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.

Haiku: A Celebration of FedEx

Perfume is en route.
Packages? Three. Guilt? No, none.
Inexplicable.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Rambling: Free associating again

So I'm realizing another reason why the perfume blogging comes and goes. I have four states:

• Interested in perfume but not feeling verbal.
• Feeling verbal but not interested in perfume.
• Not feeling verbal and not interested in perfume.
• Interested in perfume and feeling verbal.

Perfume blogging has to wait for the fourth type of moment. Well, it doesn't "have to". If I had a job and punched a timecard for this, I could spit out words whether I felt like it or not. But I don't. So I don't.

This is apparently all to explain why that brief run of SOTD posts promptly hiccuped and stopped. Despite having dozens of samples waiting for attention, I'm not in the mood for anything challenging right now.

Instead, lately I'm wearing Thymes Agave Nectar, aka "grapefruit"--I don't know why they bother to claim any other notes for this fragrance. Well, at least in the lotion. The cologne does have a stray spicy note that isn't pure grapefruit, which is why I hesitated to buy it, but this weekend I was out and about and had just bought a lovely length of silk matka that I didn't need, so I rounded off the afternoon by buying a bottle of cologne that I didn't need.

Really, has anyone ever needed either silk matka or cologne? Oh, and I left out the five yards of pale-grass-green bias silk ribbon that I bought to go with the maize-yellow silk in a yet to be determined garment. Silk matka is coarse-woven, fairly heavy and not terribly drapey--not flat-out crisp, but it doesn't have that liquid collapsing thing going like, say, wool crepe does. It would work fine in all sorts of nice fitted garments that I don't yet have the skills to make.

I bought the silk because I love the color and I've been staring at it in the store for months, but I suspect that now that it's joined the stash, it's hearing all sorts of stories about how long it's going to have to wait to become a real garment. Rather like the stories told by the toys in Holly and Ivy, the ones that are waiting and waiting on the toy-store shelves to see if they'll be given to a child for Christmas.

Have you read Holly and Ivy? It's a children's book by Rumer Godden, and I suspect I've mentioned more than once that Rumer Godden's children's books are my favorite books in the world. It's about a little girl who wants a home, and a doll who wants a little girl, and that all sounds horribly sentimental and "awwwwwwww..." but you know I'm not the awww type, right? Trust me and try to read a copy. Except, sadly, the only edition in print is, I believe, missing the Adrienne Adams illustrations, and you really need those illustrations.

It occurs to me that the scene where Ivy (the little girl) falls asleep in the flour sacks against the warm wall of the bakery is not unlike the scene where Alys falls asleeep in the warmly decaying dung heap in Karen Cushman's The Midwife's Apprentice. As you might guess from the phrase "dung heap", The Midwife's Apprentice is a good deal further away from "awwww..." than Holly and Ivy, but they're both about people fighting for a place in the world. Ivy wants love, though she wouldn't put it that way; Alys doesn't know enough to want that.

Interestingly, while I'm not interested in wearing challenging perfume lately, I am interested in sorting and categorizing it. I sent off for a big glob of decanting supplies, including a bunch of baggies, and I just finished sorting my samples into baggies within baggies. (The Serge Lutens baggie shares the larger S->Z baggie with several other baggies, for example.)

And I'm making up perfume samples for friends. Having finally accepted that I may never get over Postal Regulation Phobia, I have increased my efforts to inflict perfume on folks in town. This means smelling some perfumes that I haven't smelled lately.

I've noticed that my tolerance for prickly incense is particularly low right now--for example, I found Chergui and, as previously noted, Tobacco Vanille, quite upalatable. I made the mistake of wearing something incenseish on the back of my neck, and now all of my sweaters need dry cleaning before they stop annoying me. (Neck to sweater to coat to next sweater the next day...argh!) I assume that my taste for this category of notes will return, but right now I can't imagine it.

On the other hand, Yosh Stargazer (the oil; I see that now there's an eau de parfum) made me want to fall over and take a long nap with my nose on my wrist. That was surprising, because there's a very strong clean note, almost soapy, about it. On the other hand, I love the soapy note in Balmain Ivoire, and in the oil version of Jo Malone White Jasmine & Mint, so... hm. I always assume that "soapy" means "white musk", but maybe there's another completely different note that also has the soapy vibe.

That is all.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Perfume: Turin and Sanchez and triage

Are we all preparing for hibernation, with our credit cards?

OK, forget "we"--am I?

