back to school smells

It's the first day back-to-school for my graduate-student husband and he has a new backpack, filled with very old books. I have the itch to buy pencils and something plaid. I smell like L'Artisan Parfumeuer's Séville à l’Aube, a fragrance I've been wearing nearly every day for two weeks, with the occasional interruption from Güd's Vanilla Flame Natural Body Mist, which sounds like it would be a Yankee cupcake candle sugarbomb, but is instead a subdued, creamy, beachy vanilla perfectly suited for summer's last gasp.

It was love at first spray for me and Séville à l’Aube, as it immediately reminded of elements of other favorites: the incensey chewiness and powder of L'Artisan's Nuit de Tubéreuse, the sweet orange flower of By Kilian's Sweet Redemption, and just a splash of the root beer cream of Acqua di Parma's Mandorlo di Sicilia. But Séville à l’Aube is more changeable than any of these, and every time I go to sniff it, it shifts a little, always leaving me curious, wanting more. I don't love lavender in perfume. The plant itself smells wonderful, and I usually enjoy it in food or drink, but in perfume I often find it off-putting. As strange as it may sound, I swear the lavender in Séville à l’Aube smells different in each nostril, like dried lavender sachet in the left nostril and a bit like iris and basil in the right. I'm not familiar with Luiseiri lavender listed in the notes, but maybe my right nostril is? Séville à l’Aube has a hint of that plastic jasmine beloved-but-forgotten-childhood-toy smell, a creamy cloud of beeswax, and loads of beautiful benzoin. Its erotic origins are well-documented, but it doesn't read animalic to me, which makes it sexier in some ways, an invitation to provide those sweatier smells yourself, beneath a tree turning towards fall, with the help of your own black-clad soon-to-be lover.