I thought I was organizing perfume. Nope. Not that this is an unfamiliar situation . . . I begin with a perfectly ordinary household project. A drawer. A closet. A shelf. Several hours later, I am standing in the middle of the room surrounded by objects, holding a dirty rag and a bottle of Mr. […]
Author: Sandy
The Question Changed
For a long time, I thought learning about fragrance meant learning ingredients. The notes. The perfumer. The concentration. The history. Where the rose came from. Whether the oud had been sustainably harvested by moonlight from trees that had only whispered to passing monks. (Fragrance marketing can get wonderfully imaginative.) While those things are interesting, they’re […]
Hospitality, Not Ownership
One of the strangest things has happened during this project. The more I have come to love certain fragrances . . . . . . the easier it has become to let others go. That sounds backwards. Shouldn’t evolving from a Collector into a Librarian make me more attached? Instead, it has made me less […]
Have. We. Learned. Nothing.
Chad and I have a shorthand now. Whenever a fragrance goes spectacularly sideways from what we expected, one of us simply types: HWLN. Have. We. Learned. Nothing. Today was a HWLN day. It started with a mistake. Not with the fragrance. With my process. Normally, when a new fragrance arrives, I enter the official fragrance […]
The Little Free Library
There are two Little Free Libraries on my drive out to the highway. You’ve probably seen them. Tiny wooden houses with glass doors, standing on posts at the edge of someone’s yard. Take a book. Leave a book. Read it. Return it. Or don’t. The point isn’t ownership. The point is circulation. Stories keep moving. […]
Dulce Diablo
Some fragrances quietly accompany the day. Some become companions. Some become rituals. And then . . . there are fragrances that deserve an evening out. When I first met Dulce Diablo, my imagination did something rather unexpected. It skipped perfumery altogether. Instead . . . it wandered into the opening of Star Wars. (If you […]
From Nope to Whoa . . .
🚨 and đź‘‘ There are moments when you realize a project has quietly outgrown its own rules. This week, it happened twice. The first happened yesterday. I washed off a fragrance. That probably doesn’t sound remarkable. Except that after interviewing more than thirty fragrances, I had never done it before. Not for Sagesse. Not for […]
Appropriately Weighted
Whew! Smoke barges inSome become the evening airBoth can still belong. There are ideas that arrive all at once. And then there are ideas that quietly begin following you around. This one has been doing that. For weeks now, I’ve been trying to put a word to the idea roaming around in my head. I […]
Vanille Supermassive: Every Day Deserves a Proper Ending
Last light fills the roomNothing else belongs today—The window opens. Every so often, what begins as an interview with a fragrance quietly becomes an interview with life instead. This turned out to be one of those days. It began, innocently enough, with vanilla. Or so I thought. The opening moved on to suggest something surprisingly […]
Editorial Milestone — The Duchess Takes Up Residence
White lilies arriveOpinions bloom before tea—Good heavens . . . she’s here. The interview with Fleur de Lalita produced perhaps the strongest opening line the Living Library has yet recorded: GAH!!!! WHEW! OLD LADY FLORAL OUT OF CONTROL! White flowers. Everywhere. Huge white lilies. Jasmine. Paperwhites. (You know, the cute little white flowers on the […]