love you, stinkpots

Yow! Happy Valentine’s Day! What could be more romantic than the removal of the toilet in your home, exposing a vast waste-well that dwells just beneath the floor? It is tremendous, really, the smell of so much waste, and contrary to my hyperbolic moans and groans, and the speed with which I fled the scene, I suppose I still believe it is good to be reminded, once in a while, of the shit just beneath the antiseptic pink bathroom tiles. And this shit, forced as it is to linger in the city, underneath so much concrete, confronts with such force precisely because it is indoors, doesn’t even have the benefit of being surrounded on all sides by trees and breeze and grass and dirt and the shit of other animals, powering up the plants that fuel our future shits. [Updated to add: The source of the ongoing toilet drama turns out to be tree roots growing into, and blocking, the pipes. Know our power!, say the mighty trees, even as we rip out their roots.]

I smelled many amazing things in January. Some highlights:

Sniffin' hard

• Early in January, my new friend Mario, who has been incredibly generous with his amazing olfactory knowledge, invited me to a cupping at the Starbucks Farmers' Training Center in Kigali. It was great fun to play around with the coffee notes kits, to sniff and slurp freshly-roasted coffee with expert cuppers, and to gain insight into how professional noses approach coffee. Mario stressed the importance of being able to differentiate between preference and description, something I struggle with when approaching complex aromas. My nose zooms right in on the notes I love (chocolate, maple syrup, and toast when it comes to the coffee I'm drinking most often these days), and I want to work on sussing out those notes that I don’t love so well.
  
  
  

  

  Mario in his element

•  Mario, pictured above with an in-bloom coffee tree growing in his front yard, is also responsible for introducing me to the smell of a coffee flower. It was so beautiful! It smelled of jasmine and lilac, two flowers I adore, and I was swooning at the thought of encountering whole fields of these. Mario and Lucius, resident coffee geniuses, have both spent loads of time in just such fields, and their descriptions have propelled coffee-field-in-bloom to the top of my travel wishlist. 
• I learned that the heady, crazy-making flowers in the previous post are called brugmansia, or, in Kinyarwanda, ikigogo/ikijojo, and that they can legitimately make you mad. (Thanks to Elizabeth and Diana for sharing your plant wisdom.)  

  

  Ice-chip-sized hail!

• In late January, there was a freak hailstorm in Butare, amidst day after day of sunshine and near-90s weather. The ground near the National University was steaming as the huge pieces of hail melted, and this seemed to set off every fragrant plant in the area—my husband and I could smell blasts of eucalyptus and lemongrass from the car even with the windows rolled up. There was also a super-intense curry-like smell that reminded me very much of asafoetida. We found the scratchy little leaves that were giving off the hing-smell, and I'll endeavor to find out what the plant is called (when the leaves dried, they smelled much fruitier, almost plummy or currant-like. Nature is nuts!).

In spite of the hail, it's the short dry season in Rwanda, and this means the return of what I've come to think of as dusty B.O. The hot sun leads to sweatier humans, to be sure, but I think there's a particular bite to the B.O. that's mixing with so much kicked-up dust. It’s one of the first smell-changes I noticed in myself when I arrived in dusty Kigali last summer. I want to learn to embrace elements of this powerful stink, to again distinguish between preference and description, and to fight against the fact that I was, like many Americans, “born with deodorant in [my] hand.” (Click that link for great interview with Sissel Tolaas in Swallow magazine.) To understand a place, to know a person, you must smell them at their worst. Not that I think it’s possible to understand anywhere, to really know anyone, but the joy comes in the endeavor, the trek through all that shit.

like rocks long for rain

Is it possible I learned the word petrichor from Tumblr? I believe I can thank Tumblr for both leading me to believe the lovely word referred to the scent of any and all earth after rain, and for teaching me that it's, more specifically, the smell of rain on dry earth. Petrichor, according to Wikipedia, is "the scent of rain on dry earth, or the scent of dust after rain. The word is constructed from Greek, petros, meaning stone + ichor, the fluid that flows in the veins of the gods in Greek mythology. It is defined as 'the distinctive scent which accompanies the first rain after a long warm dry spell.'" According to Scientific American, "Petrichor was first described in 1964 by mineralogists Isabel Joy Bear and R. G. Thomas...As they defined it, it occurs when airborne molecules from decomposing plant or animal matter become attached to mineral or clay surfaces. During a dry spell, these molecules chemically recombine with other elements on a rock's surface. Then when the rains came, the redolent combination of fatty acids, alcohols and hydrocarbons is released."

