Fragrance

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 object …

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 whis …

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 mor …

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. …

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’ …

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 …

🚨 and 👑 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 t …

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 wor …

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, wit …

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. …