Ever since the temperatures started to turn, I've wanted to buy things. Socks. Scarves. Patterns. Fabric. Fancy canned goods. Hats. Books. Chocolate. Garden tools. Of course, perfume. I've mostly resisted--I keep emptying my online shopping carts into ever-growng "save for later" lists--but the urge is there.

It's logical to have an instinct to fatten up before retreating to the cave for cold weather, but does it make sense for that instinct to extend to snatching up non-edible pretty things? Am I making up for missing sunshine-serotonin with shopping-serotonin--or, since I'm not buying much, browsing-serotonin?

I suppose I am shopping against famine, when I'm shopping for perfume. In a way. In this madly-reformulating world, you really can't count on any perfume being what it was when you last heard someone describe it. I've been reading the Turin/Sanchez Little Book, and eagerly reading the little added paragraphs that tell me whether the perfume was still decent in 2011--but that was 2011. We're nearly at the end of 2012. That leaves a year or more for those perfumes to have been destroyed, and the regulating bodies have a strong and dedicated perfume-destroying work ethic. What should I have bought in 2011? What should I buy now?

OK, there is no "should". Looking back to my recent post about hoarding and choosing to be in control of the stuff, it's not as if I really need any perfume. At all. Even one bottle. If I never smell the classic vintage greats, well, I'll live.

But it is exciting that I have vintage Diorella parfum on my arm. Both arms, one dab each. From a sample--I didn't spring for a bottle or even a sizable decant. I'm still absorbing the experience. First it was an OhMyGod vintage blast that I simultaneously wanted to embrace and flee from. And then a sweet smooth odd thing that I wanted more of--I almost went on eBay to pay for a bottle then. Right now it's a gorgeously self-conscious powdery ladylike. I'm sure that it will keep developing.

"Diorella" is still sold, but is it any good? I could try to get a sample. I could try to sniff it somewhere. But will the sample be the same stuff that's in the bottle? Will one or the other be a different reformulation generation? If I take fifteen minutes to decide, will it have changed again?

I tried a sample of Robert Piguet Bandit and fell in love; I bought a bottle and it wasn't the same stuff at all. The sample was a sweaty cat in the sun; the bottle was a clean ladylike leather purse. I've been tempted to buy other Piguet fragrances. I like Fracas, I like Cravache--but, do I? I like the samples. The specific samples that I have. That offers no assurance whatsoever that I'll like the bottle.

Is this level of complete distrust really a good way to sell a product? I realize that some folks in the industry might prefer that we just admire the pretty bottle and obediently buy it--for all I know, maybe they don't really care if we ever wear the stuff. Maybe they'd rather we didn't. Maybe in their eyes, perfume is like those books with the pretty leather bindings that decorators buy by the foot, and they're a little startled and dismayed if we try to actually read them. Er, smell them. I return to edit this because I realize that yes, yes, there are many individuals in the industry who care very much about their perfume. But when the behavior gets up to the large-corporation level, that's not so much what it feels like.

I feel the urge to gobble up all the fading perfumes before they're gone. But which ones? What's most urgent? What are my triage rules?

Do I start with the ones that can still be bought new at a fairly modest price at the discounters, avoiding the vintage price premiim? Is Diorella still good? Miss Balmain? Jolie Madame? Shalimar? The Little Book says that Shalimar has actually improved, but that was 2011; has it been pulled over and cited for excessive artistic merit between then and now? How about Azuree? Poison? Missoni? White Linen? I've never smelled most of them; am I too late?

Or do I chase the niche bottles that I've craved for months or years, before they're gone? Do I get a bottle or a decant of Douce Amere? Or neither? What about Chene, that rummy thing that I one hated and then abruptly fell in love with? Is it still love? Which of Nicolai's work am I too late to catch? Do I really want Lann-Ael? Will I regret Bois Blond when it's gone?

They're killing birch tar. I love birch tar. Is it too late to buy Patchouli 24? Is Eau de Fier gone forever? I have Chanel Cuir de Russie; will that do the job?

What about the expensive designer houses? Are the Chanel Exclusifs still any good? I secured my No. 5, both EDT and parfum, but what about 18 and 22 and 31 Rue de Cambon and all those Chanels that don't even have numbers in their names? Will I run out of Osmanthe Yunnan? I have two Discovery Set bottles, and for almost any other fragrance that would be plenty, but a nice fog of Osmanthe Yunnan requires a good four or five sprays.

