Skin is in find your perfect scent – you, but intensified
The best scents this spring smell like you, intensified, and make a perfect antidote to modern sensory overload
Do you ever feel bombarded, sensorially speaking? Nowadays, moments that would once have been idle are full of stimuli and even a quick walk to the bus stop can include plugging into a podcast while speed-scrolling Facebook and sipping a grande skinny latte. No wonder experts say we should take ourselves off to a quiet room for five minutes a day and focus on being, not doing. Bit much out there, isn’t it?
Plenty has been written on the subject of mindfulness, and whether you’ve got into that or not really bothered (guilty), there are other ways to find a sense of quiet in this shouty world. Take fragrance, for example. Our sense of smell has the power to draw us inside our own minds and memories in a flash, like dipping your head underwater at a noisy swimming pool. Tellingly, feelings are now overtaking fashion in driving perfume sales too. “Ten years ago, people walked into our stores and headed for the women’s or men’s section, or just the brand they knew,” says Cathy Newman, customer experience director at The Perfume Shop. “Today’s customers are different, they want to explore notes and be transported emotionally by their perfume.”
So, which scents offer an antidote to that external cacophony? I’d say avoid generic fruity florals and seek out comforting, distinctly “human” notes, the best example being musk. This perfumery classic was traditionally extracted from animal glands, giving it that primal skinlike tang, but is now whipped up synthetically, and ethically, in labs. “Musk has an olfactory depth that’s very personal and intimate; it becomes at one with the woman who wears it,” says designer Narciso Rodriguez, whose 2003 Narciso For Her EDT, £33, is described as “the definitive modern, clean white musk” by fragrance expert
Neil Chapman in Perfume: In Search of Your Signature Scent (£15, Hardie Grant). Musk can also be outrageously sexy, as
in Calvin Klein’s 1985 classic oriental Obsession, £27.99, and creamy, lightly smoky new Ostens Cashmeran Velvet Impression, £85. Other modern musks err towards prettiness, like the airy sun-warmed skin of Narciso Rodriguez Pure Musc, £68, or Prada Candy Night, £53, with bitter orange. Ever Mr finger-on-the-pulse, Tom Ford has just launched an ultra-luxurious collection of three limited-edition musk blends, including the classy bergamot-laced Private Blend Musk Pure, £160.
If heady perfume isn’t your usual thing, it’s possible to combine the initial energy of brighter ingredients with smooth, soothing sillage (perfume jargon – means the trail a scent leaves after it dries down). “With a really well-crafted perfume, there’s a pleasing graduation of all the notes, a plot slowly revealing itself as ingredients drift away and others manifest,” explains Neil. Try Clean Reserve Solar Bloom, £88, for a citrus bang that becomes a calming amber waft. Marc Jacobs Rain, £38.99, goes from freshly washed laundry drying on the line to mellow moss, amber and musk, while Frédéric Malle’s cult Musc Ravager, £87, zips from bergamot to creamy vanilla in style. Finally, my own fragrant happy place is Byredo Flowerhead, £105, which explodes with lemon and jasmine on first sniff, then later whispers white tuberose, a fleshy floral note that Victorian young ladies were forbidden to inhale because of its carnal associations. It doesn’t get more skinlike than that.