Spring Fragrance Makeover

My fragrance wardrobe has grown a bit threadbare of late. I have dabbled here and there, but haven't added anything major to my collection in five or six years.  I just used up the last of Le Feu D'Issey, and am dangerously low on my Christian LaCroix. My tiny bottle of L'Or de Torrente is bone dry as well. I will inevitably replace them all, but I am taking this as a sign that I need a fragrance makeover.

Last night I spent several insomniac hours flipping back and forth between the encyclopedic reviews on BaseNotes, where the level of discourse is so high I feel like a bumpkin-nosed ninny, and my burgeoning shopping cart on The Perfumed Court, an equally brilliant ecommerce site where you can buy samples and small decants of just about anything, no matter how far-flung and exotic.

I should soon be getting a handful of exotic scents to audition for the spring fragrance makeover. Here for the sake of posterity is the current wardrobe. These are the fragrances I wear in heavy rotation, and that feel like signature scents to me:

• Byzance, by Rochas - floral oriental. A rather ostentatious, ornate scent that is at once exotic and comforting. For a world-weary traveler who feels at home everywhere and nowhere. Maybe her only true home is the memories evoked by this fragrance....
• Femme Rochas - She walks into the conference room, leather underwear beneath her sleek yet feminine pin-striped suit. The faint, subliminal whiff of warm tannin beneath the smooth exterior keeps everyone on edge.
• Le Feu D'Issey - She was raised by a pack of tigers in India. This is what her tiger-mother smelled like when she nursed, milky and peppery.
• Christian Lacroix - a pungent herbal that has an oriental soul. For an herbal, it has the authority of a great Caesar salad--ie, it's got body, tang and richness. Definitely a main course.
• Blond Tabac by Grandiflorum - This is what Laurent Bacall's cigarettes tasted like in To Have and To Have Not. Like burning exotic wood.
• L'Or de Torrente - Black coffee and bruised roses are what I want on Valentine's Day.
• Baby Doll Paris, by Yves Saint Laurent - I am so not a fruit and flower kind of girl, but this tangy grapefruit and rose scent has some musky issues. My Lolita.

Much as I love these, there isn't one of these I'm not ready to take out of rotation for a spell. Black Cashmere didn't made the above list because I haven't been wearing it long enough, but it's on the makeover short list, along with Kenzo Jungle.When I get my decants, I'll give you the full report. In the meantime, I'm open to suggestions. And I'd love to hear what your basics are.

Comments

[Jacq]

Funny you should ask: I blogged on this very topic on Tuesday, and listed my current perfumes!

http://exilednzer.blogspot.com/2008/04/perfume.html

[Melissa]

Me too! (I recently blogged about my favorite perfumes as well, I mean)

I'm glad I'm not the only one who has like 7 different "signature scents." :)