Or do I--and, yes, this is what I should do, but that doesn't mean I will--save my money for the small artisan perfumers? Their perfumes go away, too, but the perfumer has a face, and they're absolutely not selling books-by-the-foot. They care if you smell it and wear it and love it. That would be the sensible thing, and somehow it feels vaguely non-hoarding as well--forget the past, and pick and choose, non-urgently, among the present, even as bits of the present slides gently into the past.

Hmmm.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Indult Tihota

Hmm.

See, when I tried Indult Tihota--from a sample--I loved it. Adored it. Wanted it. Longed for it, and stared endlessly at its page on LuckyScent. But I just couldn't quite get myself to pay the price for a bottle. And then its limited-edition self went away, and that was that for a full bottle.

And I thought about it and thought about it and finally decided that before it vanishes from the decant market too, I'd better buy myself some. I did, a nice little 5ml sprayer for an alarming price. It came today. I was delighted. I sprayed some on.

I... um... am not so sure that I like it any more.

I want to be clear, there's nothing wrong with the decant. It's the same sweet lovely vanilla that I loved back then. But back then, I was early in my perfume obsession, and I still liked the lovely, the simple, the pure and beautiful. I'm pretty much over that now; I like things with claws or mottled skin or a good threatening growl.

I'm not sorry I bought it. I'm sure that there will be comfort-scent days when I'm delighted to reach for it. But it is a lesson in just how much I've changed--and in the need to re-sample. The alarming price of the decant was just about the right price and the right number of milliliters for how much I like this scent now; if I'd paid the original $250 full-bottle price, or more, I'd be a bit cranky.

But given my new issue with the beautiful, I'm a little worried about my future relationship with Un Lys. I'd better wear it tomorrow and see how it goes.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Perfume: Quick Chanel Sniffs

We're spending a few days at a hotel that's two minutes' walk from the downtown Portland Nordstrom's, which has a surprisingly good perfume department. It isn't, sadly, good enough to have many niche fragrances, except for Bond No. 9, and I have Issues with Bond No. 9. So when I drifted through, I spent my time sniffing Chanels.

No. 5 EDT: My main experience with No. 5 is my miniscule gift-set bottle of the parfum, which I perceive as strongly structured, smooth, and glowingly aldehydic for hours. The EDT, in contrast, dried down to something soft, powdery, and a little bit fruity, in less than an hour. I had expected the parfum and the EDT to be essentially the same thing, with different notes emphasized. But no; I'm perceiving them as fundamentally different.

No. 5 Eau Premiere, probably EDT: To my surprise, it's No. 5 Eau Premiere, smelled for the first time yesterday, that I see as a very closely-tied variant of the parfum. It started with a great deal of citrus, a bit more than I altogether approve of, but it dries down to the same firm architecture and glow that I get from the parfum. It still has, to me, a classic "old-lady" vibe, and I approve; nothing with No. 5's name should ever be mistaken for, say, a teen beach scent.

No. 19 Poudre, probably EDT: I love No. 19. (At least, I love the parfum.) I disapprove of flankers. So I was planning on hating this. But I found that I quite liked the top notes; they did have a family resemblance to No. 19, without doing anything to make me use the word "travesty". As it developed, it was oddly variable from sniff to sniff. Sometimes it had a good streak of green in the powder, making it a green comfort scent that I could like. Sometimes it was all retiring powdery boredom. I don't love it, but if I pretend that it doesn't carry the No. 19 name, I like its greener moments.

No. 22 EDT: Nordstrom's had Les Exclusifs testers! They told me that actually buying a bottle required a special order, but all the same, what are the odds of finding the testers? So I tried No. 22. (Why only one? All other sampling skin was already covered, that's why.) It wasn't at all what I expected--based on Luca Turin's review (I love his review of this one), I expected it to be sweet. It's not sweet, and I'm not getting the incense, and I'm not getting the white flowers. All I seem to be getting is a note that I perceive as one of the background notes in Chanel No. 5 parfum. This is a puzzlement; I'll need to try it again, with a nose not recently contaminated by any other perfume.

The dangerous result of this experiment is that I now plan to buy a .25 oz No. 5 parfum, and a 1 oz No. 5 EDT, in the not too distant future. I've mentioned my fear that I'll learn to love No. 5 after it's been reformulated out of existence; now that I am growing fond of it, I'm feeling all the more urgent.

Image: By Eric Pouhier. Wikimedia Commons.

Link: That Fume Scout Thing

So, I've created my little small list of links to information about brick-and-mortar perfume shopping. It's on this permanent page, and I figure I'll add a quick link post here when I update it.

