Perfume is Pleasure

If pressed to share my favorite perfume, I would say it is Chanel Cristalle. I don’t always have it, but have returned to it more times than to any other scent.

In a women’s beauty magazine, actor Chris Noth commented: “Cristalle — oh, man, I have to get on my knees and beg for a whiff. It makes me stop dead in my tracks.” Celebrity endorsements aside, not many are with me on this. Cristalle is the opposite of a warm and fuzzy fragrance. It seems to say: “I may be pretty, but I’m all about business, buster.” After a long period of disloyalty, I saw it on the dressing table of a new friend and tried it on. Much better than I remembered. On that day, I particularly noticed the lushness underneath the severity of Cristalle.

Another time I purchased Cristalle online and was surprised at how much sharper, greener it was than my previous bottle. Still very pleasant, but in a more bracing way, I assumed it had been a knock-off, only later learning that Chanel uses a different formula in the eau de parfum and the eau de toilette. Chanel and Hermès are known for this. A good reason to try before we buy!

Once, on a train from New York to Boston, I smelled Cristalle. A woman in her early 60’s, eyes closed, slept on her husband’s shoulder. Comfortable, distinguished, surely the one. I held myself back from approaching: “Excuse me, I notice you are wearing a fragrance I have admired for decades. Who are you and when did you find Cristalle? Is it your signature scent or part of a fragrance wardrobe? You have great taste. I love you. But so sorry to interrupt. Thank you. Goodbye. But one more thing, I meant to tell you that you smell great.”

Consumers express their taste in fragrance with an impoverished vocabulary: “something fresh,” they always say. A sales-clerk will wait on hundreds of customers before realizing that “fresh” is a synonym for “something I like.” Silly girl, she thought you meant the smell of herbs, fresh cut grass, citrus or the ocean. Lo and behold, some heady oriental smells fresh to you. Why? Because fresh is good, this scent smells good and must, therefore, be fresh.

Next time you shop for a fresh scent, perhaps a little soapy to remind you of laundry “fresh” from the dryer, recall this: One of the most popular scents in laundry detergent is musk, a fragrance ingredient formerly obtained from a gland located between the stomach and genitals of the East Asian male musk deer. Musk is used to infuse perfumes with depth and richness while fixing them to the skin and is considered by most to be a sexy smell, not a fresh one.

But the main goal of perfume is pleasure, So if it makes a person happy to say that musk is a fresh smell, why not? I like fresh scents too. Like a nice piece of pizza hot from the oven.