Friday Links: 4/1

I’m weirdly exhausted by life/final exams/the sporadically broken heating system in this  house. But I have a backlog of links and they’re all exciting so there’s no putting them off any longer.

And because it’s a new month, the picture above is my new desktop background. Set to tile, as per usual. People swimming in a sea of stars.

What else? 19 days. So close yet so far.

• Reviews of Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs. I’m still pumped because I like Wes Anderson (and dogs), but it sounds like there are some pretty ishy us vs them components.  Won’t be seeing it in the theater. Here’s a review from MovieBob and here is a deeper plunge into the problematic nature of the Japanese setting, the estrangement from the Japanese human characters created by the language barrier,  cultural tourism, and the white savior complex.
• The movies that influenced Call Me By Your Name. Be right back, adding ALL OF THEM to my list. (Except A Room With A View- I honestly didn’t love that).
• Other things I’m adding to my film list? These twisted fairy tales (from female directors).
• A trailer for The House With a Clock in it’s Walls– speaking of twisted fairy tales. Cate Blanchett! Luscious steam-punk-y visuals! Jack Black doing his character actor thing! Creepy! Childlike! I’m kind of tentatively intrigued. Post-Jumanji, is Jack Black due for a resurgence?
• A discussion of Saoirse Ronan’s costumes for the film Brooklyn, and the deeper meaning behind them. So interesting (and a great film, if you haven’t yet seen it).

Let’s talk about perfume:

• Five fabulous orange blossom scents, courtesy of Angela at Now Smell This. Of these, the Serge Lutens is my favorite, but I would add Rubj by Vero Profumo to the list if I could. (And on the more gourmand side, Hansa Yellow by DSH and Unknown Pleasures by Kerosene).
• Carlos Benaim (love) and Frederic Malle on their new lavender-focused fragrance, Music For a While.
• Hermes releases a new cologne. Unfortunately I missed the Saut Hermes (a jumping tournament at the Grand Palais), but here’s a photo.
• If you’re feeling science-y (I always am) here’s a study that shows evidence of significant interactions between perfumes and individual body odor.  The takeaway: “The odor mixture of an individual’s body odor and their preferred perfume was perceived as more pleasant than a blend of the same body odor with a randomly-allocated perfume, even when there was no difference in pleasantness between the perfumes. This indicates […] that people choose perfumes that interact well with their own odor. Our results provide an explanation for the highly individual nature of perfume choice.” So cool.

Fashion and celebrity people:

• Lena Waithe is amazing and I love her style and attitude.
• Bill Cunningham’s secret memoir. When can I read it?
• I know I’m late, but in honor of spring (and Easter) some floral looks from Moschino’s S/S 2018 RTW collection: 1 and 2.

Relationships?

• The maternal grandparent advantage. Rings true for my family (although that also has something to do with geographic proximity). And congratulations Mom and Dad, you are likely to be more involved with my future children than my future parents in law!
• Your friendship Myers-Briggs. As an INFJ, apparently I’m a bandaid and I’ll take it.
• For work relationships. I’m living vicariously through the drama of this twitter thread.
• In old age, shoplifting to find community. Heartbreaking.

Books and other tidbits

• I saw this adorable kid’s maze book at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. It reminds me of an immense Sesame Street board book I once had. But rather more portable.
• Mari Andrew’s book is out! Love her illustrations and down to earth wisdom.
• Another reason to go home for the summer? Archery tag.
• A French waiter in Canada says firing for rudeness is discrimination against his culture. He’s not wrong.
• If you’re not a fan of the lack of privacy re: data and personal info online, console yourself with the fact that if you ever disappear in a national park, amateurs can keep looking for you for decades. But it’s actually a very interesting, well-written article.

