C writes:

I used to read your old blog all the time (before & after you were outed). I remember you writing about either Coco or Coco Mademoiselle as being the perfume that, when you wore it, people always asked you what you were wearing? Can you please tell me or post about that? I would like to try that perfume.

Hi, C.!
Yes, indeed, it’s Coco Mademoiselle.  In fact, I have it on today!  I love it because it’s both sexy and mysterious, yet playful and girlish.  Here’s a link to a post I wrote on it.  World-famous perfume critic Chandler Burr writes of Coco Mademoiselle:

“It is lovely, flowery, a fresh-faced seventeen-year-old in a summer dress…when you come across someone wearing it, you want to lean closer to them.”

Doesn’t that sound divine?  It certainly smells it.

In honor of yesterday’s FiFi fragrance awards, please indulge me for a moment.  I would like to send a plea to perfumers (or more accurately, to the beauty conglomerate executives who greenlight this nonsense in penthouse boardrooms above Fifth Avenue) to stop being so damn lazy with their fragrances.  Season after season, scent lovers are bombarded not only with inane EDPs from celebrities that have no business “creating” juices, but also with updated, slightly tweaked versions of old perfumes saddled with names just like! but different from! the original.  Loved Stella McCartney?  Hey, try Stella McCartney Sheer Stella!  Were you a fan of Givenchy Very Irresistible?  Try the Givenchy Very Irresistible Givenchy Summer Cocktail!  Not really a fan of the apple-and-mandarin candied scent of the original Ralph?  Maybe you’ll like Ralph Rocks!  Or Ralph Cool!  What about Ralph Hot?  Ralph Wild?  Ralph Insanity?  (Yeah, I made that one up.) (more…)