It’s my birthday today, and I’m getting older ‘n dirt, and where… are… MY… PRESENTS?!?!?! Hahahaha! Just kidding, just kidding, unless it’s that Mugler Coffret.
Lurkers — for those of you that think about commenting, but you’re hesitant because we all seem to know each other pretty well, I just have to say, I didn’t know most of these people a year ago, and my first comment I posted on another blog made me nervous because I thought everyone knew each other and looked pretty tight. The very coolest thing about the perfume community is that it is welcoming and warm. Just jump in! You don’t have to know a lot about perfume or anything at all, but you do know what you like or what you want. I think everyone that blogs has been the lone dissenter on a fragrance or two, so liking something everyone hates is perfectly o-k. Well, except… no, no, no exceptions. So please make yourself at home and comment when you want. We love the back and forth, it’s what makes this fun, even when you disagree and think I’m out of my mind or March has a weird nose that likes things that smell like worms and feet.
We’re all friends, right? Okay, confession time. I have perfumes that I panic if I’m without that I never, ever wear.
I call them Scent Woobies, and they tend to be gourmands, but not always. I don’t very often want on my skin to wear around all day, they just bother me or are too distracting, but I have to have the bottle so I can take a quick sniff hit of my favorite comfort juice when I need cheering up or just scenty love.
At the top of the list is Serge Lutens Rahat Loukhoum. I love the open on it, but the drydown just is weird on me. Every time I open the bottle and that beautiful almond creaminess floats up to my nose, my eyes roll back in my head and I just sigh contentedly. Honest to God, this really should be a candle, I’d spend as much for the candle as for the perfume.
Next on the list is Serge Lutens Tubereuse Criminelle. Now, this couldn’t be further from a gourmand, and I find it difficult to wear very often, though I do wear it from time to time. That camphor’ish blast with the tuberose lollygagging around in the background on opening the bottle is just my idea of happy scents, and it will also clear my nose if I’m a little congested. Comfort scent? Yeah, for the weirdest of reasons. It reminds me, when I’m feeling all mommyish and frumpy that I am also all girl and need some tarting up every now and then.
Hermessence Ambre Narguile (aka Nazgul) — I hate this scent with the heat of a thousand burning suns, but only on my skin. The honey note in there and just the over-the-topness of the caramel and amber is just the last thing I want to smell all day. But a hit or two off the bottle is a slice of heaven…. or caramel nougat…. whatever. I can’t think of much that is more comforting than this smell.
What are your comfort scents — not the ones you love to wear — the ones that you really don’t want to wear, but need to have around?
Patty,
Late to the party, but I’m sending you my best wishes for a beautiful new year of womanhood for you.
Better late than never – Happy Birthday!!!!
I have very few “woobies” as I will wear anything I love almost anytime now, but one of the few is Nahema, only because I can’t wear it as often as I like since it is so powerful – so I must sniff in private or just put in on when I am alone. If I had the kind of life where I coulf get away with wearing diva scents 24/7, I would wear it a lot more. However, my inner diva will have to suffice most of the time! 8-|
Belated Happy b-day, to my most favorite santa Patty! For you, I will wish for a nice warm bath in (fill in your favorite perfume.) Hugs!
Wow, 87 comments must be a record so I’ll make this short. Happy Birthday! And I’m loving the Poivre – very strong – should come with warning label or something.
Dear Patty,
Happy Birthday belatedly@};-. Your posts are always fun, frank, and fabulous.
Scent Woobies: Diorissimo and all LoTVs, Fracas, and Jo Malone’s Orange Blossom, which is beautiful on my daughter but too flowery for me.
Oh, my gosh, more birthday wishes. Thanks to all of you! I very much appreciate that, you’re all just the best!
Sorry I’m a little late but during this so called “Most Wonderful Time of The Year” things get as crazy as my family (were talkin’ exorcist territory). Now that I’ve gotten rid of my bah humbugs……
Happy Birthday Patty<:-p It's nice to know where all of my fellow Sags have disappeared to. My b-day is the 17th. May the sags of the world unite to make everyone smell as good as you ^:)^ Here's hoping Santa drops that coffret off under your tree [-o<:d Please refrain from throwing anything heavier than rose petals when I say my woobie is.... Angel. I know I know. I love to spray a little on my pillow before I go to sleep, but if it comes anywhere near my skin I get this powdery liquorish scent that makes it an instant scrubber :( So from a devoted fan here's wishing you birthday wishes and Caron dreams>:d< & :* Skye
A most excellent and happy birthday to you! May you be transported to where ever your fragrances claim. (I’m thinking somewhere in the British Virgin Islands for instance.) We are a heavily Sag family which balances the two Tauruses very nicely. No wonder I enjoy your humor, being a staid and serious Taurean myself.