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Friday Links 2/2

Let’s just roll right in…

• A super powerful spoken word/poem by singer Halsey about sexual abuse.
• University of Washington says if you swat mosquitoes they may learn to avoid your scent. Can we put that in a perfume, please?
• Casey Affleck pulls out of presenting the best actress Oscar. Probably a good idea.
• But if Gary Oldman wins best actor, will he be the presenter backing out next year?
• There’s going to be a sequel to The Shining.
• “This is not normal.” Nutella riots hit France.
• Ten to watch from Sundance, courtesy of Alicia Malone! I’m super excited for a bunch of the new films. Possible list coming?
• Ignore the clickbait title. Instead: “There are a million ways to say no, and we need to stop ignoring them. We need to make “enthusiastic consent” our mantra and keep it in mind whenever we might have sex.” Read it.
• How Netflix personalizes its services for every person. Pretty intense.
• A great read: The female price of male pleasure.
• Is this going to be the big under the radar horror film of the year?
• There’s going to be a new royal baby (I missed this somehow)! British bookies are taking bets on baby names.
• I’ve been having a bit of imposter syndrome recently, and this piece on the ‘friendship complex’ was a reassuring read.
• Why people are eating tide pods? 1) I’m officially old, now that I’m having to google this kind of internet fad thing. 2) Gen Z is screwed.
• Two fashion industry tops under fire after a racial slur leads to the rediscovery of past homophobic and transphobic comments. Superficial apologies ensue.
• And to wrap up on a lighter note: Four teddy coats to look like a faceable Paddington Bear. As if Paddington wasn’t already incredibly sexy. Mmm, marmalade.

Do I Have a Signature Scent? (No really, I’m asking)

Despite the best laid plans of mice and men I wasn’t able to post for the past few days (and by wasn’t able I mean I spent too much of my time reading blogs/cutting my own hair/studying for my upcoming tests for which I need to identify over 200 raw materials and some equally outrageous number of fine fragrances by scent). But I’m in France and I can recognize aldehyde chains of 7, 8, 9, and 10 carbons (by smelling, not counting) so really who’s not to say that I’m living my best life?

Maybe the fact that it’s a rainy week and I have no adequately waterproof shoes. But pretty close to my best life.

Switching gears now away from flawed footwear and toward the actual meat of this post which, I apologize, is not in a list form.  More just something i’ve been thinking about.

I remember reading an article sometime between 1 and 7 years ago about the desire for a signature fragrance.  One that really signifies you, reminds you and reassures you of your stable identity in distressing situations and, perhaps most importantly, that other people (significant others, friends, children) will associate with you.

I’m trying to find the article online but am being deluged with all of these guides on how to find your signature scent (I feel like the answer is pretty obvious: smell stuff).
But the article was more than about just desiring a signature fragrance. It was also about the conflict between wanting that one personal element and wanting to appreciate and express yourself with different/multiple fragrances.
Which is why I have kind of thought of signature fragrances for a long time as a perfumista pipe dream/something for the uninitiated and not very into fragrance.  It’s like the person who has one pair of earrings.  Maybe they have reached accessory nirvana but it’s more likely they’re just not that into earrings.

The last time I had a signature scent was early high school and it was some variation of Chanel Chance. I think Eau Tendre, but I also believe I wore the original before after a long and obsessive internal debate over the pros and cons of the original and the Eau Fraiche. Some things (and by some things I mean me) never change.
And then I realized how wide and amazing the world of perfume is, how varied and multifaceted and worth exploring.  The idea of a fragrance kind of went out the window, which I felt a bit regretful about, but also very excited given the way my horizons were expanding. Discovering a new world and removing limitations I had placed on myself.  Deciding to discover more facets of my ‘fragrance personality’- all of the things I loved, appreciated, was fascinated by, and with which I resonated- made more sense than hunting for The One Fragrance that would encapsulate everything that I wanted in a perfume (which would obviously be futile, especially as I became more exposed to all of the things perfume could be and all of the feelings it could give me).

Jump cut to now, maybe seven years later.  I don’t have a signature scent and I don’t have a very well-defined numbers of perfumes that I own (given a low number of full bottles but a pretty impressive number of small decants and samples that I would like to stay in possession of and wear semi-regularly).  The closest I have to a signature scent is Miller Harris’ L’Air de Rien (which I’ve mentioned before, ad infinitum), one of my rare full bottles and the first scent I bought as a perfume enthusiast, following reading reviews and the usage of a sample (the perfumista way (or at least my perfumista way)).  It smells like dust and horses and sweat and leather and cuddle musk and hay and vanilla and patchouli and soft spice.

But I still figured a signature scent was lost to me.  It’s true that in my years of testing literally thousands of fragrances I had reached a hazy understanding of what generally appealed to me and what would not, what I was excited to try and what I could pass on without a second thought.  My buying practices, sampling practices, and ‘wishlist’ practices have reached a kind of contented plateau.  There are a few things I want to own (most of which have been chilling on a want list for years) and want to test, but I feel pretty well sated.  There’s not much new under the sun, as they say.

And I had the feeling until quite recently that my preferences were all over the map.  And I tried not to read that as a sign of mental breakdown/multiple personalities/a not fully integrated personhood.

