more tiny bottles

I wore Eau de Soir by Sisley today - it's starting to grow on me. It's a more traditional French perfume, somewhat aldehydic (like Chanel No. 5) and, to my mind, fairly aggressive. My first experience of Eau de Soir actually made me recoil a little bit. But the initial, volatile burst of top notes does evaporate, and the perfume eventually mellows somewhat - by the end of the day, I smelled pretty good (to myself, anyway).

This evening, my sister picked me up and we went and got dinner and did some shopping. I dragged her to the Body Shop, where I layered a few more scents on top of the Eau de Soir. Then I went home, to discover a bonanza of samplers in my mailbox. I was ripping open packages even as I was walking through the door to my apartment, and within minutes I had five more fragrances on my skin. As I type this, I am probably smelling somewhat ridiculous. And I am totally blissed out. My cat doesn't know what to think.

The problem, of course, is that I am wearing too much perfume. I can't quite tell one smell from another at this point. I think I may need to take a two-day sabbatical in order to be able to use my nose properly again. My sister made a good point tonight - that the more one uses perfume, the more likely it is that one's sniffer becomes de-sensitized. (I think she made this point partly because she noticed how, um, fragrant I am today.) At any rate, I need to take a break.

One last thing - one of the samples in the mail was a Laura Ashley perfume, and I will have to re-visit this when my nose is less handicapped, but my first impression is a really nice one. It's L'Eau, made by Jean-Claude Ellena, and it smells like...water. Imagine it's a hot, thirsty spring day and you are drinking a cold glass of clean, sweet water, and you will have an idea of what this one smells like. The fragrance is really delicate - it's definitely a "fresh" perfume, with some light floral and citrus notes, but there's also a faint tinge of anise, or licorice, and something else - a saltiness, maybe? so, so nice.

Oops, I was supposed to write about men's perfumes or cat butt (not necessarily linking the two). Okay, that will be the next post.