My woobles are most of the Del Raes and Sg A la Nuit. Everytime I wear it it gets so overwhelming even though I love love love the Jasmine.
Happy Birthday, Sweetie!
My comfort scents are L’EAu d’Hiver, L’Homme de Coeur, Annam, Cologne Sologne, and Vent Vert.
happy birthday patty! your bottle of C VP is safe and will be en route to the US in 10 days! when i first read your post i didn’t think i had one of these. now i would say michael kors. my friend sent me lots of spray samples once, and the michael kors had all but evaporated. when i first opened it, i thought ‘wtf? i don’t like flowers except violet/iris/lav’ but then i kept having to sniff it. tuberose and gardenia. i don’t know if i want to wear it, but now i have to go get up from the computer and sniff the lingering dampness left at the bottom of the bottle…
Wishing you a fragrant Happy Birthday Patty!
I too am a Saggitarius with a birthday coming up (aren’t you glad you’re a jovial fun Sag?).
I have many wooblies that I don’t own but enjoy sniffing.
Chanel’s Coco is a divine spicy concoction. It smells not bad on me, but very glam and heavy – not really “me”. Kind of like turning up to a casual barbeque in a fur coat.
I also love the opening notes of Cristalle, but alas it goes all funny and musty on me. I still like to sniff the citrus top notes though – especially during a hot spell.
A celebrity scent that I admire is “Lovely”. The opening notes (whatever they are) are quite heavenly. However it turns into a musky mess upon contact with my skin. So I content myself with sneaking a sniff at the perfume counter.
I like sniffing a true tea rose scent as well as White Shoulders. These perfumes are my maternal & paternal grannies bottled!
I hope your birthday was fun and scent-filled!
:d
Happy Birthday Patty. Delurking for the first time here. Wobblies? Sublime for sure. Lovely, sophisticated frag, but on me all I smell is scrambled eggs.
Happy, happy birthday with many joyous returns!
My woobie-doobie-doos include Sublime (fantastic in the air, and too much on skin), Diorissimo (again, great in the air, but not so hot on skin), No. 19 (which I love taking a sniff of, but don’t seem to wear much), and SL Fleurs d’Oranger and Miel du Bois (I love getting a hit of them, but have to be in a very particular mood to wear them).
Eliza, FM Iris Poudre came to mind, as did Creed Fantasia de Fleurs and Moschino I Love Love.
Happy birthday, Patty! Betcha the dirt I’m older than is older than yours. So there.
I came out of lurkdom yesterday–not that I had lurked for long–and it was a good experience. This is a friendly place where one can just sit and put one’s feet up.
I’m keeping two bottles of YSL Champagne even tough on me it smells like old-lady talcum powder (I’m not *that* old) because of its historical value. One bottle is of extrait and the other of eau de toilette. They have that nice champagne cork shape. I must have bought them just before the lawsuit by silly vintners from the Champagne region forced YSL to change its name to Yvresse. Okay, it’s not just that I’m interested in history. I also hope the bottles will be worth something to collectors someday. $$$
Happy birthday and thanks for the welcome to lurkers!
Maria
Happy Birthday!
My best woobie story isn’t really mine, but here goes: One day a friend asked me what perfume I had on. “Shalimar”, I said, laughing, “you know, the one your grandmother wore”… “No,” she replied, “my grandmother wore Toujours Moi.” Well, I love vintage scents and collect them whenever I can, so I happened to have a vintage bottle of Toujours Moi (this is the old one, by Cardon). So the next day I brought it to work and gave it to her.
When she opened it, she just smiled this great smile and said, “Yep, that’s pure Nana, ummmmm” She told me she would never wear it (it’s way, way, way powdery), but she just loves having the bottle so she can open it up every once in a while and take a sniff, calling up the image and dear memories of her grandmother. To me, that’s just the best kind of woobie.:)
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!
Cheers to another trip around the sun! <:-p Have a wonderful, wonderful day & best wishes to you, dear Patty!!! My woobie would have to be Feminite du Bois. Have not actually worn it in years (binged on it big time back in the early 90s) - but cannot bear to be without it.
