Le Labo - Patchouli 24

Punishing one-note smoky tea that depressed my normally vibrant libido and appetite for food.

Christian Dior - Dior-Dior (vintage parfum)

1. Your face in coils and coils of warm dark hair when silk becomes grease and jasmine oil cloaks balls of sebum.
2. There's a Swedish movie, Night Games, a son hides up his mother's (Ingrid Thulin) crinoline and steals her filmy underthings - later he is seen in bed sucking away at them, impassioned and frustrated - this smells like ugly desire, and hating yourself for wanting something so badly -
THIS IS ALL ANIMAL ON ME, noticing pores sweat hair on someone you admire -
Occasionally there are wisps of lily of the valley and jasmine but then the lovely woman laughs and hikes up her skirt . . . (an acrid, thick, curd-like odour)
Sometimes it's appalling.
Other times lulling and heartbreaking, like being struck by the softness of the nape of the neck.
Visual equivalent - the Helga paintings
Book equivalent - Madame Edwarda

Czech & Speake - Oxford and Cambridge

Possibly the most boring perfume in the world, the waffle-weave of fragrance.

L'Occitane - Jasmine (Notre Flore)

Fresh blankets in a well-furnished hotel. Candle-like, more atmospheric than skin-scent.

Weil - Antilope (vintage parfum)

What the well-dressed mori girl is wearing this spring. Fawn-coloured sleep in a sun-soft haystack.

Czech & Speake - Dark Rose

Rapidly wilting bouquet of roses left behind in a Quaker farmers' church somewhere in Elora, Ontario.

Nanadebary - Pink

Opening a box containing pink lucite heels, fresh from Frederick's of Hollywood.