That’s one of the (relatively minor) things that being in this program has made me reevaluate.  Wannabe-perfumer conversation is obviously a bit different than the conversation of any other group of people. You could say that about any group with a shared and strong passion.  We play games where we pick a raw material to encompass a classmate’s personality.  We talk about our favorite scents. Things that we would like to mix.  We analyze one another’s personal scents.  Victor smells like frankincense and weed (which would have made for a really different but potentially more interesting nativity scene, when you think about it).  We read into each other in some kind of eerie but often quite eye-opening ways.

And so basically when I was told that I’m a vanilla-amber-patchouli-animalic girl it was kind of self-revelatory.  I’ve joked before about the disproportionate real estate amber perfumes hold in my fragrance library.  And I’ve personally avowed before that all I really want is to smell like small furry animals.

When Luis smells Musc Ravageur by Frederic Malle (amber, musk, patchouli, clovey-spice) and tells me it reminds him of me, I smile and say “Yeah, I love that and I wear Meharees by L’Erbolario, which is pretty similar”.

So I guess that takeaway here is that having a signature fragrance doesn’t necessarily have to mean one scent from one brand that you stick to for all the years of your life. Maybe it can be something a bit more fluid- shared patterns, shared notes, shared architecture in the fragrance construction. Maybe some brands do better for you than others.  Maybe some perfumers are your go to guys/girls.
Maybe your perfume collection can be more like a tapestry woven by the shared threads of your favorites.

That said.

The animal-musky-vanillic-amber family is really best suited to the colder months and climes.  I may need a reevaluation come summer.

 

Late (Again!) Links

No preamble. Down and dirty style.

• Fortnum & Mason has a superbly beautiful (and fittingly spendy) Rare Tea Wooden Advent Calendar. All I can say is “GIVE ME THAT FUDONG WHITE PEONY KING!!”
• Remember dying of dysentery on the Oregon Trail? Well, now it’s a computer game and you can be a yoga instructor.
• As a seltzer lover, I came to the right place.
• Just some photos of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, the only celebrity couple that has ever mattered.
• Can we move my next raw materials exam to 9 pm?
• This might be my favorite HONY post ever. This man is the person I aspire to be. I’m ready to be illumined.
• I want this book.
• Sephora’s got a cool new campaign featuring its own employees.
• A quick video with Charlotte Olympia, she of the near-masterpiece footwear (plus bonus puppies!).
• Call me crazy, but I like What’s Happening Down There.
• Find someone who spits water on you the way Jon Stewart spits water on Stephen Colbert (and vice versa).
• Do you play that game where you imagine the stories of strangers you see? If so, this is the Instagram account for you.

Some Thoughts About Female Friendship, Courtesy of Balzac

I guess I didn’t need to stress so hard yesterday about paying my dues with a ‘book-related’ post. But I did enjoy revisiting all of the historical fiction I used to read.

Today’s post is kind of random, very vaguely book-adjacent (or more specifically, book-inspired).  There was a line in Balzac’s Cousin Bette that really made me think and reflect on some of my friendships. I’m not going to bother to find it because I know Iw on’t be able to unless I reread the 300-something pages I’ve gotten through so far.

In the novel, there is a friendship between two women, the titular Cousin Bette and a courtesan named Valerie.  The line I was struck by described Cousin Bette as attending an intimate dinner being given by Valerie so as to say all the kind and admiring things about Valerie that Valerie couldn’t say about herself.  So it’s the 19th century and Cousin Bette is essentially acting as a wingman.  The situation echoed so many in my own experience, when I’ve done similar things for my own friends (without really consciously deciding to) and when I’ve noticed them doing the same for (often in spite of not approving of the guy I’ve been interested in).  Some things never change.

Smiles of a Spring Semester

I’m leaving on Friday (in all likelihood) for my final semester of university.  As always, I have very ambivalent feelings about my triumphant return.  Less free time is both a good and bad thing, though I’ve never had a hard time keeping myself occupied.  More dancing is also a mixed bag, as is nearing the end of my university experience.  For someone as… insular as I am, even being around my friends comes with conflicting feelings.

And an aside: The title of this post references Smiles of a Summer Night, an Ingmar Bergman title.  And I haven’t seen it and never will because I simply can’t bear with Ingmar Bergman.  I’ve tried many times.

I’m in a mad dash to catch up on 2016 movies.  I recently caught The Neon Demon and have Allied playing in the background as I type this.  I’ve decided it’s not worthy of my full attention (but more on that in a future post).

I’m thinking about what my goals should be for this coming semester, after having completely failed at my fall semester ones (namely dance more and see more of people that I’m going to miss post-graduation. And of course, those will be carried over (in some form) to this semester.