Happy birthday Patty! Many, many, happy birthdays to you. . .
So. No more lurking for me. I will have to think about that woobie thing though. There are plenty of scents out there that are just gawjus, but smell like bug spray on me. But I love sniffing them on others (what a visual).
Anyway, happy birthday!
Happy Birthday, Patty!
I should be ashamed to put it here in print, but my secret is Eternity. It’s my early 20s in a bottle, where I’d rather they stay. But I can’t tolerate not having that bottle.
Happy Birthday!
And for a woobie…Coco. I always try to muster up enough vavavoom to wear my sample, but really I just want to sniff the bottle and remember my elderly neighbor from my childhood, who even now in her late 80s (goodness, maybe early 90s) doesn’t leave the house without all her makeup and her hair perfectly done.
Loved her. It’s time for a card.
Thank you, Cindy, Katie, R, Justine, R and Robin!
Happy birthday!! Oddly enough, I never smell a bottle, never. If I can’t wear it on skin, I don’t need it.
I can’t believe I listed my woobies but forgot to say happy birthday. Happy birthday, Patty!
Happy Birthday Patty!
When a birthday feels at all bittersweet to me I think of my two girlfriends that both successfully battled breast cancer and remember that getting a year older sure as heck beats the alternative 🙂
Plus, I don’t know if anyone has mentioned this yet because there are just too many posts to read through, you look gorgeous. Really. Gorgeous and wise, a very sexy combination. And you smell good too.
Rahat is one of my most loathed scents. In the bottle and out I can’t tolerate it. TC I love. It’s that gasoline accord that hooks me and keeps me coming back for more.
I don’t know that I have any scents that I like only in the bottle, but I tend to appreciate incense on others more than myself. 10 Corso Corso for example, smells great when its not on me.
Happy birthday, Patty! I hope it’s a great one. Enjoy your day!
Oh gosh,Patty, I am so late to your birthday party. Please forgive me.
I want to wish you the happiest of birthdays. You came into my life last year, and your friendship and support have been a great blessing to me.
I’m so frazzled thinking of a gagillion things I have to do this morning, that I can’t think of anything cute or witty to say about perfumes I love to hate or hate to love, so I will just leave it at that.
<:-p Hugs and much love!
Patty,
Happy Birthday MONTH to you. My philosphy is the older you get, the longer you deserve to celebrate the event.
Woobies: Escada Collection & Plaisir. Both evaporate to nothing on my skin. But they are comforting to me.
Thank you, Tom! I live in Denver, and I’ve heard of Tuescher, I’m off to find exactly two of them for today. I better not eat anything else, though.
Now, Norma Desmond is simply the greatest character ever. I used to think Carol Burnett was making it up, and then I saw the film.
What perfume do you actually think that character would have worn? Some weird, difficult Patou that makes the people around her worried because it is just a little crazee.
Some days Rahat’s cherry sticks with, and then it is absolutely perfect, but if the cherry vamooses, so, so, so bad.
Happy Birthday Patty!! I’ll be thinking of you today.
Your woobies are my woobies. I have sample vials of Ambre Narguile, Rahat, and TC, but I just can’t seem to wear them. But I’m definitely not giving them away! It’s like having a painting that you love to look at in a book but just won’t work in the living room.
L — get your paws of Chaya’s randy ferrets, those are mine, I tell you, Mine, MINE!! :d
Chaya, vintage Rumeur, for reals? Okay, I’m e-mail you!
Chaya – I’ll take your randy ferrets!
Thank you, Iris! I always read the notes on Angel and think it has to be the best perfume in the world, until I smell it, and, oy…. just not good at all. But it makes me happy knowing it exists in the world and smells absolutely divine on lots of people.
Happy Birthday Patty!
I forget where you live, but if there is a place that sells Tuescher truffles, I think that should be your birthday treat. Two is about all you will need (or want, really), and in winter they can fly over the “extra butter” one. The champagne is delish too.
Have two. They’re small.
My woobies are headed up by Tubereuse Criminelle: I adore it and sometimes even wear it to bed thinking “I can wear this out, it so leathery”. Then I awake in a Norma Desmond-like fog of tuberose which is divine, but would definitely get me weird(er) looks in my button-down corporate job.
The second is Joy, perhaps because like tarleisio I remember being 6 and smelling it on my mother’s fur coat. That one I only have to sniff.
