It’s one of those moments/phases/times when I feel like I’m just waiting for the fabulous to drop in my lap. I’ve sniffed some really good/great perfumes since the first of the year, but I’m waiting for one to wrap its fingers around my throat and squeeze until I beg for mercy.
In Yoga, we work on two things – breathing and opening our heart. Probably the best way I’ve seen that put recently is in the most recent issue of Yoga Journal when they interviewed Sarah McLaughlin. She said her yoga instructor tells her to take her heart and put it in the middle of a big, wide open, beautiful meadow and then breathe so it will keep beating. Yeah, try that sometime, it’s a very cool exercise, but it really does encompass a way of living your life with your heart and mind open, not trying to protect it, but knowing you are strong enough to live like that. Yeah, perfume. I’m feeling a little closed to so many perfumes lately. I’ve smelled so many, and as much as you try not to become jaded, what you can’t help happening is becoming round-heeled in the perfume department. So many just go under my nose or blotted on my skin with a sniff 30 minutes later and a “huh.”
What I have to keep telling myself is this doesn’t make the new crop of perfumes bad, it’s just that I have too much to compare them to, and I struggle on how to have that experience of so many perfumes, but to be able to smell each one new. To put that perfume out in the middle of the meadow and breathe into it as if I’d never smelled anything before. Well, exactly, I haven’t figured out how to do it either. I’ll keep trying, but mostly just wait for that new Etat Sex Pistols thing or the two new Inuxes and hope that clangs my gong. how do you experienced perfumistas cope with this? Ideas?
Or maybe I’ll just enjoy my trip to Chicago this week and visiting the purse object of Musette’s deepest lust and affections and having a great dinner with her and Shelley.
I was reminded that I did a drawing while in London for the new Jo Malones, which I completely forgot about, sorry! Winners are dremybluz and kitty. Just click on Contact Us over on the left and remind me what you’ve won and send your address, and I’ll get them out to you!
Oh dear Patty. The new Sex Pistols and the new IUNX’s are not going to clang your gong (I’m giggling a little at that phrase though…). The orange blossom IUNX is nice, but not groundbreaking, and the Sex Pistols is a “huh”. I bet the visit with Shelly & Musette will be great though! It may be too hot still to wear one of your new scarves though. Wear your new earrings and think of them as a talisman to handcrafted and thoughtful pieces, created with love, maybe?
Did get a chance to sniff the De Bachmakov? Denyse and I agree there is something *moving* about it, although it’s a gentle spirit of a perfume, and it won’t grab you by the throat (thank goodness).
This may be just an extended phase of the gentle ennui we all suffer from occasionally with perfume; it may be longer in your case because, with the blog and the decant business, you’re drowning even more than the rest of us in all that’s out there. I’m of the mind that whenever your interest in new perfumes seems sort of slack, your heart will be open to others things in the meadow (to overwork the Sarah metaphor).
Of course, the great dinner with Shelley and Musette will help your heart breathe anyway, because while the soul squeeze with new releases may wax and wane, the enjoyment of perfume buddies is always there – because it goes deeper than fragrance (and purse lust :) Have fun in Chicago! Wish I could be with you three!
Maybe , by opening our hearts and minds as you suggest Patty , we would be able to discern a whole new spectrum of scent , one that is there already , but up until now , was out of our range of smell . New nuances , so to speak….
Look at all the good thoughts already…yes, Carter, the gong-banging is a gift, and unusual, and not to be demanded…which is inside and then furthered by Denyse in pointing out the effects of pace and fatigue as the demands of contemporary marketing strategy insist upon putting SOMETHING new out there…add to that the timing Somerville Metro Man recognizes…Silvia’s pleasure in the filtering…
As for nothing new under the sun, well, right. And then, there’s seeing the smile of a loved one that is oh so familiar from an entirely different vantage point, whether your own, or through the eyes of another. Like, maybe, how Coltrane treats My Favorite Things. Or how that sweet girl looks at your child, your son. Or what a given perfumer does with iris.
It’s all here.
:)
By the way, isn’t it cool how thoughtful everybody is being about this? (Big smile and waves to all…)
Coltrane…My Favorite Things…perfect!
