Nod a Napper

My inability to sleep in the middle of the day has always been a sore spot.

Even the high-performance motivational types say a short nap may be the best route to those world-changing things I have planned.

On Sundays, in particular, I coldly eye my husband and two sons. Sprawled out all over the house, they rub my nose in their Sabbath peace. Silent, oblivious, effortlessly demonstrating the Art of the Nap. My emotions range from envy to something less charitable. Desperately wishing to be as far out of it as they are, with ill-will towards all, and loudly, I go about important business.

A 1951 book by Paul Jellinek, The Psychological Basis of Perfumery, categorizes scents according to their effects on us: Narcotic, Erotic, Refreshing and Exalting. It has been a long week. The first effect catches my eye. Something to soothe and numb, to induce sleep or stupor. What is not to like?

Into a very small blue bottle, filled almost to the top with jojoba oil, I mix a little essence of amber, rose absolute (the very best Bulgarian type) and a touch of bergamot oil from my friend Bill Luebke at Goodscents. Wrists, neck, backs of the hands. Take me away… It has been several months now. Hoping that this public announcement will not break the spell, I share that the potion has worked every time. True, I use it only when fully committed: I will go to that special place. Still, the scent of sleep has not yet failed!

Cristalle and Me

If pressed to share my favorite perfume, I would say it is Chanel Cristalle. I don’t always have it, but have returned to it more times than to any other scent.

In a women’s beauty magazine, actor Chris Noth commented: “Cristalle -- oh, man, I have to get on my knees and beg for a whiff. It makes me stop in my tracks." Celebrity endorsements aside, not many are with me on this. Cristalle is the opposite of a warm and fuzzy fragrance. It seems to say: “I may be pretty, but I’m all about business, buster.” After a long period of disloyalty, I saw it on the dressing table of a new friend and tried it on. Much better than I remembered. On that day, I particularly noticed the lushness underneath the severity of Cristalle.

Another time I purchased Cristalle online and was surprised at how much sharper, greener it was than my previous bottle. Still very pleasant, but in a more bracing way, I assumed it had been a knock-off, only later learning that Chanel uses a different formula in the eau de parfum and the eau de toilette. Chanel and Hermès are known for this. A good reason to try before we buy!

Once, on a train from New York to Boston, I smelled Cristalle. A woman in her early 60’s, eyes closed, slept on her husband’s shoulder. Comfortable, distinguished, surely the one. I held myself back from approaching: “Excuse me, I notice you are wearing a fragrance I have admired for decades. Who are you and when did you find Cristalle? Is it your signature scent or part of a fragrance wardrobe? You have great taste. I love you. But so sorry to interrupt. Thank you. Goodbye. But one more thing, I meant to tell you that you smell great.”

Enough is Enough

Women have agonized over perfume application forever. Some maybe more than others. Some a lot less. You know the ones who spritzed without scruples. Cleopatra and her barge of rose petals floating up the Cydnus River to Tarsus for the well-planned seduction of Mark Antony. Fragrance-infused sails announced her arrival long before she came into view.

Napoleon Bonaparte would never consider going into battle unscented and liked his women perfumed as well. Every week, he ordered two quarts of violet cologne and somehow managed to consume sixty bottles of jasmine extract monthly. His first wife Josephine reportedly tolerated Napoleon's tastes, but generally fancied the stronger stuff, musk in particular. Eventually, he shifted his attention to Marie Louise who became his second wife, no doubt because she shared the emperor's affection for violets. Josephine, in a transitional snit, saturated their boudoir with musk, and the scent lingered for sixty years.

My mother-in-law says: “A little bit is OK, but too much is too much.” This must be a French-Canadian proverb. But what is too much? The Fragrance Foundation of America encourages us to layer our fragrances. We should start with a perfumed soap, bubble bath, cleansing gel or bath oil. Body lotion or cream will follow on damp skin. Continue the ritual with a lavish splash of eau de toilette and finish it off with perfume on pulse points. On a hot day, remember the powder.

