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05 October 2008

Making Scents

As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm a girly girl. When the weather turns cooler I get a yen for new shoes and new perfume. The shoe part of the equation is easy. The perfume part...well...let's say that after my last misadventure at the perfume counter I'm hesitant to go back for a second helping of retail idiocy. Since then I've confined my new fragrance testing to magazine inserts and haphazard sample purchases on eBay. This hit-or-miss approach is inefficient, to say the least. That, and I'm not too fond of the overly synthetic scents being marketed today.

On a whim, I checked the 'Net for people who could create a custom perfume for me; I know exactly which notes smell good on my skin, and which I like in my fragrances. My findings ranged from companies that wanted me to take a personality test to determine my "perfect" perfume (WTF?) to a company that would send me individual scent bottles in lieu of an in-person consultation. The price for these services varied, as well, from $40 for the hit-or-miss, hope-this-combo-works approach to over $1,000 for the long-distance consultation. A few places didn't even list their prices, and I got the distinct impression that these were the kind of companies where if you had to ask, then you couldn't afford it.

So what's a perfume junkie to do?

Why, create her own, of course.

I got on Amazon and found a couple of books on natural perfumery, then located a couple of Internet sites that not only sold natural perfume supplies and equipment, but also had several treatises on creating one's own perfumes. I find the whole concept intriguing, but whether I want to commit that much time and effort into this venture remains to be seen. I'll see how I feel after doing some more research.

1 comments:

LoreceFA said...

I just read the whole blog-to-date.
To quote our favorite Vulcan, "Fasssscinating!"

Every time I read your username I thought of mariposa - Spanish for Butterfly - also a symbol of change/resurrection/growth.
Apt, thought I.

-Lorece