lovely/covet

I am sitting here - reclining, actually - on the couch, and I smell like Sarah Jessica Parker. On my left wrist is Lovely, which was created about two years ago (I am always, always behind the curve); on the other is Covet, which was released recently. Both are perfumes created by Ms. Parker. And I must say, I smell really fricking good. Especially on the left.

A lot has been written about Lovely, especially by Mr. Chandler Burr (otherwise known as my boyfriend [if he weren't gay]). His still new-ish book, The Perfect Scent, includes an in-depth description of how this perfume was created. I personally thought Lovely was a dorky name for a perfume and I thought the commercial for the perfume was dorky, too, when it came out. At that time, I think if I had to choose between browsing celebrity perfumes and chewing on a lightbulb while it was still plugged in and glowing, I probably would have picked the latter. What a difference a couple of years makes. My goodness.

Covet, the more recently-created perfume, smells pretty darned good. It starts out with a nice, sharp blend of fresh greeny-ness and lemon, along with a few other fairly assertive smells. The whole thing would, in fact, be maybe too aggressive except mixed in there is also a small handful of smoother qualities - I couldn't really define any of them for myself until I looked the perfume up on the internet and was able to identify: Chocolate! Nice choice.

Lovely is the twin sister of Covet, but, like, the paternal twin sister. Definitely the blonde one. Covet, in fact, would probably smell pretty irresistible on a guy, but Lovely could work well on either or any of the genders. It is pretty wonderful, in fact. In fact, I can't seem to stop sniffing my arm. The perfume has settled down to a quiet powderiness, but the first smell out of the bottle was a real zinger, albeit not a noisy one. I inhaled: a sweet, subdued floral mixed with a nice dose of woodsiness and a very nice ambery smell...plus something else that I couldn't name, except that it smelled exactly like drama class. Exactly like Lisser Theater on the Mills campus. I'm still not sure if it is the mixture of cedar and amber, plus the delicate touches of narcissus and patchouli, but whatever it is, it's great. It smells like white flowers and salty skin. Chandler Burr calls it "a sheath of light built around a core of dark." Yes.

Okay, I've been sniffing myself for a couple of hours now, and it seems as though Lovely has settled down with a pillow and a book in her corner of the windowseat, but Covet is still goin' strong and wants me to know about it. Even after a few hours, the greeny-ness is still mixing really nicely with the chocolate, plus all the other stuff that's going on in there.

DAMN, I smell good.