I hope you all survived well the outages caused by CrowdStrike’s issues. From what I read, it wasn’t the best day for air travel (and many other activities). Let’s hope life goes back to normal over the weekend.

Saturday Question #223:

What Is the Best Perfume Created by a Store?

Do you have in your collection perfumes created by/for perfume stores? What is your favorite? Did you buy it at that store?

My Answer

For many years, I didn’t like the idea of perfumes created by perfume boutiques. My thought process was that those stores should be in the business of curating existing perfumes from other brands rather than commissioning their own perfumes. I tried perfumes from 4 or 5 stores, but the only brand that impressed me was Aedes de Venustas, and the only perfume that joined my collection so far was Cierge de Lune. So, this is my answer for today’s question.

How about you?

What Is the Best Perfume Created by a Store?

I like NST. Whenever I get there, I enjoy glancing over some perfume news and reading friendly exchanges in daily SOTD threads. It doesn’t happen often these days because I’m too busy when most people are active there, so by the time I can take a break most commenters are already gone – and I didn’t see a point in talking into void. So, with any extra time I have, I prefer to visit friendly blogs. But I am trying to watch for splitmeets because it used to be my steady source of 5 ml “samples” for interesting new releases.

This year I knew it was coming – and then almost missed it. I remembered about it last moment, went there in some giddy anticipation… and was both surprised and disappointed. Not only I didn’t find anything that would interest me (I’m not even sure what I wanted – maybe Chanel Comete?), but the even itself was quite underwhelming: 8 splits were offered, just 2 of them “closed,” 2 got no takers, and the rest gathered some interest, but I don’t know whether they went through.

Saturday Question #217:

Are Perfume Splits Dead?

From the SQ four years ago, I know that many of my loyal readers did not participate in splits for various reasons. But my today’s question is not just about whether you stopped or didn’t start participating in friendly splits, but also about your opinion as to what’s happening with this part of our hobby. And, if your answer is “Yes,” why do you think it is happening?

My Answer

I know, this is my fault, it happens to me all the time: I might be going to a restaurant or a store for years; then something happens that introduces a prolonged pause in my visits; and the next time I decide that “It’s been too long, let’s visit X!” I find that X has closed. So, with my no/low-buy in the last couple of years, I’m not surprised the splitting subsided.

Jokes aside… I know, this is my fault. Well, not just mine, since probably each of you contributed to this. More and more brands have finally realized that “perfumista size bottles” (10-15 ml), about which we all kept talking for the last 13+ years, is where money are. And while small bottles from brands are more expensive per ml than a friendly split, those official bottles survive better than their manually decanted counterparts. So, having said our farewells to more than one evaporated decant neglected in our collections for two long, when (or rather “if”) adding anything else to our SABLEs (“Stash Above and Beyond Life Expectancy,” according to Vanessa’s (Bonkers About Perfume) SIL), we might be more inclined to buy a travel bottle.

What do you think? Is it my fault?

Are Perfume Splits Dead?

Musk in perfumery was recently on my mind: Portia just published a post about Musk by Lorenzo Villoresi, and while commenting on that post, I discovered that I had more than 25 perfumes in my database that had one of the variations on the word “musk” in the name. Also, one of new perfumes I’ve been testing features that note (stay tuned for the mini-review post).

Saturday Question #216:

Do You Like Musk Perfumes?

If yes, what are your favorites? If no, are you sensitive to any musks or some specific ones?

My Answer

I have never thought about musk as a leading note in perfumery: it was mostly a base note in perfumes I liked or didn’t like but not something that would define how inclined I am to feel one way or the other about new perfume I intended to try.

What I didn’t like about this (or any other) note was when it was used as a name of perfume. Not because I know that I do not like the scent profile but because I don’t like that type of names.

But what about perfumes? I decided to look only at those perfumes from the list of testes perfumes that had “musk” (“musc”) as a part of their names.

It looks like I don’t like musk in my perfumes, after all: of the 27 perfumes in my database with “musk” in the name, I do not own a single bottle (full or travel) and only one small decant.

Out of all musk perfumes I’ve ever tested, I would like to own only three – Annick Goutal Musc Nomade (the original one; I haven’t tried the last at least two reformulations, so I’m not sure that I would even like it now), Hermes Musc Pallida (maybe one day, but today I can’t bring myself to pay its price) and maybe Ramon Molvizar Musk Oriental Goldskin (but I tried it only once, many years ago, so even if it hadn’t been as expensive as it is, I wouldn’t have bought a FB without trying it again). There were 2-3 more that I thought were nice but not to the extent of wanting more.

How about you?

Do You Like Musk Perfumes?