Thursday, June 5, 2008

Un Bois Vanille


When I wear Serge Lutens' Un Bois Vanille I always chuckle to myself. I don't know about the word "chuckle", it sounds so wrong, but there it is. Do I chuckle? Well, whatever it is that I do (chuckle, chortle, laugh, crack up, or titter), I don't do it out loud, but a part of me wants to.

I find it amusing that this expensive perfume smells exactly like cotton candy. It's vanilla, but it registers more as a sweet burnt sugar to my nose (and my memory of cotton candy).

I love that smell, but I'm not sure I want to wear it. It was lovely to wear it to bed last night. It was comforting, as vanilla tends to be. Still, I prefer vanilla to be an anchor for a scent, not the main event.

I still feel that gourmand scents belong in the kitchen. Or at the circus or fair, as in this case.

Anyway, how much is a cone of cotton candy these days? I was going to compare that to obtaining the smell from a one hundred and twenty dollar bottle of Lutens, but then I realized this: if one were to buy some cotton candy in order to smell it, I would venture to guess that it would be just as expensive (or more, perhaps). How many applications does one obtain from 50ml of perfume? Anyone know, approximately?

Besides, it would look odd to walk around with uneaten cotton candy and answer peoples' questions about it: "Oh, I'm not eating this, you see. I just want to smell it." Better a bottle of Un Bois Vanille, especially if one wears a suit.

Painting note: Georges Seurat's "The Circus" 1890 (I find it odd that every web site that has an image of this painting gives the title in English. Why? I would translate it, but I wonder if that is indeed the name of the painting. As I am feeling run down and exhausted at the moment, any further investigation of this seems like just too much to do.

Addendum: Un bois vanille translates to a woody vanilla (which it is not).

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