Sorting Through My Perfumes
a canary of a personal sensualist era
I recently moved and had to reassemble my beloved Trinket Trove, the place where I keep my tchotchkes and knick knacks; a shelf of which is reserved for my assortment of half-empty perfume bottles and many perfume samples nestled safely in antique glass.
I feel like I’ve been exposed to more online marketing and conversation around fragrance than before1. Perhaps it’s the natural progression in the life of a maturing beauty product consumer. If maturing means having more disposable income to spend and having more life experience to prioritize “refining your taste” with higher quality products. One can only care about lip gloss and eyeshadow palettes for so long.
On my perfume shelf …
Glossier You (worn mostly 2019 through 2021)
I wasn’t a teenager during my Glossier You days but smelling it now makes me feel younger and smaller. Naive even. I watched the bottle dwindle down over the years and now I’m hesitant to wear it. Not just because it’s the original (superior) formula, but because the Glossier days feel like a lifetime ago. I’m not that girl anymore and I should set aside talcy things. But it’s still iconic for a reason.
Dedcool Fragrance 03 (worn Spring- Fall 2021)
During the pandemic, I wasn’t wearing anything other than a mask. Maybe a scented lotion to try and feel like a real person and to confirm that I didn’t lose my sense of smell to COVID. When I finally started wearing perfume again the following spring, I wanted something green and fresh to breathe life into a new and uncertain chapter.
Room 1015 - Cherry Punk (winter 2022)
Eauso Vert - Fruto Oscuro (summer 2024)
2024 has brought about a shift in my consumer behavior as I prescribe to that Gen-Z stereotype of caring more about a brand’s identity and social impact than a celebrity endorsement, etc… The price of these boutique bottles demand that I take my time in making a decision. That’s where the samples comes in.
Samples, samples, samples!
Samples of Odile and Odette by Gumamina (worn every time I fall into my yearly Swan-Lake-Russian-Literature-Winter mood)
Bull’s Blood by Imaginary Authors because it’s so carnal.
Byredo Samples a coworker brought me, only 2 of which have left an impression (both in terms of wear and appeal).
Viral, intriguing .5 fl oz sample fragrances I collect in flash sales because I haven’t gotten over my commitment issues to splurge on a full bottle.
Nemat Perfume Oils are tucked in all of my purses and bags, I like to apply a touch behind my ears. These perfume oils have been with me since high school.
My boyfriend’s travel size Tom Ford Tobacco Vanille that I’m wearing as I write this. I’m keeping custody of the roller because he has no reason smelling like that out in the world unless he’s out with me!
I’m testing and sampling and cataloging in an attempt to create shortcuts in my future brain for when nostalgia strikes and stabs. I leave the house and don’t know what social function or dinner date will end up being significant in my memory. But if I wear the same perfume during a season of my life, it can serve as an annotation. Scents are mysterious, personal, and hard to describe, which makes the conversation around what a perfume smells like hilarious and the science behind scent fascinating. Encountering a certain cologne in the wild catapults me back years into a different mindset. I am trying to control associations because maybe the bones of my memory is the only part of the future I can dictate. When I ask my friends what they’re currently wearing, their selection makes perfect sense - “That’s so you!” It’s another valuable piece in the journey to knowing and caring about someone.
I thought I wasn’t easily influenced to make social media based purchases but clearly I’m a sucker for marketing in the form of moodboards, niche descriptors, and specific playlists. It’s fun trying to qualify vibes while sampling scents and pouring over PerfumeTok/PerfumeTwitter. I want to smell like an overripe orange. I want to smell like a burning country estate. I want to smell like a velvet theater seat from a time when patrons smoked indoors. I want to walk past someone on the sidewalk and have them do a double-take. I want to leave my mark when I borrow clothes from friends. It’s clichéd! This wanting to be perceived a certain way, thinking you’re unique when there’s nothing that unique about a curation of goods. But I don’t mind being like other girls so long as those other girls have good taste.
All this is a hobbyist, consumerist preamble to say I need to spend more time in my body. Letting the soft animal of my body love what it loves like Mary Oliver said. I’m justifying my financially questionable purchases by telling myself that perfumes have helped achieve the impossible and ground me back into my literal skin. What’s it called when you spend years focusing on being rational, logical, and intellectual only to wake up one day and find that you’ve abandoned a whole other side of the human experience? Asking for a friend…
Flirting with a new sensualist era
IG meme: @venusion.orchid (Kahlo, Lispector (who rocked my world), Nin, Wilde, Bacon)
I’ve been walking more without earphones (constantly scared of my thoughts and that one of the clipboard people will pounce on me). This past summer, I preferred landscaping during the warmest parts of the day and sweating into the dirt. I’ve been trying to be more consistent in my Lazy Girl Workouts (though you will never catch me running) and I like having that dull muscular ache the day after. I’ve been trying to trick myself into becoming one of those Healthy People for years but falling down a health + wellness spiral is less rewarding than browsing and screenshotting Fragnatica. I’m getting older and I don’t think I can be the version of myself that I want to be if I'm fatigued and if my body is falling apart… also I have eczema.
(Except I am Catholic2)
In the past, I’ve regarded my Body to be separate from my Self (chat, is this heresy?). Mind over matter or whatever. It’s easier to compartmentalize than to take accountability for everything inside me being connected and tangled and cannibalizing itself. I minimized everything and immediately jumped to, “It’s not real, it’s just how I feel” only to come to the delayed realization that (breaking news) feelings might be real, too? Sometimes I get so lost deep inside my thought processes and spirals that I forget I am a person, not a collection of abstract concepts and motifs. “Touch grass” and all its offshoot memes has helped me more than any other pseudo-therapy catchphrase has. Maybe I need to focus on living in the world and not in my head. Death to self by decentering the self. I’m trying to find a balance instead of fluctuating between a tempting hyper-sensualism and whatever its opposite is. “Think less” unfortunately for everyone, I simply cannot! But indulging in a delicious meal al fresco helps.
That James Baldwin quote has been making the rounds on the Internet in light of recent events:
To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread. It will be a great day for America, incidentally, when we begin to eat bread again, instead of the blasphemous and tasteless foam rubber that we have substituted for it. And I am not being frivolous now, either. Something very sinister happens to the people of a country when they begin to distrust their own reactions as deeply as they do here, and become as joyless as they have become.
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
It feels increasingly political to claim your body and your experiences for you and not for some Corporation/Government/Landlord. And it’s getting increasingly harder to keep a sense of whimsy, community, and joie de vivre alive, which makes it all the more defiant and necessary.3 We know our time on Earth and our time with each other is fleeting, why wouldn’t we experience what life has to offer together? I don’t think it’s as black and white as either subscribing to the Feeling Camp of Sensualists or the Thinking Camp of Ascetics. Both are needed. And like my favorite adage goes, “life is for living”.
Anyways, send perfume recs.
I do like this episode of Nymphet Alumni’s breakdown of the social media conversation around the fragrance industry.
“Aren’t sensualism and Catholicism contradictory philosophies?” Hush!
For my next trick, I will use obtuse philosophical arguments to convince my friends to go on vacations with me.