Our street corner (before the rains) in Kigali 

Petrichor is on my mind and in the air so much lately, here in Kigali. When we arrived it was so dry and dusty that the insides of my nostrils, when I tried to blow them clean at night, would be sometimes clogged with the same red dirt from the roads. Now the rainy season is beginning, and the wet fresh smell rising from all those stones and clay after rain is one of the very best things about being here. If you've gotten an e-mail from me lately, it's likely contained a lament about how much I'll miss fall, my favorite season, all those smoky, caramelly, woolly, crunchy-leaf smells. Petrichor may prove to be my consolation. Though it's not salty, it has the same calming effect as sea air I've smelled and loved in New England and the Pacific Northwest. Everything in the air here changes after these heavy rains--the light, the weight, the sounds. Things turn dark green and then golden and the smell is close to chlorinated, but with none of the burn. I will long for autumn as I’ve always known it, but feel lucky for the chance to fall in love with this new (to me) season’s smell also, all that wet clean rock, all that dark rushing road. 

the air from here

All critters created by the LBJ Conser-clay-tion Club.

As I was last year around this time, I'm breathing Pacific Northwest air right now, remarking nearly every single time I step outside at how incredible it smells here, how you really forget that when you live here, how invigorating I find it, all this mountain-ocean-pine-ancient-glacier-freshest-coffee air. My husband usually breathes in deep and agrees, even though he has heard at least one hundred iterations of this monologue since we stepped outside at SeaTac and I exclaimed how even the airport-adjacent air, not traditionally known for its ability to invigorate, is better here. And it is!

LBJ Conser-clay-tion creation.

Better even than airport parking lot air is San Juan Island air, and that's what I've been fortunate enough to breathe these past few nights, gaping up at what seems like all of the stars between nearly all of the pine trees, dumbstruck by the beauty of this neon-mossed, pine-studded, sea-whipped island, wondering at how lucky we are just to get to walk around on this planet, and when we get to breathe in air that makes us feel especially alive it seems like too much almost, too bracing to keep even for one split second in our lungs.

LBJ Conser-clay-tion creation.

happy new year

fresh year at Fresh Pond

Happy New Year, dear Nosy readers! How is your 2013 smelling so far? I wore Avignon plus some dainty dabs of 7 Billion Hearts (the perfume absolute version) to ring in the New Year, and my smell felt solemn, human, and true. 

chartreuse + champagne

I also wore sequins (pictured above), as one should when ushering in a new year. But January rarely feels fizzy to me; it's a serious month, usually a cold one, and I think more during these short (but thankfully lengthening) days of loss than I do during January's neighbors.

I've been, and will probably continue to be, a bit remiss with regular posts. But Nosy Interviews (the best part!) will be back next week, and I'll continue to post those consistently, even as I otherwise hibernate a little bit to work more on my novel, to open fewer tabs in Chrome, to cook with greater care, and to strive to be as I smell: true, true, true. 

snowcake season

My neighborhood is not messing around, sunset-wise.

