There were no plans for shopping in Paris. And yet, shopping occurred.
Following the Dior exhibit, we stopped in the museum store. As in the museum itself, the lines were long and there was little which attracted me enough to brave the line, at least until I saw a pair of gloves. I was attracted by a pair of long burgundy gloves with interesting braided and twisted leatherwork. Alas they were too small, and they were the final pair in stock. After a brief google search for other vendors we were off, but were ultimately unsuccessful. I sent an inquiry off via email and the designer replied that she had the gloves, not in the color I saw originally, but in this deep gray, in my size, and they could be shipped to me. And so, the day after I arrived home, a package arrived. I wore the gloves the next day with a grayish green sweater. You probably can't tell much detail in the photo below.
But although I had no plans for shopping, things change. We were in Paris. It seemed our visit could not be complete without a stop at Dior Perfumes. After all Christian Dior had said "A woman's perfume tells more about her than her handwriting". We each sampled a fragrance or two. Liana adored hers and we went back so she could buy it. The perfume I tried, Bois d'Argent was lovely and soft, woodsy with a bit of leather and incense, but basically too soft and sweet for me. I apparently have trouble describing what I want in a perfume. Perhaps I should have gone back after we went to Serge Lutens, where we were both successful. I took a quick photo as I was leaving the store, bag on my arm.
Lutens' perfume Gris Clair had been one of my favorites for a long time, and it was the perfume that I had been wearing most days since I began wearing perfume again this past summer. In fact it is a perfume I have loved in summer heat, and Tennessee has a long hot season. It opens with a icy dryness that just makes me fee cool as I wear it, but there is also a smokiness, and a softness to it. If soft gray could be a scent this would be how I would imagine it, or if fog could be captured. But it is not a cold perfume, it warms into something soft, on me at least, maintaining that edgy mystery of lavender and a subtle warm smokiness. It lasts a long time on my skin, and at the end of the day the soft caramelized smoke remains, reminding me of that feeling of being cuddled up, wrapped in cashmere in front of a dying fire, warm and safe, enveloped. In that sense it is working well for me now for in this stage of autumnal weather, where the cool lavender echoes the cool crisp foggy mornings, accompanied by a hint of decaying leaves, warms in the afternoon sun, and fades softly into the evening.
Not surprisingly I bought another bottle of Gris Clair. But I also sampled other things. Gris Clair is not, to my mind, a winter perfume, but we don't always have severe winters here. I did not take it with me to Paris because I expected cool and damp, and it is not what I wanted to wear. So we both tried other things. The perfume I ended up surprised me initially, but not really, it was really a question of accepting multifaceted aspects of my personality. Like Gris Clair, there is a hint of darkness, of decay, but it is not decaying leaves. Muscs Kublai Khan is a different perfume altogether, much warmer, more animalic, definitely sensuous and sexy. It opens with an initial whiff of barnyard, but it is a whiff that quickly is enhanced and subsumed by rich warm and even soft aromas, yet it never completely goes away. I'm not sure this is a perfume that I would wear on a hot summer day, it would get out of hand quickly, but on a cool crisp day in paris, for a nice evening by the fire on a chilly night. I felt like myself wearing this perfume, just as I feel like myself with the scent of Gris Clair, but in a slight different way. I think that is what I have learned. I've learned I am very sensitive to and particular about scents, I like a little dirt and depth in my fragrances, some sense that there is more hidden beneath the surface. I need to like the person I become when I am wearing them, and I am not naïve enough to believe that the scent I surround myself doesn't subtly affect my sense of who I am, or what aspect of who I am I am inhabiting at that moment. I don't know if I need to indulge my inner Kublai Khan, but perhaps I do.
