Smell the glove

[gwyn]

Bonus points for anyone who gets the subject line reference.

All the people who responded to my BPAL questions yesterday are so marvellous and generous! So many of you have offered to send me imps you don't want anymore and you know what? It really does feel like getting into a new fandom, the way people so often greet the n00bs with information and stuff. It's really cool. superplin suggested I might want to list the kinds of scents I like and don't like, and a couple other folks mentioned that I should list some of the ones I was thinking of getting, to see if they might have an unwanted imp around, and that all sounds like a great idea.

In no way do I expect people to give me freebies -- I will gladly pay for postage and the original costs of things, or if you're local, buy you a cup of coffee/tea and some pastries and hopfully in the future have some things to trade you for, as well. I don't want to circumvent or try to otherwise skive on the generally accepted norms of behavior!



There were almost too many to list here in terms of things I was interested in, but of course, a couple of limited editions really caught my eye (and I think I may order them sight unseen, just because I can pass them along if I don't like them). I was really drawn to a lot of the things in the Salon section: And There Was a Great Cry in Egypt; Bat-Woman; The Fox Woman Kuzunoha Leaving Her Child; Cupid Complaining to Venus; The Ecstasy of St. Teresa; Melancholia.... truthfully, I'd probably like almost everything, but many of the ingredients I don't know yet so I'm not sure what I would think of them! They all sound heavenly.

Other things I was considering: In Bewitching Brews, Absinthe, Chimera, Eclipse, Morgause, Phantasm, Veil, Zephyr, and Highwayman; in Mad Tea Party, Eat Me, The Lion, March Hare, Mouse's Long and Sad Tale, Queen of Hearts, The Red Queen and White Rabbit; in Sin & Salvation, Gluttony, Sloth, The Great Sword of War, Anathema, Black Dahlia, Languor, and Vice.

Honestly, I could go on forever, so maybe it is better to just list the kinds of things I like: My fave scents are frankincense, myrrh, ambers, vanilla, chocolate; there's never been a citrus or fruit smell I didn't like; and I love the heavy, deep flowers such as gardenia (my favorite smell), tuberose, jasmine, honeysuckle, freesia, lilacs, and the oriental lilies like stargazers and Casablancas. I'm crazy for the smell of bamboo, but it's hard to find. I love leather and kind of smokey smells, too. Tea and coffee beans, but weirdly, not cooked coffee; any kinds of nuts. Things I don't like: rose fragrances make me sneeze like whoa, though I adore them in my garden; same thing goes for lavender and rosemary -- they're great au naturel, but put them in a fragrance and I get all eye-watery and itchy. Though there are so many rose type scents I see in BPAL that I am unfamiliar with, so who knows, maybe they will work! And I love sandalwood, but patchoulis make my nose hurt. A lot of woodsy smells I love, and earth smells, but some woods like pine or fir not as much. There are many scents listed in their oils I don't know -- tonka, was the big one I saw. I had a hard time gleaning from the forums yet what some of the unfamiliar ones smell like.

The classic perfumes I've liked before are Opium, Poison, Shalimar, Gardenia Passion, L'eau d' Issey, and Ellen Tracey, if that helps.

Anyway, I don't know if that's enough to help, but I want to reiterate how much I appreciate everyone's generosity in helping me get started. I have some ka-chinging to do!


Thinking about all this fragrance stuff made me consider other smells I love. I was actually making myself laugh last night because some of them seem so weird; others I thought I was kind of a freak about liking, till I brought it up in my writing group, and found other people thought the same thing!

Ten non-perfumey smells I love, and five I don't:
1. Kitty toes (they smell like Fritos!)
2. Snow
3. Loamy, rich dirt
4. Emma's fur -- she's such a clean-smelling kitty!
5. Root beer -- how great is it that bearded irises smell like root beer, so you can have a whole garden that smells that way?
6. New electronics right out of the box
7. Chrome (seriously -- someone told me recently about some time she spent with a real perfumier and they told her how they get the scent of actual chrome. I so need to find a fragrance that uses that)
8. Book stores
9. Leather
10. Just sawn or sanded wood

1. Cigarette and cigar smoke. Nothing is more heinous that being stuck behind a car getting a faceful of that for miles.
2. Burning rubber
3. The dead, lifeless dirt in the crawlspace under my house, especially when it's damp
4. Scented cat litter. Gah!
5. The laundry and cleaning aisles of grocery stores

What are yours?

Comments

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

You know, there's a lot of things about perfume that might be triggering your responses and it's part of what happens when people overdo scents. One of the worst culprits is the alcohol used in most fragrances so that it will spray -- it amps up the worst of the notes and it also means people are using too much, because sprays don't really control. I think one of the reasons mine never bothers you is because I prefer real perfume, where you can dab it. That's one of the reasons I'm attracted to BPAL's perfume oils -- you don't have to douse yourself.

perfume should be something you only smell when you're close to someone -- if you can smell it five feet away, they're doing it wrong. And it should be something pleasant that wafts, not something that comes at you like a smell freight train.

[merricatk.livejournal.com]

I don't have problems with perfume, but the men around here & their cologne! It just hits you as they walk by, and I have to bite my tongue not to say, "NOBODY COULD POSSIBLY SMELL THAT BAD! REALLY!!"

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I guess most men can't smell musk, which is used in a lot of perfumes, and so they tend to OD on stuff. Apparently they are also less olfactorily endowed than women, so they don't get that they stink like whoa when they pour on the cologne or aftershave. The worst ones are the Calvin Klein scents for me - they are way too intense and men use them far too generously. Pew!

[alexfandra.livejournal.com]

We had a faculty member in my old office space who used to douse the cheap stuff on in the single-seater restroom, which brought tears to my eyes if I went in after her. I am *so* glad I'm now in a different wing from her.

Do you go to the perfume place downtown run by a woman named Nasreen? She's supposed to know just by looking at you what scent will work best.

Have fun with BPAL!