The week before last, Boston got a foot of snow. It all melted, and I was in Atlanta at the time, but the chill is still here, even as some fire-colored fall leaves keep hanging on, too. It seems I'm constantly talking about how fall is my favorite season, so it will surprise no one that I'm in no rush for winter to arrive. There are, though, a few winter-is-coming olfactory pleasures that help assuage any anticipatory angst: the smell of our ancient free-standing radiators when they clang into action after a long rest is so beautiful, and still surprises me most mornings; the smell of cold weather clinging to people's clothes, that almost-visible mix of static electricity and thin fresh air that makes those come-in, come-in hugs all the more essential; and the smell of Snowcake, my favorite Lush soap (described in last year's gift guide as the sudsy equivalent of a comforting embrace), which is back in season, and back in my regular shower rotation (used in conjunction with Dr. Bronner's Peppermint Liquid Soap, it's as Chrismassy as tinsel and twinkly lights). Stay gold forever, fall; I miss you even when you're around.

nosy's smelloween

My friend Lauren in her jellyfish getup, with one of my fragrant petals creeping into the frame.

This year I was a BOOquet for Halloween (glamour-shot below). I weighed down a flimsy green dress with a dozen hot glue sticks worth of fake flowers, tied a florist's bow around a cellophane skirt, and topped it off with a flower headband so gigantic I'll need a royal wedding-invite to have occasion to wear it again. In the interest of verisimilitude, I coated myself with Rossy de Palma Eau de Protection. Though my costume didn't feature any roses, the scent matched the bright green and iridescent gloss of the dress, and seemed tough enough, somehow, to stand up to the chaos of Halloween. Maybe it's the bloody knife note that Chandler Burr describes in an article about The Art of Scent: 1889-2012, his upcoming show at the Museum of Arts and Design:  

The fragrance is called Eau de protection, Burr explains, and it is “one of the most fascinating works ever created, in any art form.” It was designed as “a portrait of a woman who is so beautiful that rose runs in her blood. And a man comes with a metal knife, and plunges it into her heart. And it is the smell of her blood, running down the blade.”

It was interesting to wear so much perfume (the dress hangs like a giant sachet on the closet door, scenting my whole bedroom even days later), especially since I'm usually a pretty restrained sprayer, perhaps in part due to my love of big ol' overpowering fragrances. But I went bananas spraying this costume, and this meant a lot more reaction to my smell than I typically get, ranging from the positive: "I just want to keep hugging you to breathe you in!" to the not-so-hot: "You smell like that one women's deodorant, you know, the famous one." Okay! 

Boo! Highly-filtered selfies are the Glamour Shots of our time. 

Another guest at the Halloween party, lanky and in all black, was dubbed Vanilla Bean due to her lack of costume and the serious waft of lovely vanilla she was projecting. She told me it was Jo Malone's Vanilla & Anise, a perfume I'd never sniffed before, but will definitely try when I next have the chance, even though I think part of its appeal might have been the ease with which she wore it, and the way its homey tonka bean comforts contrasted slightly with her sharp wit, luminous North London accent, and "nihilist's wardrobe." I'm on a serious "non-yicky vanilla" (term courtesy of Katie Puckrik) kick at the moment, though, having fallen in love recently with the smokey, soulful vanilla in the gorgeous CB I Hate Perfume's 7 Billion Hearts (so like me to fall for priciest car on the lot) and the woody beauty of Le Labo's Vanille 44. Maybe my nose knows that winter is coming and wants the warmth of rich, real vanilla, worn by humans huddled together around a fire.

storm smells

(last night, in my neighborhood)

Nosy readers, I hope you are safe, dry, and warm. Last night my quiet Cambridge neighborhood smelled of burning leaves on every block, the burning-leaf smell carried even on wet leaves in the strong winds, so much like late-autumn backyard bonfires that it was a genuine surprise to have the smoking chimneys pointed out to me, of course no maniacs were burning their yard waste during a weather event, rather, they had their fireplaces going for maybe the first time this year. My friend Carla remarked on Facebook at how beautiful the storm smells were from where she stood: "The stormy air in Boston smells fantastic. Scent mixture of ocean, autumn leaves, and damp earth." (Scientists have names for some of those beautiful storm smells: ozone, petrichor, and geosmin.) Even here, where my own stroll around the neighborhood was decidedly low-risk, I wrestled with the urge to tell anyone I saw to Get inside! and had a stronger version of this reaction to the live photo-tours of New York I was privy to via Instagram and Twitter. But I also understand the need to go outside and see, to feel in the whip of high winds just how vulnerable we all are, always, to breathe that in and call it beautiful, knowing how lucky we are for the chance.

