Perfume

Inspired by Laura, and my ever-growing collection…..

Narciso Rodriguez

I like Essence and Musk, but my favourite is the original For Her.  Someone described it as smelling rich, sophisticated and dirty.  Yeah, that about sums it up.  For a long time it was my signature perfume.

MAC MV3

Possibly my very favourite perfume ever; it’s sweet and quite intense with vanilla and jasmine overtones, but with a dark leathery and vertiver depth.  Utterly delicious and very sexy.


Paul Smith Story

I tend to prefer male perfumes to female ones, which I think often are too sweet/florally and don’t have enough depth. I like this one for its mix of citrus, floral and wood; it’s a very nuzzly fragrance.  It’s one of my standard work-wear fragrances.

Lancome Hypnose For Men

I suppose this might be described as a masculine oriental fragrance; it’s quite spicey with lavendery and musky overtones.   I think it’s almost feminine-smelling on first sniff, then the spices and warmth deepen it.  It’s my boyfriend’s signature scent; he’s a proper boy’s boy but with an unexpected feminine streak, and it suits him perfectly. 

Viktor and Rolf Antidote

Another citrus-floral-wood-leather fragrance; citrus spicey topnotes and then a vanillay woody base note to finish.   It’s a classic-with-a-twist; quite sophisticated and polished (a little at odds with V&R clothes perhaps!); gentlemanly in other words!  I like subverting that by wearing it when I’m working serious black leather and shedloads of black eyeliner.

John Varvatos

Utterly delicious; a warm, sophisticated and dirty mix of leather, spices and tobacco with an underlying unexpected sweetness.  I stumbled across this at T5 in Heathrow and bought the last one on the shelf.  It’s one of the most masculine fragrances I have; love wearing this with something very feminine.

I do think about whether the perfume I wear will work with what I’m wearing (the same goes for make-up as well).  There is the obvious masculine-frgrance-feminine-outfit juxtaposition, but I also tend to associate smells with colours and textures and if the “colour” of a smell doesn’t work with the clothes I’m wearing, I get annoyed.  Yes yes, I am weird.

I really want to try Narciso Rodriguez For Him and Jo Malone Vanilla and Star Anise and Black Vetyver Cafe perfumes; too skint to buy them now but come later in January I’ll be checking them out.

What’s your favourite perfume and what do you like wearing it with?