I’m not the best at describing perfume. I can list the usual suspects: amber, incense, vanilla, wood, spice. I know my notes. But when it comes to describing fragrance in a technical way, I get stuck. Because for me, perfume isn’t about precision. It’s about a feeling, a moment, an emotion.
I do know what I like. I understand what I want a fragrance to do – to make me feel a certain way, to alter my mood, to remind me of something. I can tell when a perfume has that effect on other people, too, because they tell me. I’ve been stopped in the street, in shop queues, even while going through airport security, and asked what I’m wearing. Once, I stepped out of a changing room in a high street shop, and the woman who went in after me came straight back out to ask wha
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