nosy recommends: burt's bees baby bee multipurpose ointment

This smells so sweet! Not sweet like frosting, sweet like darling. Burt's Bees Baby Bee Multipurpose Ointment just smells adorable. It's light streaming in the open windows in the farmhouse bedroom where your white sheets were just air-dried the day before and the host, one of your oldest friends, left a little mason jar full of gummy bears on your bedside table (just the orange, yellow, and adhesive-colored ones). This tub's pudding is cuddly but not cloying, and comforting with a chewiness I associate with that tantalizing pull to bite the brand-new nub of pink eraser on a fresh yellow No. 2 pencil (it doesn't smell like that eraser, but like the feeling you imagine it will have between your molars). Even though I've learned that petitgrain is a bitter orange note, there's a homier smell I associate with the word petitgrain that comes to mind when I sniff this ointment. I would like to smell coumarin (one of the ingredients listed, along with shea butter, almond oil, beeswax, and coconut oil) and see whether the compound accounts for the dollop of countryside I'm getting, since its Wikipedia entry says coumarin is "readily recognized as the scent of new-mown hay," and is found in plants like tonka bean, vanilla grass, sweet woodruff, sweet grass, cassia cinnamon, Deers Tongue and sweet clover.

You can use this ointment, intended for babies' bums, however you might use Vaseline, and it's especially nice on rough heels (sandal season is officially over here in Cambridge) and dry elbows (the season for which is fast approaching). I mainly use it at night, but it's subtle enough that it doesn't interfere with perfume.

 "Mr. Autumn Man, enjoying a seasonal stroll." --The Onion 

Other things I recommend right now, from past Nosy Interviewees and from the planet: 

• Elisa has been doing some great perfume writing on her blog lately, on her new favorite leather, lilies, and underwear perfumes. I loved this line: "From a distance, the impression is not unlike my vintage Shalimar – a powdery floriental with a smoker's cough." Elisa and I disagree about Agent Provocateur, which she thinks goes from uptight to dirty, and I believe to be so raunchy in its opening that I leave a small grace period before leaving the house with it on. 
• Rebecca has a wonderful poem, "Self-Portrait at San Carlito," up at Verse Daily (and a book coming out in 2013!!!).
• Natalie wrote an excellent review of Zadie Smith's NW for Fiction Writers Review, and highlighted one of the book's best lines: "Overnight everyone has grown up. While she was becoming, everyone grew up and became."  
• FALL! I am definitely a shameless version of Ms. Autumn Woman, and if you encountered me on the street yesterday, you would have been subjected to a six-minute (minimum) reverie on how incredible fall smells and feels and looks. I like to celebrate its arrival with an annual reading of Colin Nissan's brilliant "It's Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers," and suggest you do the same, whatever the weather where you are.

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.

silent, passionate, & gloriosensual

I must eat my words; it's really called Paper Passion.  [image via Aedes de Venustas]

“The smell of a freshly printed book is the best smell in the world,” according to Karl Lagerfeld, who we know would list "books" in his answer to the second Nosy Interview question (What do you like to smell?), and now, thanks to his collaboration with perfumer Geza Schoen, perhaps he could answer books to the first nosy question, about what he smells like, too.

According to press for the perfume, "[Paper Passion] is an opportunity to celebrate all the gloriosensuality of books, at a time when many in the industry are turning against them." I'm not sure I know exactly what gloriosensuality is, but I appreciate ambition in nouns, and am eager to see how silent the smell of paper really is this September, when Paper Passion arrives in U.S. stores, just in time to accompany all the real-book smells of back-to-school season.

