The X Factor

Mary has a nice review of Parfum d’Ida over at her blog. She mentions my review, which was actually written about an earlier incarnation of the scent. I liked both versions a lot, but I have to say the latest one is far more wearable and I suspect it will have plenty of fans. If the first one had hit the market, it would have belonged to a select niche among niche-lovers, i.e., people who want something very exclusive with a lot of moxie.

I don’t have anything against moxie. I wear some pretty hardball scents--Miss Balmain and Fracas are two widely hated faves of mine—but they’re always a little bit complicated for me. As much as we sniff fiends like to say we wear perfume to please ourselves, I don’t think any of us are oblivious to the sillage issue. I know which perfumes in my collection are fairly reliable pleasers (Ivoire, Fidji, Narcisse Blanc, Bourbon French Jasmine, Sand & Sable), and I tend to stick with those anytime I know I’ll be in close quarters with people. I save my really challenging stuff for days when I’m pretty sure I’ll be on my own at home, or at least traveling solo.

The trouble is, that leaves 50 or 60 scents in my collection for which I don’t have a wearing policy, because I really have no idea how they smell to other people. I have learned through experience that there is no predicting the reaction I’ll get to a perfume, regardless of its popularity or its cost. For instance, today I put on a generous dab of Bourbon French’s Olive Blossom. It’s sweet, it’s fruity, it’s lush, and it’s old-fashioned with a vengeance. It smells great to me, but it’s just the kind of thing that often brings on nose wrinkling and queries about whether the pest control service has been by. So I was slightly surprised when a nodding acquaintance (I don’t even know his name) walked past me at the park and then turned back to say, “You smell good!” Chalk one up for Bourbon French, but it just goes to show that there’s no reliable way of evaluating the allure, or lack thereof, in most perfumes. Fragrance lovers are stuck with an X factor that can come into play any time we take our scented bodies out into the world.

It’s such a blow to vanity to realize that we have no way of knowing how people perceive us—not just our perfumes, of course, but everything about our public selves: how we look, sound and smell, what attitude we project, etc. There are countless products and self-improvement gurus out there to help us take charge of those things, and all of them are utterly useless. Unless we master Spock’s mind meld, we simply cannot know what someone else perceives, much less control it. Our best efforts to charm may make us repulsive; the flaw we despise may be the very thing that endears us to others.

So what’s a perfumista to do? Spritz and hope for the best, I guess. And enjoy the mystery.


Photo of Tea Olive in bloom from Wikimedia Commons