Scent Week, and a Swap

I wanted to do a quick response to the Signature Scent Week comments, but first we have an important announcement:

We’re going to play another ridiculous Posse reindeer game next week, a kind of free-form scent swap. Why?  Well, a) because I had so much fun with the Scent Challenge, and b) because people have asked for a swap since forever and c) because I’m interested in the social-experiment aspect of it.  I’ll spell it out in detail next Wednesday – it’s open to all, and will take place over the US Thanksgiving weekend, with plenty of time for checking in whenever you resurface from your turkey-and-pie-induced comas.  Over five or six days you’ll be checking your Facebook, email, etc., right?  Even if you have to borrow Aunt Edna’s dial-up to do it.

I’m hoping we have a massive swap with minimal tears shed and then we can do a follow-up post where people report in on what they got.

What you need to do now is start rootling through your collections for those crummy unloved misbegotten and less than perfect-for-you bottles you’ve amassed that are sitting around gathering dust and taking up valuable shelf space. You know — those unsniffed splurges from eBay and TJ Maxx, stuff you’ve outgrown, scents you might have purchased on a whim at the mall while jacked up on pain meds from your dental work, etc.  We’re going to do a big ol’ swap – part random social experiment, part palate-cleansing, part pre-holiday re-gifting and (I hope) mostly silly fun.  Start making a pile.  Don’t forget to look under the bed or in the guest bathroom cabinet or wherever you hide the stuff you don’t wear.

All right, the Signature Scent week wrapup.

First off, the thing that shocked me was how many of you wound up, like me, partly (or almost entirely) anosmic to whichever scent you picked.  I think this was particularly surprising for all of us who picked a big scent, and more support for the theory that people douse themselves in Giorgio, Light Blue and White Diamonds in part because they just can’t smell it any more if they wear it every day.  I still haven’t completely recovered my ability to smell SL Fleurs d’Oranger, which of course perversely makes me want to wear it, so I’ve tucked it away for the time being to everyone’s relief.  The informal consensus was that three days of the same scent was about right, and any more was either tedious or risky in terms of potential anosmia.

Second, I was happy to read numerous reports from those of you who got to enjoy the drydown of your scents.  I’m guilty as sin on this one – either I’m wearing several scents at once, or after an hour or two I’ve moved on to something else.  But are you ever really going to revel in the gorgeous drydown of Bois des Iles if you can’t spend a single day wearing just that?  I am for sure not the Queen of Discipline, but experiencing the scent in its entirety and not just gorging over and over on the top notes was a nice change.  As was, for a few days, having no decision to make about which scent to wear.  This is an experiment I plan to repeat.

Finally, kudos to those of you who made it all the way through, even if you skipped a day of wearing, and hugs of peace to those of you who didn’t.  Also lol at all the folks who basically went screaming in the other scent-direction after the week was up (zingy citrus after a week of heavy musk or big-shouldered floral.)  I’ve spent the last few days test-driving some samples (of course) and wearing YSL Cinema, I find it oddly comforting in small doses.  I can never decide whether Cinema’s gorgeous or kind of trashy.  Maybe it’s both?  I bet you have a scent like that.