[If you prefer to smell like older books, CB I Hate Perfume and Demeter have you covered.] 

smells like summer longing

 Image via L'Artisan Parfumeur

Two perfumes I'm itching to sniff:

•  L'Artisan Parfumeur's Séville à l’Aube: Inspired by "one of the most beautiful nights in [the] life," of popular perfume blogger and writer Denyse Beaulieu, the reviews of this fragrance, created by Bertrand Duchaufour, hit all my sweet spots: orange flower, beeswax, frankincense, jasmine, smoke, and benzoin. I am chomping at the bit for a whiff, veering precariously near full-bottle-sans-sniff territory.
• A Lab on Fire's What We Do in Paris is Secret: When Dan Rolleri, Katie Puckrik's perfume pen pal, calls a fragrance gorgeous, I sit up straight and order a sample.

I'm also wearing a bucketload of sunscreen.

What I'm wearing this week:

• Perennial humid-weather favorites Nuit de Tubereuse and Boyfriend. I understand the desire to wear sheer, citrusy perfumes in the summer, fragrances the color of celadon and the texture of cucumber seeds. I keep my robot rosewater in the fridge to satisfy this need for breeze. But my fragrance, when it's this muggy, needs to dig in and open up a bit wild. I can't be wearing something frothy or delicate to the swamp; it's got to be juicy and a bit animalic to hold its own on days and nights like these. 

 Dunham as Hannah Horvath on Girls. Summer smells and swells in this photo for sure. 

A stray smell from Lena Dunham's essay on first love in the latest issue of The New Yorker: 

"I don't think about it very often, but occasionally there's a smell--a whiff of cat, of stale air-conditioner, of a frozen, gluten-free pizza warming--that is so purely ours that I could resume being a woman who cries dolefully every fifteen minutes at some perceived slight."

oils of summer

I'm not one to rush spring (humidity is my enemy), but it's sandal-weather in Boston, so I thought I'd recommend a few of my favorite summertime oils: 

Nuxe Huile Prodigieuse (Multi-Usage Dry Oil): Beach beachy beachiest! You would ideally cover your body with this while enjoying a fresh salty breeze from the open windows of your completely clean, all-white, beachside bedroom. This oil makes an ideal summer moisturizer: it absorbs quickly and leaves just a touch of shine. But best of all is the smell, which I was thrilled to learn is going to be available in a perfume version sometime this month. I plan to wear loads of both this summer, and you'll smell me coming, bringing the beach.

Auric Blends Egyptian Goddess Roll-On Perfume: My policy on layering scents is pretty much the same as for choosing them: if it smells good, I'll put it on.  This light but persistent oil lends itself to layering, and seems to especially extend the life of some of the fainter, citrusy scents I crave in the summer months.  I love how close Egyptian Goddess stays to the skin, and though its warmth and my preferred season for wearing it make the comparison counterintuitive, there is a hint of that beloved cold-smells-on-a-sweatshirt tang to it, something warming-up, something cuddleable and fresh and human.

Dr. Bronner's Peppermint Liquid Soap: I use this castile oil cleanser in the shower year-round (and for my laundry when I travel), but I especially love its bracing chill after a hot, sweaty summer's day. Your butt-cheeks have never been so cold!

without winter

 [image via] 

This winter, I never moved my bike from the back porch to the basement. This was a huge difference from last winter in Cambridge, when the snowbanks were high enough that you couldn't tell which ones concealed cars, and the bike lane disappeared for months. As a  result of all that cold and grey, I got on a serious amber kick, culminating in the purchase of a big old brick of Annick Goutal's Ambre Fétiche, a sticky (but still somehow so dry!) syrup blanketbomb whose bottle alone felt as wrong to the touch this winter as my all-wool leggings.

During this weird nether-weather winter, I got hooked on Narciso Rodriguez for Her.  Something about NR for Her came especially alive for me, some bright cottony aspect that blooms best on sunny, chilly days, a burst of warmth that I don't usually smell until at least the third spray, and then puff, there it is (that there even is a third spray of this not-timid fragrance should reveal how hooked I am). It wears like a mood ring, knows when to scale back its musky bits and when to purr, shimmers and recedes throughout the day like a scarf that knows how to read a room's temperature in every sense of the word. NR for Her seemed even to go with the clothes that I wore all non-winter: a thick canvas jacket and fingerless gloves.