But wait! The Foundation instructs us not to dominate our surroundings with perfume. A personal “circle of scent” should extend no further than the length of an arm extended from the body. Be careful that vigorous layering does not extend your personal circle to the entire planet!

How much? There are different schools of thought. I have a wonderful girlfriend, originally from the Mideast. When I meet her after work she smells rich and wonderful - not having applied any fragrance since early morning when she leaves her house. The woman loves perfume. So one time I asked: “How many did you spray?” And she said: “I don’t know, let me think, one, two, three…” And I said: “Eight?” And she said: “Yeah, eight." Another friend of mine lives to know that people cannot always see her, but know she was there from the scent left in her wake.

Me? I go light. I might spray once, twice, rarely more than three times. Three spritzes, perhaps, of an extremely volatile citrus splash that I know will be gone in a half an hour but I just can’t get enough. I would not use a heavy hand with a rich floral or an oriental fragrance. But many folks do, and I enjoy the wake when they pass.

Moderation Shmoderation

Many offended by public displays of perfume have organized. See Breathe Free or Die (your source for buttons, magnets, keychains and posters that say: “I’m fragrance free. Help me stay that way!”) or Fragrance Free World. These groups educate and defend the rights of people with multiple chemical sensitivity, migraines, asthma, allergies and other conditions, as well as the soon-to-be “formerly healthy people who’ve been exposed to too many chemicals.” I am torn on this issue. Life and death aside, have you ever tried to eat sushi in the presence of extreme Giorgio? Or watch theater next to Amarige applied with an without discretion? Don’t.

On the whole, we dwell more on the dangers of perfume over-use than its under-use. A few weeks back I attended a college alumni event, all perfect strangers. Out of decorum, I applied a mightily restrained portion of my chosen scent. To be extra careful, I put it on at four p.m. for the evening event. Champagne, Hors d’oeuvres. Great art. Conversation about fragrance. When asked about mine, I had no evidence. We pawed, we sniffed, but not a trace. Later that evening, on my way out, a woman swept by me wearing the very scent I craved. Filled with melancholy, I left the party, never to make that mistake again.

Classic Scents, Nostalgia or Nightmare?

“Smells like my grandmother.” This popular variant of “smells like an old lady” is often applied to powdery, musty florals and spicy oriental fragrances and is not a compliment. Fact: 100 out of 100 women I have interviewed will not wear their mother’s signature scent. I suspect a girly backflip on Oedipus taboos.

Would we like this scent it if it weren’t for mom or grandma? If we could erase the memory of a perfume, how different would it smell? When grandmothers, not yet mothers, first donned Estée Lauder’s Youth Dew, how did it smell to them? Keep in mind: Their grandmothers knew that nice girls didn’t wear perfume. Did it smell old and fusty, the Trojan horse in the form of brown bath oil Estée used to scent a generation of women who would not buy real perfume for themselves? Or did it just smell rich and spicy? What was the mental image evoked by Youth Dew, the emotional response in 1953?

We rule out once-popular fragrances simply because we’ve smelled them before. Isn’t that a little like: “Cheese, never touch the stuff, my folks always had cheese around.” Not that I think people reject a scent to be difficult. No, it really smells dated, and in a bad way, not like old is new again and black is the new black.

If I had $10 for every woman who has told me she won’t wear Clinique Happy because her mother wore it, I could buy myself a bottle of Guerlain Aqua Allegoria Pampelune. If these women gave me $15 instead, I might spring for Annick Goutal’s Eau d’Hadrien. With the change I would buy some really good grapefruits and eat them.

Along the same lines, if I had $20 for every woman who won’t wear Chanel No. 5 because 2) her mother wore it, 2) her step-mother wore it or 3) her sadistic boss wore it, I would buy: Bois de Portugal, Cabochard, Cuir de Russie, Elle, Elle, Ferme tes Yeux and Vent Vert. Note that these fragrances are not floral aldehydes in the same spirit as Chanel No. 5 but I want them very badly.

