Thursday, January 16, 2014

Perfume: Pretty Little Things


I read Victoria-at-EauMG's review of Dawn Spencer Hurwitz's The Beat Look, one of the perfumes in the YSL Retrospective Collection for the Denver. Within an hour I had ordered the coffret, containing 5ml mini bottles for each of the scents in the collection. It just arrived today. Yay!

This is not a review; I haven't properly worn any of the scents, though I did sniff each bottle, and responded with a different delighted "ooh" for each one. Nor is it a call for an analysis of Victoria's hypnotic powers.

I'm just musing about minis. I've been buying fewer full-size bottles and fewer samples; it appears that a tiny jewel-like manufacturer's (or artisan's) mini bottle is exactly what I want. Luckily, the independent and artisan perfumers seem to be particularly reliable about offering minis. I say luckily because the independent and artisan perfumers are where I want my money to go. That's part of the reason for fewer samples--if I regret a blind buy, I'm far less annoyed if my money is supporting a perfumer who is making glorious things.

And there's something delightful about storing an entire perfume collection, actual bottles, however small, in a jewelry-box-sized drawer. See down there? That's twenty-one bottles in that little drawer, along with bracelets and a bottle cap for scale. Imagine the collection that I could store in a larger container such as, say, a shoebox.


Of course, none of this would work if I were a lavish perfume wearer. But I'm not--I like to dab a little on, enjoy it for three or four hours, and I'm perfectly content if it fades away after that and if no one else can smell it. Perfume is more like food, for me, than like clothes--it's for my senses and no one else's. That seems to be increasingly true as I grow more interested in actual clothes.

Er.

I feel that this post deserves an actual conclusion, but none is coming to mind. Yay minis. That's about it.

Images: Mine.

8 comments:

  1. I prefer spraying perfumes (unless they are extraits) - and that is the only reason I haven't got that cofret. I like three of the five a lot (and do not mind the other two) but I won't enoy them as much from the splash bottle.
    I like that more and more houses offer perfumes in smallet bottles: I think it's the right way to go. I wouldn't mind paying 1.5, even 2 times more per ml for a small bottle since I too prefer "the full package."

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  2. Yaay!
    And those are Dawn's minis! :)

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  3. Yo, Undina! Yes, I'm just fine paying far more per ml--it's especiallly not-an-issue in my case because I (1) will never use up a large bottle and (2) am too Postal Regulation Phobic to sell any of it away if I have to mail it. So that extra perfume doesn't do me any good.

    Increasingly, I prefer dabbing, though I'm not sure why. I don't prefer it so much that I decant to dab, but I definitely don't object to splash bottles.

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  4. Howdy, Ines! Aren't they so pretty? I dunno why I love tiny things so much.

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  5. I too love minis. They are so cute, and I often don't need any more than that amount of a scent.

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  6. Yes! So pretty, and when you can clutch four of them in one hand, how can anyone call you a glutton?

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  7. I love mini perfume bottles, they are tiny works of arts, bijouxs of the perfumery world. :) I know what you mean about dabbing something on just to enjoy it, even if no one else smells it.

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  8. Hey, Lian! Yes, they are so pretty. I'm still vaguely disconcerted that I'm interested in anything beyond the scent, but there it is.

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