Vera Wang

What do I think about Las Vegas? It’s a quintessence of kitsch. It’s busy, crowded, artificial, vain and idle. I like Las Vegas exactly for all these traits. Having grown up in the downtown of a multi-million-population city and living now in a suburbia (highly urbanized but still and all), I miss crowds. I miss well-dressed work crowds and dressed-up holiday crowds. All that is within a 30-minutes drive from where I live but I do not take that drive too often in my day-to-day life.

Las Vegas is my fix. Once every 2-3 years for several days I live in a very busy downtown. Every time we’d stay at one of the newest hotels, walk the Strip, do some [window] shopping, watch a show and occasionally pay for resting at a video poker machine.

Many years ago my vSO and I went to Las Vegas to celebrate my birthday. The plan was to have a dinner and go for a walk but then my vSO decided to take me to see Riverdance show which I wanted to see but was hesitant to spend money on (for budgetary reasons). It was a very thoughtful gift on its own but while we were getting ready to go out my vSO handed me a nicely wrapped gift. I suspected (and hoped) it would be a perfume but wasn’t sure which one since at the time there were several perfumes that I liked and hinted to my VSO I wouldn’t mind having in months preceding my birthday.

It was Vera Wang’s first perfume Vera Wang.

Vera Wang – created in 2002 by Jean Claude Delville and Harry Fremont, notes include Bulgarian rose, calla lily, mandarin blossom, gardenia, musk and white woods. In 2003 it won two Fifi awards – for the Women’s Packaging of the Year and Women’s Nouveau Niche.

I liked Vera Wang perfume very much and was so excited that I got it that as soon as I tore off the wrapping paper and opened the box I sprayed myself all over with this wonderful perfume. I mean all over. I don’t remember how many sprays it was but I wasn’t trying to be frugal: after all, it was a new 100 ml bottle of eau de parfum.

Riverdance performed in a small venue with somewhat unconventional seating arrangements: there were sets of a table with four chairs next to it. Tickets stated only a table number. When we arrived there a couple who shared the table with us was already there. They had occupied two seats adjacent to the table leaving us two seats a table and two chairs apart. I felt bad about it: it was my birthday, we paid a lot of money (for us at the time) to go there and we were forced to sit apart. My vSO is a nonconfrontational person and I… they were just much older and I didn’t find the right words.

So we sat apart. And despite everything I was enjoying the show. Until I realized that a woman sitting next to me started coughing and sneezing and I suspected it was caused by my perfume. Because even two hours after the initial application I was still in a fragrant cloud. I felt hostile towards her for grabbing those seats but at the same time I felt guilty for aggravating her allergies. I even contemplated apologizing to her after the show. But then I thought she could have changed places with her companion (or with my vSO to be even further from me) but she hadn’t. So I kept silent. I don’t know for a fact that she did react to my perfumed indiscretion but since then I’ve never applied too much perfume when going to any performance.

Since then for many years Vera Wang was my dress-up perfume. I used it for occasions where I wasn’t afraid to over-apply it. On the onset of my perfume hobby my tastes and my collection changed and for a while I forgot about my old favorite. And then I took Vera Wang to my most recent trip to Las Vegas and wore it (very discreetly) to a show (Penn & Teller – we loved it). I still enjoy this perfume. I have no idea if it’s good or if it just holds a sentimental value but I love it. It’s loud, very feminine and very flowery. And, I think, it’s mostly (all?) synthetic. But I still would wear it from time to time and remember myself being once a Sillage Monster.