Rahat Loukoum I actually wear. I get a bit of funk at the end, but not a lot. The wonderfully boozy cherries stick with me all the way through, and whatever funk is there just makes them sexy cherries. :d
Lastly, about your comments to newbies, I’ve been commenting on these blogs for less than a year, and I have never been received as warm a welcome. Dive in kids, the water’s fine.
Hey, baby-
YOU didn’t answer the question…
I’ll happily make a package for you, just say !
Always on me, but I bet the bedsheets would smell great spritzed with it!
Happy Birthday, fragrant lady! I adore Rahat and TC. They will always be in my collection.
One of my woobies is Angel. I love how it smells in the bottle, but it doesn’t always behave on my skin. For that reason, I rarely wear it out of the house.
Thank you, V!
See, everyone has them. Even if they don’t keep the bottle, they have them in their head, like White Shoulders and Cinnabar.
Putting the word “Hombre” in any perfume really should get them drummed out of the perfumers’ guild.
Tigs, thank you! I totally disagree on the taxi thing, but I do agree that you’ll stay younger if you’re driving them than if they’re driving you. I’m so over teaching teenagers to drive. I only had one round in me, and this second one has just fried my nerves, and he’s a good driver.
Tolu is a weird one for me too. I always like the idea of it and even love it sometimes, and I have a bottle with about a squirt or two in it where I just smell the cap from time to time, and I won’t throw it away.
We are a goofy bunch, huh?
Beba, I have missed you!! I’m glad you are doing well and recovered!
I almost snagged some Vol De Nuit parfum this week, then changed my mind. I smelled it once and really liked it, but now I’m having trouble remembering if I loved it enough to spring for the parfum or not. :”>
Thank you, Teri.
Same here on the Shalimar. I have a little bottle of it, and I’ve smelled it on people who make it do the magic, but on me it is just rancid baby powder. The SA swore to me if I got the shower gel, that would make it all better. How very wrong she was. :-w
Karen, happy late birthday to you and to your aunt! that is so good you went to see her. I so hope you’ll have her for many more years.
When I get old, I’m going to drive people out of my assisted living apartment with all the perfume and scent I have in there, since my nose will barely be able to smell anymore, so I’ll have to spritz more of it to compensate. 🙂
Thank you, Dear L.
So do you just spritz your bed with AN before you crawl in, or take the bottle with you? This may be a way for me to enjoy it more, just a spritz on the blankets, being careulf to get not even a molecule on me, lest it be ruined.
Agree in ISM, but I have to throw Apres L’Ondee and Encens et Lavande in the mix. March and I have declared at least one or all three of these must be piped in at our wakes to ensure copious tears.
Love you back!
Happy Birthday!
I thought the idea of Scent Woobies was weird. After a moment of introspection – you are right. I have a few. Adolfo Dominguez Vetiver Hombre, Carlo Corinto Vetyver Pour Homme, and Jovan Grass Oil For Men
I nominate them for the ‘Dumb Name for a Frag’ award, too. How about Vetiver Hombre and Hombress, Vetyver Pour Homies and Jovan Grass Oil for Womyn? Hey, if Carlo can spell it ‘vetyver’….
Happiest Birthday to you, Patty. My mom claims still having kids to taxi keeps you young. (I have a brother 11 years younger than me. His first day of kindergarten, my mom, who was a teacher, ran into another mom who said wonderingly to her: “Mrs. B?” She’d taught the other mom in Grade 7. It was like an Oil of Olay commercial.) You sound young at heart and now young in forehead too.
Woobies, hmmm. Kenzo’s Kashaya, which smells so cool in the air or on a coat sleeve, but just smells fruity sweet on me. Tolu, too – I love the orange blossom hit at the beginning, but it morphs into a weird mixture of edible and incense dust after that. My husband says “That is how women are *supposed* to smell…” but it just disturbs me a bit.
Thank you, Sharon!
Marina, you and March and Judith are scary in how close you all three feel about some pretty weird stuff. 🙂
Thank you!!!
Thank you, March! Creative use of the icons! 🙂
BTW, I put something in the mail to you that you hinted strongly about.
E — thank you! And totally agree ont he LotV notes, they are just horrible on me.
I knew you’d have hundreds of these. 🙂
Thanks, Judith!
Safram is awesome, but i never wear that one either, though I could be talked out of mine for something else more wooby-ish.
Thank you, Christina! What do you supposed makes Rahat do that? I’ve worn it every now and then and didn’t get that funky thing, which makes it awesome, but once it turns, it’s just horrid.