My man is out of town, I am alone in the house for the next week, so I am planning an orgy. Of fragrance. I dropped him at the airport this AM, and by the time I got home, I smelled like a French whorehouse. I had every intention of buying myself some Kenzo Jungle, but when I tried it on in the shop, I balked. After about ten minutes, the tuberose dominated the scent to the exclusion of all subtlety. I am not built for tuberose, and passed.

I did pick up a bottle of MAC MV3, an old favorite I ran out of years ago. It’s a vanilla (M for Mac V for Vanilla), but has some leather and wood to it–I find many vanilla scents to be lacking in infrastructure, but this one has some shape to it. I also tend to prefer dark scents, and this dark vanilla can be worn during the day quite nicely. I also tried out the MAC MV2, which has a gold lid, whereas MV3 has black. It smells golden, like a cookie. I want to get some for Nancy, my sister-in-law, who is the only person I know who can make baking cookies sexy. She prefers white floral fragrances, and currently wears Fracas or Antonia’s Flowers, but I think she could wear the hell out of MV2.

Then the little whiff of leather

in the MAC, and the thought of Nancy’s Tuberose-laden Fracas, made me recollect that I have a bottle of Robert Piguet’s Bandit on my dresser that I haven’t touched in years, so I uncorked it.

Oh wow. I have finally grown into Piguet’s Bandit. It’s like being slapped in the face with a leather riding glove. A glove being held by a blonde, smokey-eyed German vixen who has spent the day crushing flowers and grass under her heels, and who just may mean you harm.  This is an old-fashioned classic scent; there is nothing modern about it, whatsoever. This perfume smokes and drinks and has been married several times. It is eccentric and not the minimum bit sweet, but it still smells like perfume the way Chanel No. 5 smells like perfume–it’s the first chypre, according to Luscious Cargo.  Did I mention that this fragrance was launched in1944? That Garbo wore it? Who would wear it among today’s stars? I think that would have to be Daniel Day Lewis.

It’s exciting to grow into a fragrance, after years of failed attempts. I am going to have to attempt to go to the Fassbinder film series at the SFMOMA next month now, I suppose. I might be alert for that, too. Good reviews of Bandit on Now Smell This and Bois de Jasmin.

Original post by Hillary Johnson