Last week, as we discussed perfumes we’d like to get back in our collections, Hamamelis mentioned Iris Silver Mist, and that sparkled a memory. 12-15 years ago, Serge Lutens perfumes were quite popular in Perfumeland in general, and bell jars were something that people talked about with bated breath. Those who were lucky to travel to Europe (or have a perfume mule) would proudly present their prized possession, and others would be in awe of the beauty. Around 2012, those bell jars finally made it to the US. The price was steep by those time’s standards – about $300 for a 75 ml bell jar, much more expensive than those were in Europe. But at least they were here.

These days, I don’t hear about Lutens perfumes too often, and I don’t know if any store in the US still carries that line after the demise of Barneys. But Serge Lutens website offers all perfumes, including bell jars (with just $9 delivery fee). And the prices today, 12+ years later, are $320 for a bell jar, which in today’s prices doesn’t feel as exorbitant (not that I’m prepared to pay it now). It has been a while since the brand released the last new bell jar, but still…

Saturday Question #263:

Do You Own Any Serge Lutens Perfume in a Bell Jar?

If yes, which one(s)? If now, was the price the only deterrence? Or did you not find any in the line to love? Or did you not like that format?

Do you think you’ll ever buy one [more]?

My Answer

I have two! The first one, De Profundis, was delivered from Europe by a friend after I overcame my initial preconception against the name. I bought and wore the second one, Boxeuses, as an invisible armor during a couple of rough years at the end of my long stretch at the company I worked at then, including the last day, as I was leaving for the next job. I still enjoy both, though I just can’t bring myself to using perfumes from those bottles: I keep decanting them into a much less glamorous containers keeping perfumes in bell jars pristine.

I am not sure if I would buy another perfume in that format if it is available in a spray bottle as well. The closest contender would probably be Bas de Soie, but it really pains me to pay a bell jar price for perfume I should have bought in a regular bottle when it was available.

How about you?

Do You Own Any Serge Lutens Perfume in a Bell Jar?

Last week’s topic clearly wasn’t a favorite of my loyal readers: some didn’t participate at all, some still refused to part with any of their bottles even theoretically. Let’s try the other way around.

Saturday Question #262:

What Perfume Would You Get Back If You Could?

The condition is: you previously had that perfume in your collection – not a sample, but anything else from a decant (the smallest allowed size 5 ml) via minis and travel bottles to a full bottle can play. It doesn’t matter if perfumes are still in production, discontinued or reformulated. In this fantasy poll you can wish for any version of any perfume – as long as it fits the criteria.

My Answer

Since in the last 15 years I haven’t finished any bottles that I loved without replacing them, and I’ve bought most perfumes I tried and liked, my choice is between something mainstream that I wore before falling into the niche rabbit-hole and perfumes that were discontinued before I could get them.

My choice is Deneuve by Avon. I had only a decant of it shared by a kind friend, and every time I wear it, I feed sad that once my decant is gone, I won’t be able to replace it. Vintage bottles can still be found online, but I wouldn’t trust it to be in a wearable condition. It is a wonderful green chypre. You might like it or not, but when you smell it you know that what you smell is a real perfume and not some conceptual art or abstract scented product. If I could, I would have magically conjured a bottle of Deneuve.

How about you?

What Perfume Would You Get Back If You Could?

Let’s do a mental exercise. Just for fun. Don’t worry: nobody will hold you to whatever choice you’ll make answering this week’s SQ.

Saturday Question #261:

What One Perfume Would You Vote Off Your Wardrobe Island?

It has to be a full bottle (presentation-wise, it doesn’t have to be actually full), so no decants, travel or mini bottles! It has to be a perfume that you used to wear at some point – and not just got someone else’s castaway (“I know you’re ‘into perfume’ – here, take this one, I do not use it”-style). It can’t be a perfume you’ve already consciously decided to “retire” but just couldn’t or didn’t want to part with. Just look at (or think about) your perfume wardrobe and name one bottle you’d let go if you had to make this choice.

If you have a “good” candidate, tell us how you got it in the first place and why you don’t want it any longer. If you don’t have any such perfumes, you still have to choose one (that’s the rules of this game!) and explain your “Sophie’s choice.”

My Answer

I constantly put myself in this situation: I come up with a question – and then I’m not sure how to answer it myself!

After spending some time going through my perfume collection in my head last night, I fell asleep. (Hmm… maybe I should start using this method as a sleep aid?) Today I went through the database and came up with a list of 7 “maybes.” One was a gift – so, not ready yet. One was kind of a swap… and it’s discontinued/rare, and the bottle is cute… Nah, it’ll die in my collection. In the end, I decided to go with the one that was the latest to my collection (out of the five considered) – Ilio by Diptyque. I bought it almost four years ago (here’s the story – I should have known better by that phase in my hobby!), and since then, I have chosen to wear it… exactly two times, both soon after the purchase. I am not sure I even thought about it since then. So, I suspect I wouldn’t even have noticed if it had decided to abscond and join the secret all-perfumista army of MIA fragrances.

How about you?

What One Perfume Would You Vote Off Your Wardrobe Island?

As much as I do not care for the most new brands these days, a brand created by one of the most prolific perfumers of 2010s, Bertrand Duchaufour, seems deserving at least a consideration.

Saturday Question #260:

Have You Tried Any L’ENTROPISTE Fragrances?

If yes, did you like any of them? If no, do you plan to?

A bonus question: Do you have any favorite perfumes created by Bertrand Duchaufour?

