Dames Perfume Summit, Part Deux

You're welcome! Alternately, we're sorry!

Members of Dames Nation who consider themselves fragheads or who just don’t mind if we prattle on a bit more about smells, you’re in luck! This week brings the second half of Sophie and Karen’s joint sniff-off AND sometime this weekend Karen will drop a new Drugstore Cowgirl for paying subscribers featuring an EXTREMELY good, cheap new (I think?) perfume line straight outta Target! Must be something in the air (perfume, right? it’s perfume) because the original perfume newsletter, The Dry Down, came out of retirement and is as good as ever, to no one’s surprise, and now includes an advice column! What a treat!

For those of you who don’t like or care about perfume and are still here, thank you very much and we promise we’ll move on to other topics. There’s some recommended reading at the bottom; maybe you’ll like one or more of those?

But for now…we take you back to our perfume party.

Dame Karen: What are the notes for Winter? I’m almost getting those chalky violet candies that taste a little soapy?

Dame Sophie: Yes! That gives it…not even a matronly smell, but much older! Someone who was alive when you could go and buy a penny’s worth of candy. Big All Of A Kind Family vibes — but then the pine sap does something else to it.

DK: Yeah, now that you say that, the sap is really coming through the more it dries down. 

DS: The notes: “It opens with fir needles lying on a soft and velvety forest floor. As black cardamom lends a smoky aspect [?! I don’t get any smoke] that combines with LAVENDER…”

DK: There we go.

DS “...to create a subtly unexpected gourmand though not sweet finish.”

DK: There it is. I do not smell cardamom or smokiness, but yes to lavender.

DS: That accounts for that violet pastille situation. I think this would be really nice for a sachet to go in an underwear drawer. That’s not a knock; I think that “fancy utilitarian” is its purpose. Meanwhile I remain bananas for the Winter Nights and Winter Green combo — I’m so glad we gave that a whirl!

DK: Nice! Let’s come back in half an hour and check on them!

::an hour and a half later::

DK: We’re back. Winter Nights is still very camphor-y and is now my favorite, because the mintiness of Winter Green has almost entirely faded and just kind of smells like b.o. on me. Do you smell that? ::offers arm::

DS: It smells really nice to me! 

DK: I don’t mind it! 

DS: To me the mintiness is gone and there’s just that early spring sap smell left.

DK: It smells weirdly human to me. Maybe I’m just smelling myself? 

DS: It smells fresh to me.

DK: Isn’t that interesting? Two different people can smell the same scent on the same person and still smell entirely different things!

DS: Why are senses so subjective?

DK: And then the original Winter…all of the lavender is gone and it’s just pine but it’s SO faint on me.

DS: Yeah, it’s much stronger on me! 

DK: I love it on you! 

DS: I like it a lot more now that the lavender is gone and I still love the Nights and Green combination; I’m getting more mint and less camphor.

DK: Oh, I love that--it smells like nice plants.

DS: Dasein is really crushing it on…crushing botanical things! 

DK: The combo is my favorite, although who knows how it would smell on me?

DS: I’m so glad they combine nicely because then you have scent options that are all coherent together. If I was making a habit of wearing any of these, I wouldn’t go out of my way not to wear a specific coat or scarf because they can all work together well. They coordinate. 

DK: Right, which is a consideration if you wear different perfumes, particularly this time of year when there are so many layers of clothing in play if you live where we live. 

DS: I’m excited to see how this plays out this winter now that I’m wearing perfume much more often than I did even last year.

DK: I think overall this set is a success.

DS: Yes, I recommend ordering the samples, which are very generous, by the way.

DK: So generous! I love that they only offer little spray samples as opposed to the daubers most other places have. Good on you, Olfactif!

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Karen here…have some links!

The Yankee Doodle Movie - I’m a huge fan of Celia Mattison’s newsletter, Deeper Into Movies, and am still thinking about this essay in which she breaks down, yes, what makes a movie a Yankee Doodle movie. It’s not what you think, probably! I would be happy to attend a Yankee Doodle film festival.

The Winston Duke Era Begins Now - It began a long time ago for so many of us, but thank you for your service, Esquire!

Artist/Activist Michelle Browder Buys Site Where J. Marion Sims Experimented on Slaves - “Now, Browder plans to build a $5.5 million museum and teaching clinic there to serve the community with a focus on the reproductive health of Black women, as well as a training center for doulas and midwives.”

Sophie is reviewing Fleishman Is In Trouble over at Vulture! As always, she’s in amazing form and damn, that broad can turn a phrase.

I talked about the history of cowboy boots on NPR Nashville! THE Manuel Cuevas said he liked listening to me talk! I do not like listening to myself talk, so, thank you, living legend of Western wear!