Scented Thoughts: Not Knowing How To Perfume The Season

Bliss! I am starting to smell the crisp cool autumnal air of New England. This sensation is a forerunner of little celebrations of warmth, hot steaming mugs of mulled apple cider, coffee that sharpens the senses, candle lighting, breaths of warmth on one's frozen fingers, cosy fluffy ample enveloping scarves, smell of leaves and walks in the forest, and best of all a cool ambient air that needs to be infused with spices and amber. Now is the season for the deepest and richest Oriental scents to reveal their mystery. I want my perfumes to feel like glowing amber, rich cognac, and dark molasses...

This I wrote three weeks ago. I am still dreaming of rich somber perfumes. But the weather is so changing and unstable in Cambridge and Boston that it does not yet feel like a convergence of all natural energies towards the coming of winter. We are going through a period that seems to be made of a patchwork of summer and autumn materials as if an unknown force remained undecided as to fully throw itself into the cold crisp arms of fall.

Pumpkins are already being sold but they seem slightly out of place against the bright sky. What one misses are the fogs of condensed breaths and the quiet that surrounds nature as it slows down. Yet, the other day it became very quiet, so quiet that you could not hear a bird chirp and this felt too soon and out of place too. Snow was lacking to transform the dead wintery day into something more characteristic.

In this changing weather I am not able to atune my perfumes to any clear ring of the season. As a result I have acquired this Friday light fragrances as well as deep ones thus doubling my purchases. Rose Essentielle by Bvlgari was accompanied by Jill Sander no 4 and Omnia Crystalline came accompanied by Habanita. I shall not mention the others who came with them, they were a solid cohort is all I am going to say.

Photo is Autumn Mosaic by Jing