NR for Her and Lana Del Rey's "Video Games" have more in common than my inability to quit them 

I ignored NR for Her when it came out, in part because I'd heard (and agreed at first sniff) that it was "reminiscent of Miss Dior Cherie," a perfume I get too much of a cheap beer note from to enjoy wearing, though smelling it on others does take me back to my college days. (To be clear, I'm still fond of cheap beer, but these days I prefer to enjoy it in contexts other than basements coated in spilled beer, party sweat, and a cloud of competing Bath & Body Works body sprays. Sweet Pea! You were so good to me. Do college girls still wear Bath & Body Works sprays? Or is it all Victoria's Secret Extreme Sexy Dream Harbor SexyHot Angels' Mist?)

 [image via Rodarte's tumblr]

There are perfumes I love more than Narciso Rodriguez for Her, but I haven't had such a monogamous run with a single fragrance since Lolita Lempicka circa 2001. I would call it a rut if I weren't so eager to coat myself with NR for Her, even today--the day before the first day of actual spring, 73 degrees outside and everyone in Cambridge playing tennis and wearing t-shirts--when I'm tempted, but can't quite bring myself, to mark the season change with something new.

pining hard

Steep Ravine soap, Cascade Glacier essential oil, and solid perfume in Stag

My piney little haul, picked up in Seattle and pictured above, demonstrates how much I miss the Pacific Northwest. The air there! I was in Seattle all of last week, and on the day the snow finally melted and the wet ground warmed, I was hit with such a blast of green and ice and pine that I felt scrubbed and dizzy and brand-new. It's the opposite of being unable to catch your breath, it's all breath, all freshness. But real fresh, not cleaning solution or cosmetic "fresh," fresh instead like you've been breathing the wrong air for a while, like a gentle glacier just eroded five years from off your face. 

Juniper Ridge products really do come closest to that smell of smashed pine needles in your palm, and the Cascade Glacier oil is so brisk and beautiful that even the whiff off my fingertips from tightening the cap makes me feel like I've just come off an invigorating hike (the actual hikes I took while in Seattle last week were less of the invigorating nature-loving sort and more of the hiking-is-the-only-way-to-get-anywhere-in-town variety). The Stag fragrance is the solid perfume version of my beloved candle (this pine kick won't quit!) and Christen of Knows Perfume in West Seattle told me that the creators at Soap & Paper Factory thought she was joking when she asked them where the solid version of Stag was (solid perfume versions of the other candles in this series were already available), and that when she convinced them that she wasn't kidding, they put it into production for her. Christen told them, "This is Seattle. We want to smell like trees here." 

nosy new year

My bottle acclimates to its Midwestern surroundings.

Happy New Year, nosy readers!  I wish you a 2012 filled with new smell discoveries as well as familiar or forgotten scents that make you swell with emotion.

The holidays were the usual sensory riot. I had a bit of a cold, but still managed to eat more than my share of cookies and breathe in some nice smells:  

• The smokiest scotch I've ever smelled (Pop, if you're reading this, what was that delicious scotch?)
• I drained a full sample of Sweet Redemption for my parents' annual holiday party, and people seemed more eager to hug me than usual (they lingered due to my fragrance rather than their scotch intake).
• I was so happy to unwrap a bottle (pictured above) of Un Bois Vanille (the ideal fragrance to spray on your wool scarf, and I agree it's perfect for layering) and a bundle of beautiful beeswax candles. Both will go a long way towards making the bitter Boston winter warm. 
• The weird, unseasonable warmth in Wisconsin meant that I could smell more manure than usual in winter, when the ground is often frozen. For reasons not exclusively olfactory, I dread the completion of a harrowingly gigantic factory farm under construction right off the highway on the route between my hometown and Madison. (The cows, I heard, are on their way from Nebraska in the new year. Not that I'd prefer Wisconsin cows meet their fate in such a place, but I'm puzzled as to why the Dairy State needs to import its livestock.)
• Alterra Coffee! I visited the main roasting facility on Humboldt, and wanted to set up permanent shop at one of the tables, eating pie, breathing in toasty beans, and talking all day with old friends. 
• A friend had a Mrs. Meyer's Iowa Pine candle going in her bathroom, and I was teased for emerging from the bathroom more than once exclaiming how great it smelled in there. The candle seems to be sold out all over, but I'll be keeping an eye for one out next winter.
• Oh man, if you're ever in Iowa, do yourself a favor and purchase some AE French Onion dip. You may be thinking, I've tried french onion dip in a tub before, and it's not that great. I agree! It usually isn't, but this stuff is so delicious that dipping your chip so deep that your hand comes out creamy is one of my family's most sacred holiday traditions. Viva Midwest!

