Old Favorites

It's May and May Day has already passed. Now it is May 4th and it's Star Wars Day. But May 1st got me into Diorissimo and Diorissimo is not a perfume that I wear often. A younger me, 15 or 20 years ago would have probably worn this exclusively. Ever since I have fallen down the rabbit hole, heavy florals is not something that I reach for often. But for some reason, I was looking at Guerlain's annual Muget perfume release. I have never smelled any of the Muget releases. Reason being, it's always been out of my price range and I don't need to fall in love with something that I can't afford. I don't care if it is a 4.2 ounce bottle but if the price varies between a minimum of $400 to $600, that's out of range for most people when talking about a bottle of perfume. I think that I will stick to the more affordable and more available Diorissimo.

Since I don't have a realistic way to organize my perfume collection yet, I have been looking through my collection a little bit more. There are things that I kind of did forget that I actually did own. Mind blindness is to blame. Cuir de Russie is an old favorite and I have a huge bottle. Sycomore is another favorite that I don't reach for often. Sarrasins, Nahema, Mitsouko, are others that I sort of forgot I had but yet knew that I had. Now is the time to start wearing the crap out of them. I think that I have been so wrapped up in vintage BaV, L'Heure Bleue and Ubar that they fell off my radar. It doesn't help that I have a pretty large collection anyway that some perfumes were going to get lost in the shuffle. How many of you have done this?

Not Often Worn but Not Forgotten About

I can't believe that I went almost a month without posting a thing. It's been a wacky month for me and blogging kept slipping my mind. Mostly because I had nothing to blog about. Not wanting really to wear and review, nothing that I haven't blogged about at one point or another.

I think that everyone has a handful of perfumes that they haven't exactly forgotten about but haven't been wearing them either. It's more than you "forgot" about them. You just are not wearing them. The larger the full bottle collection and the bigger the decant pile, the harder it is to keep track of things. I might have to really force myself to wear and review a minimum of one or two perfumes a week to get the ball rolling.

I'm not talking about just vintage perfume. I'm talking about the current formulations of some perfumes. I do have a couple vintages that I am hoarding because I have so little of the vintage formulation. L'Heure Bleue is one of those vintages that I do tend to hoard. I do own a fairly current version of L'Heure Bleue but it's such a powder bomb and kind of a sad scent that doesn't get worn often. Yes, I don't find LHB to be a cheerful perfume to wear.

When I go to pick out my scent of the day, I gaze at my collection and tend to wear the same thing over and over again. But when I do wear something a little different, I wear it for days. Take Amouage Epic for example. Even though I somewhat wear it regularly, I will wear it for days on end. But it always seems to be the same ones that I will wear day after day.

Some that are not quite forgotten about are the ones that are more of a seasonal thing than the ones that can be worn year round. Many of the classic Amouages do seem to wear much better in the winter than any other time of year. Can you tell that I haven't been enthused by the latest released that I have tried with Amouage? Some of them I have worn but haven't reviewed.

The Collection Experience

I have been trying to shop my own perfume collection and not buy so much perfume. Right now, this is kind of questionable. Ever since the weather has stayed warm, I have been able to wear two or three perfumes a day. But I've come into a little roadblock.

The roadblock comes in the form of what I have forgotten about and think about a back up bottle. I do tell myself that I don't need anymore perfume because I haven't even finished one full bottle let alone mini to justify another bottle of anything. Definitely not a sixth bottle of Theorema or my millionth bottle of Bal. So it is a little tough to get through my collection without adding more. I am considering just going cold turkey and see if I can get through a bottle of Mitsouko (not a vintage bottle) or maybe no 5.

Multiple Bottles and Flankers

When I first started my perfume journey, I could never imagine owning more than one bottle and it never crossed my mind to own a flanker. I never imagined that I would have back up bottles, let alone vintage bottles, of anything about 7 years of perfume collecting. This horror of owning multiple bottles came when I had looked at my bottle collection and saw my stock of no. 5 in various concentrations and 4 bottles of Shalimar.

Some of this stemmed from the whole 'limited edition' bit that Chanel loves to peddle on the website. I kid you not, when you look at no. 5 (for a while it was) and no. 19 in EDP form online, there is the 'limited edition'. Since I love no. 5 and did hear about the potential reformulation, I did load up on the EDP and EDT form.

Shalimar, as good as it is, is actually not a perfume that I wear often. I either forget about it or it just doesn't suit that particular day when I think of wearing it. In this case, I don't have back up bottles in a literal sense. My back up bottles have been in the form of two vintage EDT bottles. At the time, I was still kind of wanting the tear drop bottle and vintage Shalimar is easy and cheap to find of E-bay.

I've never been much of a fan about flankers, especially when it comes down to classic perfume. My thought has always been, why mess around with a classic? No. 5 Eau Premiere was the first Chanel flanker that I tried and at first, I didn't like it. It smelled like a toned down no. 5 but it's messing around with a classic. I had tried no. 19 Poudre and was horrified by what it smelled like. No. 19 Poudre smelled a lot like Prada's Infusion d'Iris and nothing like the original no. 19. If you are going to mess around with flankers and classics, try to make it resemble the original perfume.