Tuesday, February 14, 2006

The Scent of A Woman

I love perfume! The bottles are so pretty. And I find that my mood matches the scent I've chosen on any given day.

When I was younger, I thought that I would one day find a signature scent. After all, my mother wears Shiseido and my Tante H wears White Shoulders. To this day, smelling these scents conjures up a vision of either woman. I've searched long and hard and yet that one perfect scent has eluded me.

I started out, like most teenage girls of the '80's, wearing Love's Baby Soft. Tante H gave me Nina Ricci's L'Air du Temps for Chanukah one year and I really loved that. It was my first "grown-up" scent. Chanukah 5750 -- my parents gave me Anais Anais. Ah...I fell in love with this scent and really felt that this was the one. As it so happens, I had fallen in love with a certain young man and felt that he was the one too. However, the scent didn't do it for him...and one of them had to go. I married the young man...and ditched the perfume.

The certain young man had selected a wonderful scent for me in celebration of our wedding. We really thought that we had come upon "the" scent with Jessica McClintock. Oddly, this beautiful scent takes a nasty turn when it hits my skin. Sadly, this was not to be.

The next several years saw a number of scents come and go: Sunflowers, Tommy Girl, Tommy Girl Freedom, Clinique Happy, Clinique Happy Heart. All lovely scents. And though PC enjoyed these, they just haven't felt right to me.

There had been a certain scent that PC had long admired and finally after unsuccessfully trailing after women in public places, he finally got the name!
Estee Lauder Beautiful Sheer. A sweet, floral fragrance. He loves it...and I think that it is fine.

So here's the question: for whom am I wearing perfume? If the purpose is to be alluring to my beloved, than does it really matter what I think of the scent??

"Yes!" scream my feminist friends. "No!" shout my traditional friends. What does Frume Sarah say?

"On the one hand, it is important to captivate my husband. After all, as a Jewish woman, the creation, growth, and stability of a family is my paramount responsibility. On the other hand, if wearing a particular scent makes me feel good about myself, is it not to my advantage to select something that I really love?"

And so the search continues. A recent stop at the frangrance counter yielded the following recommendations [and more importantly, samples!]:
Donna Karan Cashmere Mist
Chanel Chance
Valentino V Absolu
Dolce & Gabanna Light Blue
Ralph Lauren Pure Turqoise


Stay tuned for the results.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've never bought perfume for myself, though I have on occasion included it on my birthday or Chanukah wishlist. My parents have come through smashingly well. The one I like the most for right now is Revlon's "Absolutely Fabulous," which actually comes with a little fake-fur stole around the bottle.

Rebecca Einstein Schorr said...

How fun!

I actually have only bought perfume when the one PC has selected has run low and he hasn't had time to replace it -- which is not the same thing! I have been spending quite a bit of time reading (typical) about scents and hanging out in the fragrance section of Sephora to get a sense of what I like.