game changers

 Detail from Panel V of Romare Bearden's The Block

The seasons are changing, every day it seems, and sometimes over the course of a single day. Last Thursday, in New York again, I could feel the air lean towards winter, in that way that makes it harder to take a very deep breath. But the night air was mild, even a little warm. I was running late, and wearing too many layers, but also wearing Bois de Paradis. Just as you sometimes read the right book at the right moment, there are days when you make the exact right choice with your perfume. Bois de Paradis was a fine choice that afternoon, but as I ran down Lexington Avenue on a weirdly warm nearly-winter night, it became perfect. Sometimes I'll honestly forget that I'm wearing something lovely, and ask around about what smells so good. But that night I didn't wonder; Bois de Paradis was like some golden amber orb around me, pulsing with a beauty that grew as the evening warmed, and darkened.  

Two days later, on the dress I was wearing again, I could still smell the wood. The sweat had lifted, and some of the sweetness was gone, but there remained this sturdy beauty that I love. I wish I could explain to you all the reasons that this was the perfect fragrance for this week, for the things I heard, the people who showed me something of what it means to do more than endure, but most of that has already faded into the fabric, and it will take some running on my part to remember.

new york notes

 Your nosy host poses with our mascot at the Sensorium exhibit. 

We spent this past weekend in New York, and smelled winter. On Saturday it snowed on and off all day, big fat wet clumps of snow, turning all the wool I wore wet. But I don't mind that wet wool smell, and I don't mind the first day of snow; it still feels clean, smells like air and mineral. And I love how everybody heats up when they come inside from the cold, how they're stinkier even in some ways than in summer, wearing all those layers, sweat and perfume rising thick off their sweaters. 

Other nosy New York highlights:

• The entryway to my aunt's apartment. Why is it that some homes--some rooms, even--maintain such powerfully specific scents over time? Her foyer was probably the first smell I distinctly associated with New York and, as such, it remains one of the most New York smells I know.
• The Sensorium exhibit, where my favorite part was smelling the "flights of fragrance" in unmarked wine glasses. I liked having so little information about the fragrances (I wouldn't say that I had no information, as the perfumes were organized thematically on four trays: playful, polished, casual, and addictive, and I also knew they were all for sale at Sephora). My other favorite part, and this is very unMidwestern of me to admit, was the tickle of pride I felt when the attendant, Ranfi, remarked that I'd correctly guessed more of the fragrances than some of the perfumers and noses that he'd seen come in and sniff. Apart from my deeply-ingrained aversion to boastfulness, I don't know why it's so uncomfortable for me to admit I am getting better at identifying scents. Of course I am improving; if you smell a lot of fragrances, you get better at remembering and naming those fragrances. And wasn't that part of the point of starting this blog in the first place? To improve my fragrance vocabulary, to reduce the number of times when identifying a scent is, as it so often becomes, frustratingly similar to the experience of hearing a melody to a song you can't name, or having the right word forever on the tip of your tongue.
• We finally made it to MiN New York, a gorgeous little store that feels like the well-appointed personal library of a fragrance-obsessed, tweed-wearing grandfather. The beautiful built-in bookshelves displayed all sorts of fragrances--many lines I'd never had the chance to smell before--and, book-related bonus, MiN is super close to two actual (and awesome) bookstores: Housing Works and McNally Jackson. 
• At MiN, my husband fell pretty hard for the Parfum d'Empire line. He just brought the shirt he was wearing when we were there in to the kitchen to have me smell it, and the Fougere Bengale he'd sprayed still lingered. It smelled warm and alive, like it could take on any weather. 