I was in my early 40’s, driving home from work at the end of a day. On this day my gas tank read very low near a Mobil station I had not patronized before. Inside, they had tiny fragrance samples for sale. Real perfumes, not the “if you love Cinnabar, you’ll love Cinnabore” type. I believed that anything as popular as Chanel No. 5 had to be awful, but curiosity won out. For practically nothing, I got to try the world's best selling fragrance of all time. In this case, that many people are not wrong. You should try it, and pretend that your mother didn’t wear it. Forget what I said about Oedipus and the wicked witch too.

You deserve the right scent, be it old or newborn. Don’t let the ads and sales clerks push you around. Smell for yourself and decide.

More on the Classics

If the idea of perfume classics intrigues you, read: Here's the Hottest Secret in Fragrance: Go Back to the Classics! Johanna McGlaughlin, the author, is a perfume expert with a lovely personality. Johanna is a frequent feature-writer at Perfume Reporter. You may discover that you love the stories behind the scents. If it tickles you to know that the perfumer actually had a name and a personality, that some fragrance rocked the culture, why a particular bottle matches the spirit of the juice so very well, what makes this one or that one a “classic” along with details on specific ingredients of the fragrance, Michael Edwards’ Perfume Legends: French Feminine Fragrances is a book for you.

It Musk be Fresh

Consumers express their taste in fragrance with an impoverished vocabulary: “something fresh,” they always say. A sales-clerk will wait on hundreds of customers before realizing that “fresh” is a synonym for “something I like.” Silly girl, she thought you meant the smell of herbs, fresh cut grass, citrus or the ocean. Lo and behold, some heady oriental smells fresh to you. Why? Because fresh is good, this scent smells good and must, therefore, be fresh.

Next time you shop for a fresh scent, perhaps a little soapy to remind you of laundry “fresh” from the dryer, recall this: One of the most popular scents in laundry detergent is musk, a fragrance ingredient formerly obtained from a gland located between the stomach and genitals of the East Asian male musk deer. Musk is used to infuse perfumes with depth and richness while fixing them to the skin and is considered by most to be a sexy smell, not a fresh one.

But the main goal of perfume is pleasure, So if it makes a person happy to say that musk is a fresh smell, why not? I like fresh scents too. Like a nice piece of pizza hot from the oven.

The Name’s Bond

She waltzed down the aisle, all shiny fur and shiny hair, a twittering entourage and more glamour than usually seen on a Thursday in Hartford’s Bushnell Theater. But she didn’t get past me. “What is your fragrance?” Surprised, she turned. “It’s fabulous,” I reassured her. Not like any I had smelled before, puffy, light and ethereal, but for all the delicate femininity, hinting at mischief. I liked it.

She registered my benign intent. “You know, I don’t know. I got it from a friend. I stayed at her house and she left me a sample.” But wait, she dug through her purse. Normally you’d get some details on the pocketbook, but tonight it was all about perfume. “Maybe...oh, here it is! Let’s see. Bond No. 9.”

“That’s good,” I encouraged her, “Bond No. 9 is the manufacturer; can you see the fragrance name?” “No, no,” she inspected the small glass vial as the houselights went down, “That’s it. Bond’s the name.” Oh, well, maybe Bond had its own house scent, something I hadn’t heard about. Then the incident slipped my mind.

Months later, I stopped into the lovely Madison Avenue shop for Bond No. 9. A gorgeous young Russian woman standing behind a display of well over thirty bottles (my estimate) greeted me warmly. I told her I was looking for a fragrance called Bond No. 9. She gently explained that all of the fragrances are Bond No. 9, exactly as I knew and feared to be the case. She and another salesperson who had joined the conversation giggled, but without a hint of condescension. Then he admitted “We have a problem.”

Undeterred, she asked me what it smelled like. I began to speak, but didn’t get far before she reached for a bottle and sprayed it on a round paper blotter. Handing it to me, she asked: “Is this it?” “Yes!” Nuits de Noho. She and I had landed a plane wearing blindfolds. The language of scent. Very handy.

Bond No. 9 flagship store pictured here.