One of my favorite things to put on before I step out the door each day is lipstick. I have a vast collection of colors to match my various moods, and even on days that I don’t wear make-up, I need to at least put on a swipe of sheer gloss on my lips. During these weeks of confinement, I haven’t been applying my usual coat of lipstick, since almost every time I go out, I am wearing a mask, or taking some exercise.
However, I found that I am turning more to one of my other indulgences—perfume. Each day I put on a little spritz of perfume. It gives me a boost, and I feel a little more presentable even if I am dressed in a comfy sweatshirt and leggings, and the only other living beings that I will be near that day are my two feline roomies. In normal times, when I’m guiding my food tours, I am quite careful about how much I apply, because I don’t want the perfume to interfere with the scent of the food and wine that we are tasting on the tour.
Your olfactory sense is a major part of your taste experience. According to vlogger Justine Leconte, French women say, “Your perfume odor should not overpower the odor of your food.”
Perfume comes in different concentrations, extrait de parfum is the most intense, followed by eau de parfum and eau de toilette, and then eau de cologne. However, this is not always the case, explains perfumer Will Inrig, creator of The Quest for Your Signature Scent tour for Flavors of Paris.
The names can be misleading, several houses offer extraits that are more diluted than their eaux de parfum, due to regulatory issues. To complicate matters, eau de cologne is also a standard accord in perfumery, descended from Johann Maria Farina’s 1709 creation, based on citrus, aromatic herbs and florals such as neroli and lavender. And in American masculine perfumery, cologne is often used as a synonym for eau de toilette.
So it seems that you can’t really judge the concentration of a scent by what it says on the bottle. The best way is to try it and let your nose be your guide. It really is the only way to truly know how the scent smells on you. Not only the concentration, but the performance of the scent will vary on people depending on their body chemistry. Many years ago as a college student, I was doing an internship at an advertising agency. One of the guys from the art department was trying to guess the scent I was wearing. He was stumped. When I told him it was Poison by Dior he looked at me in disbelief and said, “No way! My wife wears that.”
Getting back to the topic of the perfume as a “pick-me-up”, I asked Will for recommendations for scents to lift the spirits a little. He was hesitant to make recommendations, as a man who is passionate about perfume, and very poetically stated that:
Perfumery, by its very nature, is uplifting. The meaning of perfume is ‘through smoking’ from the Latin, per fumare, as incense was long the main form of perfumery in Europe, and remains so throughout much of Africa and Asia today. Perfume is symbolic of prayer rising to heaven. It is a reminder of the perfume of Eden, of man’s original shape. Perfumery is essentially spiritual, and as such, an expression of hope.
However, he does acknowledge that he finds aromatic resins like frankincense and myrrh to be uplifting, as they take him back to memories of childhood and spirituality. And that many of his clients find citrus materials like bergamot, orange and lemon will elevate their mood. Getting back to recommendations, Inrig is still rather hesitant to recommend specific perfumes, as the consummate artist that he is, he states that “Art is too personal”. However, after some pressing, he shared the scents that he loves to revisit time after time:
Most of them date from the beginning of modern perfumery, an era of tremendous ambition, experimentation and artistic responsibility. I think of Jicky (1889) by Aimé Guerlain, or Ernest Daltroff’s work at Caron: Le Narcisse Noir (1911), Le Tabac Blond (1919), Nuit de Noël (1922).
So while my array of lipsticks remain in their little container by the bathroom mirror gathering dust, for the time being, my bottles of perfume are still getting daily use. Do you have a favorite perfume that you recommend? What scents do you find are the most uplifting?