excessive heat warning

[via Thessaly]

My popsicles melted completely on the one-block walk home from the store (they're reforming themselves now, filling the puffed tubes of their containers). I'm starting to think the acrid smell is the air itself. So thick! When I'm complaining after weeks of slush and ice this winter, feel free to point me in the direction of this post and tell me to suck it up, that thin air, that barely-there air. 

nosy recommends: muggy-weather scents

My friend Charlotte urged me to make more recommendations on the site. Charlotte is a great encourager, and my first recommendation is to befriend her if given the chance. In terms of scent suggestions, I've been thinking lately of what I reach for now that the muggy-monster is among us. Boston is humid as all get out, and these are the fragrances that have served me best during my least-favorite weather:

East MidEast by D.S. & Durga 

I'm a jerk for recommending this (though I recommend it without reservation for all seasons) because it's impossible to track down. But maybe we could rally enough nosy demand to inspire D.S. & Durga to re-release this beauty? (This worked for me once with a seasonal flavor at an ice cream shop in Madison, Wisconsin). I didn't discover East MidEast until it was already on clearance at Anthropologie, and though I was able to manage to hoard a couple of small bottles, I still wear it less than I'd like to for fear of running out. I mention it despite this scarcity because its notes ("saffron, Indian cardamom, Russian roses, & red mandarins") would have, at one time, seemed to me to make it a big no-go for the summer months. In our haste to subsist on watermelon and ice-cold margaritas in the summertime, we forget how excellent spicy foods taste when it's hot. I think the same goes for perfume--though the natural inclination might be to reach for your sheerest citruses, the right big rose thrives rather than cloys in the heat.

Recommended for: Anyone who likes to smell really good, people who can't stand being told what to do, and Katie Puckrik.

Nuit de Tubéreuse by L'Artisan Parfumeur

Nuit de Tubereuse may be my favorite muggy-weather scent; I rarely wear it when it's not crazy-humid. I bought a bottle, somewhat impulsively, on a super-hot day in New York last summer, and I'm not sure I would have had the weather been milder. Something about this peppery, dirty, juicy-fruity, sexy, incensey stunner just heats up so right. Reviews point to the abundance of white florals (though are quick to correctly note that you won't get your creamy-tuberose fix here), but this smells so green to me. NdT almost (almost!) makes me look forward to muggy weather, and this makes me believe the ad copy claiming narcotic qualities isn't just fluff. I've also noticed that I get more compliments on NdT than on any other fragrance I wear. This could be due in part to the odor-amplifying days on which I tend to wear it, but it also speaks to the tenacity of the scent (especially notable since people's biggest beef with L'Artisan seems to be that their scents fade too quickly).

Recommended for: Women wearing backless dresses, glamorous outdoorsy types, and people who like to flirt on the bus.

U4EAHHH! by Yosh 

I've mentioned this mellow fruit-bomb on the site before, and while it can be a bit too sweet for me, it's perfect for those muggy days when all I want to do is eat popsicles and read the kinds of magazines generally reserved for waiting rooms and long flights. 

Recommended for: Lemonade stand salespeople, freckled stoners, and teenagers attending their first spring formals.

If you have other sweaty-weather favorites, please share them in the comments!

spring ring

The lilies of the valley are making their intentions known. Some magnificent human planted half of the whole front yard of our building with lilies of the valley, and while the white skirts haven't opened yet, the smell is already incredible. Did you know that it's nearly impossible to extract essential oil from lilies of the valley? All the perfumery devoted to the muguet, as it's also known, is the work of chemists trying to capture that perfect little bell of a note. 

All the brick in Boston makes me think it's a city made for the fall (the 46,000 universities here support my view), but it does pretty well for itself in spring, too. 

real red! no filters or funny business.

glitter confetti gutter