Suggestible Me

Today we welcome longtime Posse reader Sarah P as a guest poster… Sarah lives in Switzerland but is from the U.S.

Windy Day, 1950s fashion, pinterest.

I have a mirrored tray crowded with perfumes on my bureau top. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning I lie there waiting for one to call to me. When one rises to the fore, floating faster and higher than the cloud of notes that clamber for attention, I’m probably not actually smelling it. My nose is not that good. But if I’m patient and tuned into the scents drifting by, one will take shape in my mind’s nose. Suddenly it’s there, fully formed and… Bam… that’s the one I’ll wear today.

On these cold, but sunny March mornings the perfume that beats out all the others is always Baghari by Roger Piguet. Originally created by Francis Fabron in 1950, the exhilarating breeze of aldehyde plus vanilla gives it a definite new car smell surely reminiscent of that heady era of big, faster-than-ever-before cars with blissfully easy automatic transitions. The perfume was reorchestrated in 2006 and the notes that Piguet lists for it are: rose, jasmine, iris, fresh citrus, powdery amber and vanilla. It is categorized as a soft oriental and The Perfume Guide calls it an orange chypre. Out of all of these descriptions, the “powdery” amber is key. Like it or not, this is a baby powder scent and I find it very similar to the Pinaud Clubman talc featuring the dapper dandy in a top hat leaning on his cane on the green can that is used in barber shops to dust the back of men’s necks after their trim. Perfect for sunny, windy cold days in early spring.

I don’t wear Baghari on any other kind of day in fact. It sits on my tray waiting for this kind of weather and a certain ‘let’s make the best of it’ mood that comes over me in March. I need a perfume that can hold its own against the wind and the chill without knocking anyone over and for that Baghari suits perfectly.

I think we all have scents that call out to us in certain kinds of weather. Sometimes I play against this and pick something completely out of line with what’s going on outside the window (perhaps Fracas, another Piguet) in the heavy humidity of summer. But Baghari for me is one that never budges from its early spring rotation. It brings a bit of bracing joy to neither here nor there time of the year.

Do you have any perfumes that only work for you in certain weather?