A question I asked today:

I tried searching the forums for "terminology", "definition", etc., looking for a list of terms that might answer my question, but didn't find anything.

 

There's a quality some scents have that I'm looking for, and need a word for -- or at least a word for its opposite.

 

Some scents seem to sit on top of my skin, proclaiming to one and all that I AM WEARING PERFUME. That's the opposite.

 

Some scents seem to interact with my body chemistry, changing it so that *I* seem to emit the scent I've applied. In milder cases, my personal smell just seems different where I've applied the scent (usually pulse points); in extreme cases, I can apply a scent to, say, my left wrist, and then my inner right elbow smells different. I LOVE this quality, this illusion that it's not my perfume that smells amazing but me, myself, that it's my own oil and sweat that smell like gingerbread or flowers or spice.

 

I'm slowly learning that some notes have a much greater chance of "hooking into" my body chemistry to produce this effect. Oakmoss, for example, seems to guarantee that I will be able to happily wear a given scent, even if I despise it in the bottle. Eucalyptus seems to be another; my skin drinks eucalyptus so that it becomes almost undetectable in minutes, even in heavily-eucalyptized scents -- Ultraviolet is "just plain violet" on me -- but it seems to anchor everything else. Other notes' reaction to my skin changes dramatically in the presence of these factors; jasmine and gardenia smell awful on me, cloying and sometimes rancid, unless one of these transforming notes is present; jasmine-and-oakmoss, for example, smells just like me, only a touch sweeter (instead of the choking, saccharine cloud of jasmine alone).

 

Without this quality, wearing even a lovely scent I adore feels a little awkward to me; I know that it's my perfume that smells so good, at best, or I can't shake the feeling that I smell like someone else's perfume, at worst. With this quality, even a scent I'm ambivalent toward can become a favorite, because it still smells (to my nose) like I'm me, just a better- (or at least different-) smelling me. This makes the difference to me between a scent I like and a scent I love, or a scent I love and a scent I can't do without. Nothing gets five stars from me without it.

 

But I don't know what to call it.

In testing my imps, I've been trying to give priority to the ones with oakmoss, although after a recent cold, I got sidetracked onto eucalyptus (resulting in two bottles of Ultraviolet and an upcoming purchase of Schrodinger's Cat and Jabberwocky). This may not be the best sense-of-smell day for me, since my allergies are breaking through my antihistamine a bit, but I can't help wanting to experiment anyway. The stash-tracker doesn't work well for the length of comments I sometimes want to make, or for noting the changes over time or layering/mixing effects, so I've decided to track all that here.

This morning, I'm trying Two Monsters, and it's falling kind of flat. From my stash notes:

Salon: Exhibit I pack ordered 11/07/11

 

In vial: I punch you in the nose with BITTER! Benzoin, oakmoss, maybe galbanum. Interesting. Want to try.

 

Wet: Chanel #5. Perfume. Does seem to mix into my scent, but changes my scent to perfume (instead of sitting atop my skin as perfume). Threatens to turn powdery.

 

5 min: no change, but almost overpowering throw

 

30 min: I'm starting to like it. The PERFUME! impression has died down, though it hasn't gone away completely. On my wrists, it's still pretty artificial-smelling, but inside my elbows (which have been bent to type), it's taking on a clean/floral incarnation that's not amazing, but acceptable. OTOH, my in-vial impression when I applied it was "Chanel #5", which seems to be my nose's shorthand for something-or-other when I'm stopped up, so I might not be at my olfactory best right now.

 

1 hr: It's starting to smell a bit like baby shampoo. J&J "No Tears", specifically. I like it okay, but won't cry in a few minutes when I shower it off. It's pleasant, but I can't help feeling like with all my other imps and bottles, I could be wearing something amazing instead.

 

1.5 hr: definitely metamorphosing a bit. The throw has returned, at about half-power compared to application, and it's sweetened quite a bit -- almost but not quite too much. I'm really getting the oakmoss and... galbanum?... now on my wrists. However, on my inner elbows, it smells like Grape Kool-Aid.

I'm wondering if I did Two Monsters a disservice by layering it over whatever remains of yesterday's Schrodinger's Jabberwocky. I'll have to try this one again when my nose is clear and skin is clean.

Schrodinger's Jabberwocky, on the other hand, was amazing, and I kept getting lovely whiffs of it even in my sleep several hours later -- not sure how much of that was the Schrodinger's Cat, which seemed to vanish in 10-20 minutes, but I'm going to be getting bottles of both in case the Jabberwocky delightfulness was a byproduct of the layering. The combo even went amazingly well with a bedtime application of Oneroi.