Once things settled down a bit, it occurred to me that a post about perfume choices during busy times might be worth writing. When there's limited time or energy or inclination to make a careful, considered choice based on my moods, what do I wear?
Parfumerie Generale L'Eau Rare Matale, that's what.
Oh, I wore one or two other things - if I look at my Twitter feed, I see that I wore Fou d'Absinthe on 3/25, for example, and I seem to remember wearing some thick floral on another day, and regretting it. But in general, lately, if I'm scented, it's with L'Eau Rare Matale. That was true in either home--from a decant in the one we moved out of, and from the original bottle in the one we're finally permanently living in.
So, why? What is it about L'Eau Rare Matale? Does this mean that if I ever went to a signature scent, this would be the one? Is that possible? Not No. 19, not Cristalle, not White Rose, not Un Lys, not Tubereuse Couture, but instead this biting, charred-wood, angry-tea scent?
Hmmm.
Now, I could argue that it's a mood thing. That when I'm busy and grumpy and rushing around, I want something sharp and bracing. But that ignores the fact that I've actually been finding L'Eau Rare Matale very comforting. It doesn't feel like a challenge, it feels like a friend. When I did take a moment to put on some perfume, I not only chose this one, I put on a lot of it, doubling or tripling my usual two sprays.
A side thought comes to me - I recently saw a reference to the Little Brown Dress Project, a project where a woman made a brown dress, and wore it every single day for a year. I find myself comparing L'Eau Rare Matale to the brown dress. Both brown, both earthy and simple and lacking in frills and glitter, but also both with a distinctive style, and just a tiny bit of a "you wanna make something of it?" attitude. Maybe I should try wearing L'Eau Rare Matale for a year.
Very funny. It's just the lemon drops talking. But all the same, it's interesting that this, of all things, is my too-rushed-for-perfume perfume. I'll have to think it over some more.
Image: By Maylene Thyssen, Wikimedia Commons.
I hope I'm not presuming here...but I'm intrigued by the 'requesting permission to move' part of your most recent posts (fwiw I am thrilled for you that you received said permission). I'm assuming one of you is military? Or else you work in a top-secret lab! Or you're a secret agent!
ReplyDeleteIn any case, I've amused myself here and there imagining what, other than military, could require 'permission'. I compiled a fun list of sane/insane possibilities.
I've been doing a bit of screwball speculation too! I ended up with the fall back position of "permission to work from home", but I thought you sometimes/usually did that anyway, and only occasionally visited an office in the conventional sense of the term?
ReplyDeleteMy own busy busy scent appears to be nothing. I must improve on that with my own brown dress equivalent. Yet how could you wear one of those all year round? I would struggle to find unladdered tights on such a relentlessly recurring basis. Especially as I recently only managed to score one pair of Cocoa by Calvin Klein in my recent hosiery-buying sortie with ScentScelf!
Here we go...I knew I had seen something!
ReplyDelete"But recently, our Employers have agreed that, OK, we can live in the House and use the wonders of modern technology to communicate with them."
Though when you lived *nearer* Employers, you still operated mostly from home, right?
Hey, Musette! Hee. :) No, I'm nothing that exciting. The permission was about moving far away from the workplace.
ReplyDeleteYo, Vanessa! Yes, indeed. But the Employers felt that working at home twenty minutes away from the workplace and working at home six hours away from the workplace were not precisely the same thing, and that therefore the second one required permission.
ReplyDeleteOn the brown dress, judging from the website, not that many tights were worn. There are pictures of her wearing it over jeans, and over long knee socks, and so on. I find myself really wanting a slide show of all 365 days, but if she did that, it's not on the website.