Got more links? Send 'em! Please! Got your own lists of links? Send, them too! We may get a bit circular, but I never mind clicking a few times in the hope of new information.

Image: By Ed Uthman. Wikimedia Commons.

Link: In case you missed it (Basenotes thread about feminine perfume packaging)

I enjoyed this thread:

Stereotypical "Feminine" Bottles, Packaging: Irritating? Offensive? Humiliating?

and thought you folks might too, if you haven't already run across it.

Image: By tanakawho. Wikimedia Commons.

Proposal For All Perfume Freaks: Fume Scout. Or something like that.

Perfume can be hard to find. Not nearly as hard as pan-fried chicken, but hard all the same. It's especially hard when you're just traveling, and you didn't do your Googling ahead of time to find out that you should go to the right-hand back corner of that little salon between the pizza place and the paint store, to the one shelf where they keep the Carons, below the shampoo and above the nail polish.

The perfume freaks who live in that town know all about that shelf, and they're certainly not interested in hiding it--the more Caron that gets sold, the higher the odds that they'll add one more shelf and start selling some Guerlains. But they don't necessarily have an accepted way to share the knowledge. OK, yes, there are the appropriate threads in Basenotes, but, really, can information like this be disseminated in too many places? Of course not. I'd sky-write it if that were an option.

So I propose that we disseminate it, all of us perfume bloggers. Under some common phrase, string, meme, whatever, so that when you've bought your plane ticket, you can Google that phrase and find out where to get the perfume. I already have a post about buying perfume in Ashland, Oregon, one that's sadly out of date. I was sitting down to start updating it, when it occurred to me that we could all do this, and then came this post.

So, what do you think? Want to join in and write your own post or page about where to find perfume in your own area, or for that matter, any area where you have knowledge? We could all crosslink madly. And what's the phrase? Ideally, it would be something that doesn't produce a lot of Google clutter when searched. I just Googled the string:

"fume scout" perfume

and got precisely one hit. But I'm sure that there are dozens of other possibilities.

Of course, the "fume" part reminds me of the way that I suggested #fumechat and then vanished into the ether, but on the other hand it looks like #fumechat is rolling along (with the active help of people who, unlike me, are not slackers), so, hey! Maybe this could, too.

Opinions?

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Rambling: The Moratorium, Shopping, and My Brain

In February, I started the Perfume Moratorium. I was worried that my perfume experience was being consumed by the shopping end of the hobby--pricing, budgeting, filling and clearing online shopping carts. Dithering over buy decisions--is Heeley Cardinal redundant with Serge Noire? If I buy Din Dan will I have too many citrus perfumes? Would buying Tihota be grounds for having me committed? And budgeting decisions; I made the "one bottle per quarter" rule and promptly "borrowed" up to... is it just 2012?

I wanted to take the buying option off the table. I imagined six months of happy nibbling at the collection. I would wear neglected scents for days on end, and really get to know them. Empty vials would pile up as I worked through the sample backlog, savoring each scent without worrying about remembering them for a buying decision. My reviews would be uncontaminated with purchase dithering or budget whining. It would be a commerce-free creative scentopia!

Yeah. Not so much. I slacked off on the SOTD posts. I stopped reviewing perfume. My sample box went unopened for weeks at a time. I abandoned Basenotes. I kept reading perfume blogs, but mostly just to keep up with the bloggers' lives, rather than their perfumes. I stopped regularly wearing perfume.

And I didn't just stop perfume blogging. I slacked off on garden blogging, too. The fiction vignettes petered out. The random babbling about chocolate and fried things slowed down. My film festival posts were less extensive enthusiastic than last year. For a while, I wasn't doing much reading. My plant breeding and selection plans came to nothing.

Now, you could argue that all of that suggests a general lapse of creativity, maybe a low-key depression. That would make sense. But I don't think it's true. It feels as if perfume purchasing, perfume interest, and then all aspects of creativity, fell one after another like a series of dominoes.

And then the moratorium ended--I didn't buy much perfume, but the option to buy returned. And I started reading more. And posting more. And my interested in the garden perked up. And I started wearing more perfume. And I can feel the reviews bubbling up. All the dominoes popped back up, like Weebles.

My creative enthusiasms have always waxed and waned in bursts, triggered by nothing identifiable. For a few weeks or months I'm interested in everything, and then for a few more I'm interested in nothing at all. I don't like it, not one bit; I hate the "off" periods.

