Perfume Soothes Me

So. Everybody who knows me well knows I love perfume. I always have. When I was teenybopper, I learned to use baby powder and vanilla extract. Then came Love's Baby Soft, Heaven Sent, Emeraude, and others. Then I discovered Shalimar. Oh my.

These days, I've experimented with several fragrances. Whatever I can afford and whatever family and friends gift to me on special occasions. This is great because I often end up falling in love with a scent I would never have tried.

For Christmas this year, my family got me 2 new fragrances. This one is Shi by Alfred Sung. I had never heard of it before but I mentioned that I liked his Sung for Women scent. This one is really nice. It's soft and feminine and nice for everyday wear.

And doesn't that bottle remind you a little bit of a gnome?

The other fragrance really surprised me. For one thing, I'm only vaguely familiar with Micheal Buble and I didn't know he had a fragrance branded to him. For another thing... Wow. Totally knocked flat by how much I like this.

The bottle is gorgeous. The USPS must have knocked the package around because the tip broke off the top. This is what an undamaged (and better photographed) bottle looks like:

Notice that the little circular piece is not missing from the top of the bottle... The glass part holding the perfume is sort of floating inside the metal outer ring. Very classy looking.

The scent is a smoky, Oriental type of fragrance. Before applying it, I was thinking that it smells a lot like Rhianna's fragrance, Reb'L Fleur:

I have a bottle but my lid went missing during the move from Alaska.

However, when this is applied to my skin and mixes with my chemistry, it's just glorious. Reminds me of a darker, smokier version of Opium if Opium was married to Shalimar. This is the kind of fragrance that will make someone want to nuzzle your neck. Another plus is that it takes very little to get a full effect, and the scent actually lasts for quite a while.

Now, you all remeber my beloved Shalimar that a niece gifted to me before I left Alaska:

Yeah, you guys have probably seen that pic before. I post it so much! I think I mentioned that Shalimar no longer lingers well on my skin. I've been using its brother fragrance, Habit Rouge. It's marketed to men but smells wonderful on females who like Opium and Shalimar.

The perfumes I've gotten are my favorite gifts this past year. I guess it's been about four or five years since I discovered Viva la Juicy. Man, I love that scent. It has been my go-to fragrance for a while now. I've used up most of my supply and am down to the little collection type bottles.

So glad for those miniatures!

Now, if some of you were wondering as I have exactly how those celebrity fragrances come to be, then this article thoroughly explains the process.

The only thing I hate about perfume is that they are kind of unreliable. Either a scent you love will start to hate your body chemistry and just stop working or - and this is what I really hate - a scent will just be discontinued. Ugh! That's the worst. That happened with Flori Robert's Gold. Also, whatever happened to Cher's fragrance? It was pretty nice.

For now, I'm happy to have my gifts so THANK YOU, fam. I'm tightening up my already squeaking budget and perfume is the first casualty. What you want to bet I can make my current supplies last for at least a year?

Peace
--Free

Shalimar (the fragrance) Has a Brother & I Love Him

Shalimar perfume was once my scent. Not just the perfume, but even the EDT and the lotions smelled amazing on my body. Shalimar, my sweet Shalimar... I owned it, rocked it, and wore it so well that I should have been a Guerlain spokeswoman.

Then, hormones.

When I turned the age corner from 35 to 36 or 37, I noticed my Shalimar didn't smell quite the same. Actually, it smelled just as wonderful as always - for about two hours. Then, nothing. Always before then, it was at the 2-hour mark that the fragrance was starting to work a third-level of magic. Those undernotes in the potion would go from spicy and start to get mellower and kind of smoky.

By the time, I hit 40, I had to give up on Shalimar. The perfume still worked for me. Mostly. Thing is, the perfume is pricier than I could splurge on that often.

I played with some other scents, trying to find any one of them that made me feel the way Shalimar once had. And, believe me, with fragrance, it is so much about the feeling. When I wore Shalimar, I felt beautiful and sexy. I felt empowered by my own femininity. That may sound strange, but it's true. No matter what clothes I wore or how I styled my hair and makeup, I just didn't feel completely "finished" until I dabbed on, spritzed on, or smoothed on my Shalimar.

The first other fragrance I kind-of-sort-of loved after Shalimar was Dior's Dune. I really liked it a lot, but it didn't take away my grief over Shalimar.

Then I met Flori Robert's Gold fragrance. Oh, mercy. It's as if the heavens opened up and breathed out golden sunshine. Once again, I felt like I had found my soul's aroma. That latest for about 2 years and then, I will be damned if Gold was no more.

What is it about wonderful things like the perfect fragrance or a really good makeup product? Is there a demon of the vanities that decides when to slap us with reality by discontinuing something we love?

Whatever.

Everyone knows what they feel like when something they love is discontiued.

Since then, I have never had a "signature scent". I like Viva la Juicy (a lot), Donna Karan's Cashmere, Kenzo's Flowers, and another Gold scent that I lost my tester tube of so I don't know who brands it. I like a lot of scents, but I have never been in love with one again since Shalimar and Flori Robert's Gold. I became perfume celibate.

Then, I was reading about how a lot of femme scents have matching Homme scents (and, no I don't care if I just mangled that all up). I started to wonder if Shalimar had a matching "brother" scent. And, here, folks, is where life gets weird...

This is apparently the brother scent of Shalimar:

I even like the bottle

That is Habit Rouge. Which happens to have been the favorite scent of one of my biggest celebrity crushes ever. This man:

via GIPHY
Makes me sweat.

OK, that's when he was young and so were we. He still had that charisma when he got a bit older.

via GIPHY

The saddest thing is, he never lived to reach middle age with the rest of us.

Still, you know a man is hot when he's been gone from this earth for something like 20 years and women still swoon at the mention of his name. Just take a look at the teenagers on Tumblr who crush on the man.

via GIPHY

Go ahead. Swoon a little. I'll wait.

Anyway, I heard about the fragrance matching Shalimar a while before I learned my late crush had favored it. And it smells ah-may-zing.

Now, I will wear a fragrance meant for men. Fahrenheit is a favorite of mine, but only because I like the way it smells, period. I love Habit Rouge because of the way it smells on me. Isn't it just crazy the power scents and smells hold over us? They evoke all kinds of emotions and memories.

If you ever wanted a fragrance that compliments Shalimar, Habit Rouge is the one.

Peace
--Free