I am a sieve-and-retain experimental type. Generally I go through life cherishing the best of the old but also looking for the best of the new. By old I mean what I have experienced so far, so not all new is new-new, if that makes any sense. I try to do this with an open mind and manageable expectations, although it is hard not to crave to be amazed/moved/touched once you have experienced it. Sometime you are left with a gold nugget in the sieve, but much pleasure is also in the filtering.
I’m really perfectly happy with all my vintage perfumes – yes, maybe I am living in the olfactory past, but it’s a past that suits me and makes me happy! And I agree that every once in a while something really gorgeous and brand new comes along to augment the collection so it’s worth keeping on the look-out (although given the “nothing new under the sun” argument, is it always going to be “ooh and it reminds me of….xxxxx?)
So succinctly put. To echo carmencanada, someone (can’t remember who) said that as there is a finite number of notes in music, it is not surprising that so many tunes sound like others; there are only so many ways of putting them in different orders, and inevitably replication happens. I guess it’s the same with perfume; creators increasingly use stranger elements to perk up our jaded palates, but really there is nothing new under the sun. And maybe we enthusiasts have sniffed ourselves out a bit!
But I haven’t entirely given up, and was pleasantly surprised by Pierre Guillaume’s Ilang Ivohibe. I don’t think this was something I’d have tried ordinarily, but the lovely person at Les Senteurs thought I would like it, and she was right. It starts off with a lovely citrus burst (almost like lime – wish that it lasted!) and dries down to vanilla-y, white flowery woodiness. I thought it different from the crowd and enjoy wearing it. And I bet someone is at this moment thinking “But it smells just like …”!
Double ditto to what Carter says – 1st comment. I find so much of the new stuff disappointing. I know the synthetic components are necessary to perfumes cos they round out, add depth etc etc – but too many new releases just smell like chemical soups to me and unfortunately make me nauseous after a while – no matter how good they start out. March did a post on beautiful frags a while back and that is the stage that I am at. I just want the fragrance to lift me, inspire me and make me feel deliciously beautiful and smell “real”. Oh and vintage. Some of the vintage stuff brings tears to my eyes it is so well done. Sigh . . . . .
Patty, honey, you *can’t* smell each perfume as though it were something new: very few of them *are*. We’ve all discussed this a million times, but the pace is so frantic that it’s almost impossible for perfumers to come up with something novel and exciting, whether for mainstream or niche.
And you’ve been going down the blogging road for quite a while now: blogger fatigue syndrome is bound to hit every once in a while. We’re exposed to much more new stuff that just about anyone, plus we have to find things to write about that stuff! There’s a point when it starts becoming more of a chore than anything, feeding the blog… Exactly like it becomes a chore for perfumers to feed the launch machine.
But… I was just thinking yesterday that I’m lucky enough to have fallen in love with a couple of new things so far this year, and that I’ve got samples of at least five perfumes coming out this fall that I think are winners. So that heart’s still out there beating! (somehow the image is disturbing in a David Lynch kind of way…)
I go through life *expecting* nothing to clang my gong, so, when something does, it’s a wonderful bolt out of the blue. Perhaps this is the opposite of opening one’s heart, but I don’t think so. I just feel very grateful that I already possess many glorious perfumes, all of which are very carefully chosen. I only wear what I really love, and because I keep only those fragrances that I consider to be great and right for me, I am genuinely surprised and thrilled when something new (or just new to me) comes along and rings that bell.
That sounds really preachy and snotty, and I didn’t mean it that way at all. I just mean that I just don’t expect the exceptional to come along very often, and I think that’s about right. When something brilliant hits, it’s a big deal. So I collect the ones that are my idea of great, and am very excited on those rare occasions when some new discovery manages to inspire awe and adoration.
It seems like this is the point every year where I also start to worry about the state of the fragrant union. It really has more to do with my short attention span theatre that is my mind. I’ve already forgotten the really amazing fragrances from the first part of the year and August brings that lull before the fall/holiday releases start to find their way to my nose. The one thing I always know is come January I have trouble keeping to a list of 25 of my favorite new releases and a few get cut. There are fragrant delights glore just as the weather begins to cool a bit.
The best I can offer is the most unique perfume I have: a bespoke/custom Parfumerie Generale called “Cuir Santalion”. It’s perhaps best described as an associate at the PG boutique in France put it: “a musk-leather, with some gasoline background.” If so, e-mail me your address!
PS: So excited; this is the first time I’m the “first responder”.. Yay!