Home Beckons

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Already five minutes late for meeting my husband in the food court, I weave my way quickly through the racks of skinny clothes in Macy’s junior section, beating a fast path toward the mall center. With just a few feet to go before the doorway, I swerve left, eyes drawn to the familiar purple Poison bottle, calling out to me under the bright fluorescent lights. I glance left and right, hoping to sneak a free spray before the helpful young woman with the one-counter-over-perfect make-up can snag me with her sales pitch. Successful, I wave my wrist a couple of times, take a big whiff, and head out the door. Ah, perfume…

Perfume proves there’s a difference in body chemistries. My husband came home one day raving about the perfume a young woman at work wore called Fire & Ice. An internet description said it all. “For the woman who plays with fire and skates on thin ice. Fire & Ice is a provocative fragrance that’s both sensual and passionate, yet cool and mysterious.” How could I lose? So, off to K-Mart I drove, anxious to light the match and test the ice. Back in the car, I tore open the package, spritzing this direct route to passion onto my wrists and neck. By the third spray, I was opening the windows, hoping to dilute the stench (hint of singed feathers doused by cold water) with the frigid January air! With great diplomacy, Gary told me that it smelled pretty good on me, but we agreed to donate it to his coworker so that he could continue to enjoy it at work!

Fortunately, Jean Carles created a masterpiece for Dana in 1932. Tabu ranks right up there with my other favorite smells – cotton towels fresh off the clothesline, homemade apple pie in the oven, and corn silage pitched out of the silo. Recently, I read a review of Tabu, feeling slightly offended by the description. “Tabu smells … like a viscous brew of maple syrup, patchouli, and incense. It is an odor that is almost tangible, like walking through a thick-napped velvet curtain.” Another site describes it as leathery tobacco! OK, so it’s cheap, but Gary sure loves me with Tabu – fortunately even better than that young woman with her Fire & Ice!

I’ve actually been pretty much perfume-free over the past few years, feeling empathy for my boss who has a super-sensitive, beagle-like nose. I figured it was a fair trade off, considering our work in the chemical industry; a perfume-free office in exchange for an on-site, coal-mine canary, able to alert me to any strange smells long before I could catch wind of any dangerous concoctions. Now semi-retired, I’m swooping into those perfume counters more often, trying to find that perfect mix of Tabu with notes of sunshine-dried Tide, hot pastry, and fermented corn. Perfumers: this is your challenge!

My mother’s long-time favorite is Chantilly. Brought to life in 1941, Chantilly’s recipe calls for a chaotic mix of lemon, jasmine, rose, orange blossom, carnation, sandalwood, moss, vanilla, musk, and more exotic-sounding ingredients – bergamot, nerolic, tonka bean, and ylang-ylang. My mom can’t put into words why she picked this fragrance, other than to say that it just smelled good to her. At least one other soul is more expressive. One evening, about forty years ago, my mother attended a local dance, wearing her beloved Chantilly. As the last words of Eddy Arnold’s “Bouquet of Roses” faded away, the guy she was dancing with stepped back and made her day, saying without cracking a smile, “You smell really good. You smell almost as good as mashed potatoes and gravy!” Must be the ylang-ylang…

Spray away, but don’t kill the canary!
Deecee