I demand an explanation. Or at least a theory.

So I Googled.

I found more than one article that assured me that shopping produces dopamine--and (bonus!) endorphins. Seeing something new and novel, finding a bargain, anticipating hunting down some new possession and dragging it home to the cave, feeds your reward center. That may be how shopping addiction happens. It's probably also behind the acquisition side of hoarding. Sadly for the shopping addicts and the hoarders, it's the anticipation that gives you the high--actually getting the item back to the cave does you no good at all.

Have I mentioned that I think that I have ADHD? Have I mentioned that ADHD is said to be a defect in the brain's reward center? And I've definitely mentioned that I have hoarder genes. I think that it's not entirely whacky to theorize that my brain might be particularly sensitive to dopamine levels.

And, of course, dopamine and endorphins are also associated with creativity.

So... you see the puzzle pieces of the theory? By declaring the moratorium, did I cut myself off from a highly effective method of self-medication? When I browse through LuckyScent et al with at least the possibility of making a purchase, does that feed my brain things that it needs?

Wait. Wait a minute. I just said this. I just said this. Five posts ago, I said "I have a hoarder id, and sometimes I need to feed it..."

That post and this post are saying the same thing, aren't they? Sure, that one was about bribing my brain so that it doesn't turn me into a hoarder, and this one is about feeding it for creativity, but it's the same food, and the same howling brain, isn't it?

Huh.

First Image: By Debbie Mc. Wikimedia Commons.
Second Image: By Quatar&Me. Wikimedia Commons.

Perfume: Window Shopping

My Perfumed Court and LuckyScent carts are empty. They expired. That never used to happen.

So what's going on these days? I see that Andy Tauer has some new perfumes. I see that Nathan Branch compares them, in a regretful sounding sort of way, to Orange Star. I liked Orange Star, but if the new perfumes go much further in the fresh modern direction, I can see that I might be a bit dubious about them. All the same, I want to smell them, especially Verdant.

Parfum de Nicolai's L'Eau Chic looks very interesting. Geranium, mint, lavender, sandalwood, chamomile, iris... ooh. Unfortunately, also white musk, not one of my favorite notes. On the other hand, the bath oil version of Jo Malone's White Jasmine & Mint has a distinctly soapy note, and it works there. I fell madly in love with at least one other Nicolai. (Number One? Yes, Number One.) So I need a sample.

I keep trying orange fragrances, searching for the perfect one, and Jardin de Poete looks interesting. The description promises orange and grapefruit and cassis, all scents that I love. Unfortunately, I have trouble imagining myself loving them all together, and Eau d'Italie has yet to completely win me over with any fragrance. But it's also worth a sample.

And the "if you like this" listing for Jardin de Poete included Din Dan. Din Dan... that one, I liked. Looking at my own review, I see that I perceived it as having enough complexity to maintain my interest. And I do love lemon. And while I'm shopping, what else is Lostmarch doing? I don't see anything awfully new, but Iroaz always looked interesting - "wild rose, grass, marine notes".

I've never yet so much as sniffed a By Kilian fragrance; I think that something about the packaging puts me off. But Sweet Redemption has orange, vanilla, and balsamic notes. Mmmm. Sample sample.

I was drawn to Fool For Love in a sort of gawking-at-a-car-accident sort of way. That pink bottle. That very, very pink bottle. And when I get to the detail page, with an even bigger picture of the pink bottle, I see "fruit punch accord". I'm frightened.

I never heard of Huitieme Art before, and I really dislike the bottles. I realize that an opaque bottle is good for the perfume, but, well, no. I clicked on one, just in case, and was fascinated by the description of Sucre d'Ebene -- brown sugar, witch hazel, and benzoin. Ooh. Another one combines immortelle and leather. Tonka, sandalwood, and verbena. Peach blossom and hay. Cassis and tomato leaves. Hmmm. Maybe I can get over the bottles.

Samples. I'm going to be ordering samples.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

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.

Perfume: The Candy Store

We were just in Vancouver, for a little under a day. I spent a little under an hour in The Perfume Shoppe.

Bwahahahaha.

I will now draw the veil over all budgetary offenses that may or may not have ensued.

Image: By Andreas Praefcke. Wikimedia Commons.

Compilation: Perfume in the San Francisco Bay Area

In a past post, I offered some information about where to find perfume in Ashland, Oregon. It occurred to me today that a similar post for the San Francisco Bay Area would be good, too.

This list primarily includes what I know of or have read pretty clearly - there may be perfectly obvious things left out. Please let me know if you know of something that should be added.

