It is not a serious question: I couldn’t help but paraphrase the philosophical question “If a tree falls in a forest… ” It was prompted by real events earlier this week (see My Answer for more details), but for the Saturday Question post I meant it more along the line: How often does it happen to you?

Saturday Question #225:

If You Can’t Find a Perfume in Your Collection, Does It Even Exist?

Is your collection small enough or well-organized so that this never happens to you? Or do you also struggle with locating perfumes you want to wear or test?

My Answer

In the beginning of the week, after reading Vanessa’s (Bonkers About Perfume) post about Epona, a new perfume from Papillon Perfumery, and its place in Vanessa’s personal hierarchy of preferences for this brand (I’m not telling – check it out in her post if you haven’t done so yet), I realized that I haven’t worn my two absolute favorites from the brand in a while and decided to rectify it. Immediately. Riiiight…

In my defense: I do not own bottles of Bengale Rouge and Hera (yet). A decant of Bengale Rouge that a generous friend shared with me still has a couple of ml. This perfume has a special meaning for me: missing Rusty while traveling to London years ago, I fell in love with Bengale Rouge. So, this bottle is on my mental “to buy” list once I finish the decant.

I bought a sample of Hera right before my self-imposed “no-buy,” so I was cherishing it, knowing that eventually this perfume would join my collection (and secretly hoping that maybe the brand would release their perfumes in travel bottles).

I spent two days looking for both perfumes. I knew that I had them. I could envision them in my mind. But I couldn’t remember in which box or drawer I put them. That’s when I thought that if I couldn’t locate a perfume when I wanted to wear it, it wasn’t much different from not having it at all. Well, in some respects, it was worse if you count my frustration from going over and over all the possible places.

I dug them out eventually, wore them again and confirmed that I still liked and wanted both. But don’t I risk “disappearing” more of my current favorites by adding more perfumes to my collection?

What is your experience?

If You Can’t Find a Perfume in Your Collection, Does It Even Exist?

I remember times when Olympic games were a big deal for me: I watched even those sports that didn’t interest me at other times. Then I would watch an opening ceremony and gymnastics (Summer games) or figure skating (Winter). Then… I knew about the upcoming 2024 Olympics in France and read some news and commentaries (I still can’t believe they are going to swim in Seine!). But I wasn’t sure about the exact schedule, and a couple of days ago I thought the Olympics had already started. A couple of hours ago, I learned that the opening ceremony was earlier today, and I missed it. It didn’t even upset me. I might attempt to watch a video if I find anything online. Or not. But one way or the other, sport was on my mind.

Fragrantica has about 400 fragrances sporting (pun intended) one of the forms of this word, for example, Burberry Sport, Polo Sport by Ralph Lauren or Sporty Citrus by Michael Kors. Additionally, one can find some sport-related names (though not utilizing the word itself), such as Tennis by L’acqua di Fiori, Work Out by Womo or Rugby for Men by Pascal Morabito.

Saturday Question #224:

Do You Have Any “Sport” Perfumes in Your Collection?

Be as literal or metaphorical as you wish.

A bonus question: do you plan to watch any of the Olympic disciplines this time?

My Answer

Not only do I not own a single “sport” perfume, I am not sure whether I’ve ever tried any. I wonder if it is my attitude towards most sports activities that put me off those.

The only perfume I tried with the name vaguely reminding a sport (though not an Olympic one) is Checkmate by Mind Games. I enjoyed the fruity-rose opening every time I tested it, but that pleasant intro combination was a sprinter on an extremely short distance, and 5 minutes into the development it became somewhat boring. It gets its “second wind” the next day as a wonderful robe scent. But I disqualified it from the daily competition for the first place on my skin.

As for the Summer Olympics, I might catch a couple of after-the-fact clips of Simone Biles if she performs well. But in general I will probably miss most of the competitions.

How about you?

Do You Have Any “Sport” Perfumes in Your Collection?

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?