Fragrance

The Hunter

You walk down the cement steps and move cautiously through a wall of lights; the air buzzes with dance music, as if it’s filled with angry insects. Bodies meld together, indistinct forms of color and movement and flesh.

The bartender hands you a drink you’re unfamiliar with, but you take a sip anyway. You notice someone across from you on the dance floor. He slinks between shapes in the amorphous crowd, the top two buttons of his shirt undone. He looks at you; your eyes lock. You cross the floor and take his hand in yours. Together, you make your way onto the raised floor. Two bodies becomes one; indistinct forms of color and movement and flesh.

The Victor

You step onto the dais, surreptitiously checking your hair in the small mirror you always keep with you. Satisfied that nothing is out of place, you advance, and a swarm of skeptical eyes sweep toward you. Your polished boots click as you approach the podium, sure of every step. Your notes are already there. You begin your presentation. Someone coughs, but it doesn’t break your stride. Nothing could. You make the merger, impress your peers, get the promotion.

The Scholar

You strut down the crowded halls, chin held just a tad too high, but you know it. Your black bookbag taps lightly against your side in silent rhythm with your movement. You don’t need to weave around the masses of gossiping children, because the masses move around you. You turn and laugh at the joke your friend just made, not concerned in the least with where you’re going.

1 Million by Paco Rabanne is all about power.

Notes of chilled grapefruit, blood mandarin, smooth peppermint, sweaty musk, dry cinnamon bark, aged leather, tonka bean, subtle patchouli, and amber ketal don’t just call for attention; they demand it.

1 Million begins with airy peppermint and sparkling blood mandarin. These two notes are rather distinct for the first five minutes or so, creating a refreshing blend that lends a sort of brightness and glow akin to that which accompanies a night with a lover. However, these soon begin to fade and give leave to more smoothly blended Middle Notes.
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Perhaps you met by chance and sniffed it on a friend, in the pages of a magazine, or wafting through the air at Nordstrom. Or maybe you designed it yourself after researching fragrance notes, perfume houses, and bottle designs. No matter how you found it, you finally took the plunge and purchased yourself a pricey new scent. Now you have an expensive bottle of fluid on your vanity, and it’ll be worth less than the box it came in if you don’t handle it with the care.

1. Storage

High heat and sunlight have it in for your fancy new fragrance. They breaks apart the bonds between fragrance molecules, weakening the potency and overall shelf life of your perfume, and eventually leading to a watery, lusterless liquid with little to no staying power. Even more destructive, though, are frequent fluctuations in temperature that can spoil a fragrance fast.

So, what’s the best way to store fragrances to preserve their gentle power? While it’s not always practical, one way is to stick them straight in your fridge. Temps at the higher end of the spectrum tend to degrade fragrances, but lower temps can actually protect them. And because many scents contain a veritable amount of alcohol to accelerate drying time after application, you need never worry about them accidentally freezing and expanding. Should your refrigerator be stuffed to the seams (especially in this post-holiday month), never fear. Simply keep your scents out of your bathroom (where the steam from your shower could prove harmful) and out of direct sunlight (UV rays are another common instigator of scent spoilage). When in doubt, ask yourself this: “Would I store an expensive vintage wine here?” If “no” even crosses your mind, cross this spot out as a potential display area for your cologne collection.

2. Application

One frequent misstep many people make is in applying fragrances to incorrect areas. However hard it is to believe, scents really do mix with your body’s chemistry. It’s why some fragrances smell wonderful on the tester strips but just kind of “eh” when you get them home. By applying your perfume to certain points on your body, you can get it to play perfectly with your pH and body heat to create a lasting and balanced aromatic experience.

The points are known as pulse points, and they’re exactly what they sound like they should be: places where it’s easy to read your pulse. Now, I would never recommend applying your scent to each and every one of them (unless, of course, you’re trying to knock someone unconscious), but here they are from the ground up: behind the knees, the inner thighs, about an inch below the belly button, the inner wrists, the crease of the inner elbow, the frontward facing area of the underarm, the base of the neck, behind each ear, and the temples. Which ones you choose to use are up to you, but I recommend choosing one place to spritz for a Perfume Extract, two for an Eau de Parfum, and three for an Eau de Toilette (in these cases, a “paired point”—such as the wrists—counts as one if you only spritz once and distribute it between both areas, or twice if you use one spritz on each). Of course, this is just a general guideline, and how many spritzes you use will vary greatly depending on the product. For example, my Dior Fahrenheit, an Eau de Toilette, really only needs one spritz to last me throughout the day.
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Aquolina is a relatively unknown fragrance company whose only products are the brother and sister scents Blue Sugar and Pink Sugar. While Pink Sugar is an overwhelmingly sweet, candied perfume, Blue Sugar “man’s-it-up” and presents a heady, sexy cologne that still retains the flirtatious sugary notes that its sibling is known for.

Before I was 14, I never wore cologne (and honestly, rarely even more than a basic deodorant… Shhh!). Those awful Axe Body sprays that smell like a boy’s locker room when the janitor has gotten lazy never appealed to me, and so I just went around smelling faintly of soap and fresh water (ironically, now some of my favorite base notes in colognes). But Sephora changed that. Sephora changes everything, really.

I went in just looking for a hair product to tame a style that would now be called the eponymous Bieber (I shudder looking back on pictures of me then… What was I thinking?), and walked out with two sample vials of colognes: Juicy Dirty English and Aquolina Blue Sugar. I tried Juicy’s first, as I’d actually heard of them, even then, and was instantly reminded of why I hated Axe. It smelled like sweat, musk, and aggressive machismo. That one went immediately in the trash. So the next day, I dabbed a bit of Blue Sugar on my wrists, went out, and fell in love. I returned to the mall a few days later to purchase my first cologne ever.

Housed in an attractive, blue tinted cylindrical bottle, Blue Sugar holds its own visually next to the likes of Dior’s Fahrenheit and BANG by Marc Jacobs on my vanity. I rather enjoy the simplicity of its design; no gimmicks (looking at you, PLAY by Givenchy), nothing belying more than it is.

Even now, the scent’s progression from Top Notes to Base Notes is still a journey I take pleasure in, and it certainly hasn’t gotten old. Throughout the entire thing, notes of caramelized sugar wrap themselves sensually around the others, caressing and embracing rather than smothering. Have you ever been to an authentic candy shoppe (yes, spelled with an extra “p” and an “e”; that’s how you know it’s authentic) while the mother and son duo were mixing a giant vat of sugar to turn into those sweet, little caramel chews? This aspect smells near exactly like that: flirtatious, slightly insolent, and sexy in a boyish, rustle-your-hair kind of way.
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