At Stanford Mall in Palo Alto:

• Wilkes Bashford, selling L'Artisan Parfumeur and Penhaligon.
• L'Occitane.
• Kiehl's.
• Bloomingdale's.
• Neiman Marcus.
• Nordstrom's.
• Sephora

In San Francisco, stores I've been in:

• Diptyque boutique on Maiden Lane. (Very close to Union Square.)
• Hermes boutique on Maiden Lane.
• Chanel boutique on Maiden Lane.
• Barney's at 77 O'Farrell Street, near Union Square.
• Nieman Marcus at 150 Stockton Street, near Union Square.
• Gumps at 135 Post Street.
• Saks Fifth Avenue, 384 Post Street.
• Nordstrom at 865 Market Street.
• Fresh boutique, 301 Sutter Street. (And take a few steps and get some chocolate at Teuscher's, too.)

San Franciso Rumored:
I've never been to these places, they're just mentioned in the Basenotes link above, some in rather old messages. Quite frankly, I'm putting them in here so that next time I'm in San Francisco, I can easily look at my own post and go have a look.

• Yves Saint Laurent boutique, Maiden Lane.
• Jaqueline Perfumery, 103 Geary Street.
• Kiehls, 2360 Fillmore Street and 865 Market Street.
• Wilkes Bashford, 375 Sutter Street.
• Yosh Olfactory Sense. I'm a little confused about the address, so I'm not going to risk giving it and being wrong.
• ElizabethW, 900 North Point Street, in Ghirardelli Square.
• In Fiore, 868 Post Street.

Other Cities:

• Mahin & Co, 350 S. California Avenue, Palo Alto, is rumored to carry some L'Artisan Parfumerie, Bond No. 9, Caron, Different Company, and Jatamansi fragrances.
• Aftelier Perfumes, 1442A Walnut Street, #369, Berkeley. (Rumored. I don't know if this is a store that can be visited or just a company location that cannot.)
• Harmony Pharmacy & Health Center, San Francisco Airport. (Inside security. Been there. The selection of each fragrance was very limited, but I was still impressed.)
• Herringbone Apothecary, 1527 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley. According to their website, they carry Mandy Aftel and CB I Hate Perfume fragrances. (Rumored.)
• Black Swan Boutique, 42 Elm Street, Los Gatos.
• Bliss Beauty, 682 Rancho Shopping Center, Los Altos. (Rumored.)
• A Basenotes post tells me that the Perfume Gallery in Valley Fair Mall, has a surprisingly good selection of classics. (Rumored.)

Link Roundup: Also check the San Francisco city guide and the South Bay City Guide from Basenotes and the Yelp search on San Francisco perfume.

Edited to further clarify what's rumored and where I've actually been.

Photo of Union Square by Thomas Hawk. Wikimedia Commons.

Compilation: Where to buy perfume (and a few other things) in Ashland, Oregon

When I travel, I always want to know where I can shop for perfume. Whenever we pass a row of nice little shops, I just know that there's perfume hiding there somewhere, and I always wish that I could grab a local perfume freak and demand to know where the good stuff is.

I'm sometimes a local, always a perfume freak in Ashland, Oregon, home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) and Southern Oregon University (SOU) and the Ashland Independent Film Festival (AIFF) and other nice things that could result in you driving through someday.

So I want to tell you where the perfume and other scented products are, so that you'll (1) buy some, which will (2) encourage the stores to carry more of it and possibly (3) carry more brands or more scents, so that (4) I have more that's local to sniff.

And while I'm at it, I'll tell you about a few of my favorite other stores.

Perfume: At the airport?!

Yesterday, I bought a bottle of Lorenzo Villoresi Musk.

At the airport.

This is not normal. Lorenzo Villoresi is an Italian perfume line that is rarely found in the United States. I had never seen an actual live bottle before. My closest hope of in-person sampling was The Perfume Shoppe in Vancouver.

But yesterday I walked into Harmony Pharmacy and Health center in the San Francisco airport, to find Lorenzo Villoresi (only two scents, admittedly), Tokyo Milk, Santa Maria Novella, ElizabethW, and a number of other fragrance lines that you simply don't find on pharmacy shelves.

At least, not on American pharmacy shelves - apparently Harmony follows the "European-style pharmacy" model. I don't know much about that model, but if it means that I can shop niche fragrances while I'm waiting for a plane, I like it.

Photo: By TSRL. Wikimedia Commons