My Answer

I have not tried any of these perfumes yet. I would have been tempted to get a mini-discovery set from the brand’s site, but shipping to the US almost doubles the price of already quite spendy samples. So, I’ll probably wait until I can try them somewhere at a store or at least buy with the local delivery rates.

I remember a couple of years when Mr Duchaufour would release more than 20 perfumes per year. So, for some reason I thought I would have more perfumes created by him. But according to my database, I’ve ever tried just 46 perfumes where I know he was the nose. And out of those, I counted only 8 strong favorites – Naomi Goodsir Or du Serail, Neela Vermeire Creations Bombay Bling!, Ashoka, Pichola and Trayee, Parfums MDCI Chypre Palatin, The Vagabond Prince Enchanted Forest and L’Artisan Parfumeur Traversee du Bosphore. And even then, I have full bottles only for the first two, and with the rest – just travel bottles or decants. I wish I didn’t miss the opportunity to buy Traversee du Bosphore while it was still available, because that one and Bombay Bling! are the only two from the list I will miss once I’m done with what I have.

How about you?

Have You Tried Any L’ENTROPISTE Fragrances?

I started thinking about this topic when I read that Domino’s Pizza, an American multinational pizza restaurant chain, for the recent Valentine’s Day had launched a limited edition perfume, Eau de Passion, inspired by their most popular pizza, Pepperoni Passion. It wasn’t openly sold, but you could enter to win a bottle of it somehow (I’m not sure about details). They liked that idea so much that recently they continued the theme in their April’s Fool FB post. It wasn’t a completely novel idea: Demeter had their version of Pizza perfume in 2012, and it looks like it’s still in production. And it looks like at least a couple more of the less known brands cooked up their own pizza-inspired perfume recipes. So, let’s talk about pizzas and perfumes. And taking into consideration how geographically diverse my loyal audience is, I thought this topic might be deeper than it seems on the surface.

Saturday Question #259:

Do You Like Pizza? How About Pizza Perfume?

Do you eat pizza? If yes, do you have a favorite? Have you ever smelled any of the pizza-inspired perfumes? What do you think about the idea?

My Answer

Story time! Since I haven’t done real perfume stories for a while, I’ll use this SQ post to tell one of my stories.

I grew up without pizza in my life. We just didn’t have that in my native country. I am not sure I even knew about that food. Many other foods, even more exotic, I knew at least from books or movies, but somehow pizza wasn’t a part of that learning avenue. And then around the time I started university, the first pizza restaurant opened in my city. Chicago-style deep-dish pizza was the closest our first pizza resembled. It smelled divine, it tasted great, and it seemed totally worth the 40-50-minutes waiting in line to get seated and order it.

Even before coming here, from the friend who came here first with his parents and worked for a while delivering pizza, we learned that local pizza was completely different from what we knew as “pizza” back at home, which was confirmed when we moved to the US. The fact that pizzas would be usually ordered from (as I still think horrible) chains didn’t help. I refused to eat it.

After many years in the US, I kind of accepted the tradition of ordering pizzas to the office or improvised parties and resolved to eating just toppings leaving most of the crust on my plate. My co-workers and friends laughed looking at me scraping the toppings from the next slice, but at least I participated.

And only decades later, I discovered that pizzas made by good Italian restaurants were quite tasty. So, from time to time, we order a pizza at one of my favorite restaurants (to dine in or to take home). The one I like the most is a pizza with prosciutto, burrata cheese, eggplant and arugula. I am still not a fan of any “traditional” pizzas. Pepperoni is not something I would eat in any form, and as a pizza topping it seems even less attractive.

As to pizza perfume… Definitely no. I am not even curious to smell it. There are not that many food-related scents that I would find attractive as a personal scent. And nothing about pizza, even the best one, is associated for me with perfume I would wear.

How about you?

Do You Like Pizza? How About Pizza Perfume?

Thank you to Portia for holding the fort last week. I’m back and feeling better. But my last week’s malaise brought us this topic.

Saturday Question #258:

Have You Ever Lost a Sense of Smell?

If yes, how long did it last? Did you keep wearing perfumes? If you were to experience these for a prolonged period of time, do you think you would keep applying perfumes?

My Answer

Last week I got sick. It was some type of a virus that goes around. Several of our friends got it, then my vSO followed them. I was the last one to finally succumb to it. I thought I escaped it, but almost a week after my vSO got sick, I eventually followed him. Not a fun experience. Do not recommend.

One night, feeling feverish and thirsty, I took a sip from the bottle of Smart Water on my night stand and in half-dream thought: “So, now they decided to reformulate this water as well?” Water didn’t taste the way I remembered it. The next thought woke me up: “Wait a minute… It’s not a new bottle, I had some water from it the day before, and it tasted fine…” I immediately picked up my Vicks VapoInhaler – just to confirm my suspicion: I couldn’t smell neither menthol nor camphor, both of which are very well represented in that inhaler. “Can it be that I do have Covid?” – I thought and went back to sleep, since there was absolutely nothing I could do at this point.

It wasn’t Covid after all, and a day later, as the inflammation in my nose subsided, the sense of smell came back. But before it restored, I was extremely upset thinking that it would have been quite unfortunate if I were to lose my sense of smell for any prolonged period of time (I didn’t even consider a possibility of a permanent loss!). I didn’t wear any perfume while I was sick (I couldn’t get out of bed, so perfume wasn’t a priority), but I was thinking that once I feel better, I would put something on – even if I can’t smell it for a while. Luckily, I didn’t get a chance to live through wearing perfumes without being able to smell them. But the thought was scary.

Have You Ever Lost a Sense of Smell?