Saturday, January 15, 2011

SOTD: Bad Tester! No Biscuit!

I've mentioned the perfume shop at the San Francisco airport. Well, I called it a perfume shop; they call themselves a pharmacy, and, sadly, they seem to be shifting their focus a bit more in the pharmacy direction. There was no more Lorenzo Villoresi, less perfume focus at the entrance, and more focus on unexciting, Perfectly Nice brands in the perfumes that were still displayed.

But they still had Ineke, so I tried Field Notes From Paris on one arm, based on vague positive memories. Then I found a cologne that promised saffron and cedar, so of course I had to spray that on the other arm. If I'd noticed the name, I might have veered away, but by the time I saw the phrase, "Liquid Magnetism", I was already wearing it.

Liquid Magnetism was nicely cedarish, and then I lost track of it, because I think that something very, very bad had happened to the Field Notes From Paris tester. After three hours of slowly growing unpleasantness, followed by an attempt to wash it off with bar soap, dish soap, and then cooking oil and dish soap, I was ready to conclude that I just fervently hated the thing. But I sat down to write this post and re-read my comments after the last test. There's no way that the persistent fumes that are still giving me a headache are the perfume that I was discussing in that post.

Next time I'm in, I may point out that storage above hot lights may not be the best thing for a tester. Ineke wasn't toasting above that broiler today, but other bottles were, so that's my best guess for what happened.

Image: By Hemingray. Wikimedia Commons.

7 comments:

  1. Thanks for the post, we'll contact Jian at SFO and replace the tester. Bill at INeKE.

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  2. I've often thought that perfume testers at airports are unreliable. I know that I'm not at my best under those airless brightly-lit conditions either;-)

    cheerio, Anna in Edinburgh

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  3. Hey, Bill! Man, you're speedy! Very impressive.

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  4. Yo, Anna! Yeah, I so often test from samples that I forget that testers have a harder life. (I guess samples can have a hard life, too, but at least they spend much of it in the dark.)

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  5. A new tester can't go amiss, and maybe that was your problem in this instance. For what it is worth, I tried Field Notes in Paris with Wordbird and Potiron in Basel last year and it was simply wrong on me in a way that I would struggle to articulate now, but "slowly growing unpleasantness" was definitely involved. When an orange scent in particularly is not nice, it can be distinctly horrid.

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  6. Yo, Vanessa! Hmmm, that's worrying. Though I do remember (and documented) a very positive impression of that scent the first time I wore it, so I'm pretty sure I like it, when tested from a fresh tester. :) I suppose I should break down and send off for the sample set.

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