Monday, May 9, 2011

smell

Having a good sense of smell is probably one of my favorite things about life. Similar to music, scents are just another easy way of being transported to another place. A certain smell can take you into a time machine back to a certain memory that you didn't even realize you were keeping inside your brain.

Once you're all dressed for the day or night, the last thing you add onto yourself before stepping out the door is a spritz of your favorite perfume. Girls see their moms doing it when they're little while they're watching them get ready to go out for the night, and as the little girls get older they begin to do the same thing. Perfume is a beautiful tradition and an invisible way of expressing who you are while leaving a lasting impression.

A person can "have" their "own" scent without even owning their own fragrance line. I doubt anyone has their 'own' t-shirt or pair of jeans that they're instantly associated with, but smell can do that. Unless you're a person who wears the same t-shirt, jeans and smells weird all at once, then it can be a negative thing. But we're talkin' about positivity here!

So here is a list of my favorites even though favorites lists are narcissistic, but hey, this is a blog. So what who cayuhz.

This is one of the best scents ever and I'm constantly being complimented on it. I've been wearing it for about a year now and my friends can often smell it before they even get a chance to say Hi to me. It's always awkward when an old woman asks me what I'm wearing and I have to tell them "Oh, it's called..cannabis rose?". 9 times out of 10 I just say "I'm not sure! I borrowed someone's!". What's the big deal in saying cannabis? I don't know. NBD. I guess I'm a big ol' prude deep down. Anyway, it rules and lasts FOREVER. The scent is so strong and no it doesn't smell like weed. The title is misleading which can be seen as either a good thing or bad thing, depending on what kinda gal you are.
Quite possibly my favorite perfume that I'm constantly going back to. It was my first 'real perfume' that I decided I wanted after smelling a tiny sample of it at the mall. I had never heard of the brand and never really cared that much about fragrances until I smelled this. It's extremely hard to describe but I've been told that people say it reminds me of them. In fact, I remember spraying a letter I wrote to a boy I was dating with this. He asked me "This smells exactly like you. Did you spray it?" and I said "No. I did not" when I clearly did. I don't know who I thought I was or what I was getting away with. But yes, this is a crowd pleaser and my favorite. Not to mention the bottle? It's absolutely gorgeous.
This is currently what I've been wearing. Switching off between Cannabis Rose and this. I just received it this year as a Christmas present and it's a beautiful smell in an extremely pretty little bottle. It's strange because I can never smell it on myself, but I'll spray it on at 10am and I'll get comments all throughout the day even til 5pm about it. It lasts for a while on you but doesn't overpower you which is good because you're the one who has to have the damn smell trailing you around all day.

Another thing is that this one seems to attract middle aged men. So i mean, if that's your thing..take note? But when the 40 something year old man with a questionable teeth situation making my burrito asks me what perfume I'm wearing? Shit gets weird. I certainly don't want to tell him "I'm wearing Cleopatra by Tocca. You know, the one you can get at Anthropologie?" so I just say "Nothing." Which might have made things weirder.

This is one of the best scents that can ever hit anyone nostrils. Seriously. I'm not even going to TRY to explain it. Most of you have probably come into contact with Angel, and it's just a beautiful stop-dead-in-your-tracks smell. It always reminds me of my Mom and I'll spritz it on occasionally when i'm home. I've never officially owned my own bottle of Angel but I'm always borrowing it and putting it on when I see it in a store. The bottle is really interesting and usually that color blue can be a little cheesy but it truly works with the rough way the glass bottle is formed.

This is my second all time favorite perfume. I've gone through three bottles of this over the past 3 or 4 years. It's amazing. Completely subtle, light and musky but it's one of those scents that people notice the second you walk into a room. Man, woman, cat, dog, tarantula, baby, ghost. Everyone loves this fragrance. I still keep the bottle on my mantle in my room, even though it's been pretty much empty for quite some time, because I'm still convinced if I spray even just the AIR in the bottle onto my skin that I'll be able to smell like a hint of it. It's one of those scents that really make your day brighter, when you're running around feeling like a mess or even when you're laying around doing nothing. One little sniff of your skin with For Her sprayed onto it really makes everything nicer.



This was my very first fragrance ever. My Dad was on a business trip to Los Angeles the same year that Gianni Versace was killed (which was when I first found out about him. I was about 5 or 6 I believe?). Since his name was all over the news, my Dad stopped into his boutique in Beverly Hills and picked up this fragrance for me to bring home. I believe it's a cologne for boys? But I still remember him bringing it home to me, and how I saved the bag for years. I never really wore it because I was too young for perfume so the bottle always sat on my dresser. In high school I started wearing it and fell in love with it's powdery scent. It's clean and refreshing with a bit of a 'pow' involved. I still have the bottle even though it has been empty for years.

It's a special scent for me because it was my first ever, and my first (and only) Versace possession. Not to mention my family loves a good scandal. I'm sure 99% of the reason why this was purchased was because Versace was just murdered. Have I told you guys that my parents and a 5 year old me also drove by the scene of the OJ Simpson murders when we were in LA? And on a previous California trip, with little ol' me in a car seat, my family apparently 'accidentally' almost stumbled upon Spahn Ranch. So let's just say that if there was an infamous murder fragrance, I might have wound up with that too. Is this why the true crime section of Barnes & Noble is my absolute favorite? Morbid 4 ever.