Marine Layer

Posse!  ‘Lah-di-dah, ’tis Autumn’.  And this year Autumn happened with a quickness.  After several weeks of 80s-90s a torrential (and VERY COLD) rain plunged down … and suddenly we’re in low 40s and, if we’re lucky, high 60s. This week we’re supposed to go back up to mid-high 70s… but TOO LATE! The damage is done 🙁

(And this is also #Blame Tom (yet again!  LOVE YOU! 😉 with all his talk about beachy/marine scents.)

But we’re also not in Full Autumn just yet, either.  Rather it’s that transitional time, when the nights are foggy and I get a full pail of dew each morning.   This is our version of Marine Layer – that foggy, wet, chilly atmosphere that heralds the seasonal shift along marine coasts.  My favorites for this season are the North Sea and the Brittany coast, both of which I find wildly romantic in that Heathcliff & Cathy way (yes, I know that’s the Yorkshire moors but the food is better in Brittany) – all that walking through the bracken, sitting at the window of an isolated cottage on a seaside bluff, awaiting your (possibly illicit but definitely unsuitable) lover to crest the craggy hilltop with his raven-black hair shot with silver and his beautiful, craggy face creased in thought.  Is he thinking about leaving you?  Or is he thinking of new and delightful ways to delight you?

Yeah.  That.

That romantic fantasy only happens in this transitional season, when you can wear a fisherman’s knit sweater without wishing you’d thrown a heavy jacket atop it.  It’s the season for fleece wraps (wool is fabulous but itchy).

And it’s the only time of year I can wear my beautiful Ambra Grisea by I Profumi di Firenze, which is a soft, marine-floral-heather scent (and it has the added romance of being Brigadoon-like:  in the 10?+ years I’ve owned it I have never, ever seen another bottle of it – ever.  I goog it every now and again (usually around this time of year) and … :: crickets::.  Nothing.   Not on the Firenze site.  Not even on Fragrantica!  Goog AI tells me it doesn’t exist) Honestly, if I didn’t have a bottle I would think I’d imagined it.  But nope!  Here it is! 

Because of the specific nature (the ambergris/salt) of this perfume and my own weirdness I can only wear it if I’m in Autumn clothing – yesterday was perfect: double hoodies (I run VERY cold) and a light pair of gloves in the pocket, long pants, etc.  Today is 75F so… alas, no.  But it’ll wait in the window of that cottage until the perfect weather arrives.. again.  It really is romantic, in that brooding Laurence Olivier way that’s best experienced in cooler weather.  But, like Brigadoon, the time to wear it is specific – and very fleeting.  Which is also very romantic.

Obviously I’m big on Romance in Autumn.  It’s even better if there’s a hint of doloroso in the air.  sigh.  I really need to get over myself.

Have any of you smelled this?  Do you own a bottle?  What’s your favorite Autumn location?

sooo many questions!  Lah-di-dah!