stars! they smell just like us.

All week I've been wearing By Kilian's Beyond Love and I smell amazing. I'm like this buttery, floral angel of aroma just floating around town, upstaging even the lilac bushes and lilies of the valley. I suspect the only reason more people aren't stopping me on the street to ask why I smell so good is that they're weirded out by how focused I am on smelling my own arm.

I went to the Class Day ceremonies at Harvard today because I wanted to hear Amy Poehler speak (like every smart young lady in America, I am morally bound to support any event at which she is featured). The crowd was full of girls in bright, floral dresses, hair and skin and smiles gleaming. Poehler herself wore this gorgeous shade of saturated teal and a metallic blazer, bright as the blonde froth of her hair. There were huge Veritas flags strung up everywhere, and the trees in Harvard Yard were shedding the tiniest golden leaves, like tasteful, perfectly-timed confetti. A sucker for ceremony (even ones I am not a part of), I walked home feeling restless and nostalgic, optimistic but a little bereft.

The blue was much better than this.  © Reuters, via

Poehler told the students that if they could manage to add kindness and the ability to fix a tire to their existing smarts and bravery, they would just about be the perfect people (not just sweetness & light, she did flip off the kid who referred to her as the "blonde Tina Fey" at the start of his very funny speech). She was more earnest than any of the student speakers. She told them to put down their iPhones and look at people's faces. Her own face—not just that custard-colored hair—was radiant, but I believed her when she said she'd stayed up late writing her speech. I get the feeling that she is the sort of person who, even when exhausted, emits a kind of sunshine. She just seems so undeniably good. Though there is nothing goofy about Beyond Love (apart from its stupid-high price), it is also undeniably good.

My mom has said that if writing doesn't work out for me, I should try to become a scent adviser to the stars. (Is this a real job? Has anyone seen a "Scent Adviser to the Stars" offer intimate-seeming insight in US Weekly followed immediately by a disclaimer that they have never met, let alone sniffed, the celebrity in question?) If writing and manure-ranking both fail to keep me in perfumes, I'll start with Amy Poehler: Get your hands on some Beyond Love! No doubt you'll look adorable even with your nose buried deep in your own elbow crook.