:25 PM
It amazed me how wrong I was thinking thinking the topics of perfumes was shallow before I started diving into it. Now I am hooked and can't get enough.
Posted by: Issey Miyake Perfume | November 28, 2009 at 02:37 PM
Ooh, thanks for the link to The Posh Peasant! I just added one of their sample sets to my Christmas list. :)
Posted by: Steph Burgis | November 28, 2009 at 04:57 PM
Oh, you have to tell us which one you want, Steph!
Posted by: Steph | November 30, 2009 at 01:44 PM