Holiday in NYC

Dave saw a note in the NY Times several months ago that said the play Black Watch was going to be returning to St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn this fall. Since I was dying to see it when it came out last year, and since it would still be running on my birthday--which happened to coincide with the Thanksgiving holiday--he asked if I'd like to go. Answer: Yes! So, we spent our long weekend in New York, enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner with some old friends, saw the play, and of course, shopped for perfume.


















Yep, this is me at the Caron boutique, as transfixed with desire as Gollum before the Ring, or a dog at a deli counter. Note the hunched shoulders, the clasped hands--I swear I didn't pose for this. Dave secretly took it with his cell phone. Apparently, this is just how I look when I'm shopping for perfume.

Or maybe I should say, this is how I look when I'm surrounded by great perfumes, and there's a charming, knowledgeable person to help me sniff my way through them. Diane Haska was wonderful about encouraging me to sample some new things without seeming to push them at all, and it was a lot of fun to have some serious perfume chat with a flesh-and-blood person. I don't get much opportunity for that in White Bluff.

Courtesy of Dave--official sponsor of the 2008 BitterGrace Black Friday Sniffathon--I snagged a little of the doomed Alpona, and I also got some French Can Can. FCC has recently disappeared from the Parfums Caron website, and I asked Diane about its fate. She said she's had no word about it being discontinued, but I figured I'd nab a drop just in case. It's such a lovely, romantic scent. While we're on the subject of the urn perfumes, I would like to say that I sniffed several that I have known for a long time, and they do not seem substantially changed to me. I am aware of the critical wailing and gnashing of teeth about the cheapening of the classic Carons, but I would encourage Caron lovers to take it with a grain of salt.

That said, Diane did let me sniff an edp version of N'aimez que Moi, which seemed like a very pale shadow of the extrait. I wouldn't buy it, but of course that's because I have loved the extrait for years. She also had me sample both the old and relaunched versions of Montaigne. The 2007 tweak is, predictably, a lighter and less interesting duplication of the original. Dave and I both loved the old Montaigne so much that he bought me a bottle of that, too.

Our New York sojourn also included visits to Takashimaya and Aedes de Venustas. I'll blog about those later this week, and there'll be a post about the play, too. Meanwhile, back to Sunday chores ...


ENABLER ALERT: Caron, by the way, is having its annual sale this week, Dec. 1-6, with 20% off fragrances. The phone number is (212) 319-4888.