Incredibly Specific Queer Perfume Recommendations: Scent for a Slow Burn and Scent for a Major Update
2004 called and went straight to voicemail
Helloooo my little scented sachet-aways! It’s time for another edition of Incredibly Specific Queer Perfume Recommendations!
This is a recurring column where I answer some of your questions about perfume and offer up my best recommendations to help you smell hotter, richer, meaner, gayer – whatever you’re going for!
Each column kicks off with a perfume recommendation from me for an incredibly specific queer scenario, and then we get to reader questions.
If you’re new here and wondering why we’re talking about perfume, please check out my Why Perfume post, and then come back here, because I wanna sniff your wrists!!
Scenario: So You’re a Slow Burn Who Likes to Make Other Queers Work for It
Every now and again, you meet someone who is everybody’s crush. You know the type – we’re talking about someone who’s very hot. Or someone who’s very talented. Maybe they have a way about them that captivates; maybe they’re so good at meeting new people that everyone walks away from them for the first time thinking, I’m pretty sure that person is into me.
But we’re not talking about the person who’s everyone’s crush today. We’re not talking about their big, obvious, in-your-face charms, like a dazzling smile or a warm aura or an infectious laugh or an ease with strangers or a really, really, overwhelmingly nice ass.
Today we are talking about the joys of reticence. Of reserve.
We’re talking about the pleasure – the absolute pleasure – of being a slow fucking burn.
Maybe you’re a bit shy. Maybe people don’t always see you at first. Maybe you’re someone whose greatest qualities are not right out there in the open for everyone to see and partake of.
And that’s fine with you, because you’re not interested in sharing yourself with just anyone. To know you, someone has to put in the work. They have to earn it.
Have I got a perfume for you.
Foxglove by Joya is the scent of reserve rewarded.
Let’s ruin people, shall we? Once someone gets to really know you, they’re not going to forget you. Not in Foxglove.
With Foxglove, we are not walking around smacking others in the face with our scent. (We would never do that, anyway, of course!!!) We’re not filling a room; we’re not alerting people to our queerness and our availability via perfume.
No. We apply Foxglove for ourselves. Only ourselves. Should a ~select few~ be allowed to appreciate it – well, that’s a considered choice.
And what isn’t there to appreciate?? Foxglove smells… personal. Sensual. It’s disarming. It’s also incredibly, bafflingly natural-smelling, as if its raw ingredients have been plucked from the earth and bottled by a hot witch who does not dabble in dark magic. This perfume is an instant eye-widening affair, androgynous and queer-feeling; smelling, at first, of cut green grass and crushed leaves and dripping blood oranges. Then, slowly, Foxglove reveals pieces of its heart – quiet jasmine, daffodils dusted with pollen – before eventually showing you what it’s built on: a sturdy base of oak and cedar and musk.
Foxglove wears close. No one – no one – will smell it unless you want them to. However, once applied to your skin, you’ll catch tiny wafts of it all day on yourself.
Sounds good, right? Ideal.
But things aren’t entirely what they seem. Just as still waters run deep…
WILL YOU LOOK AT THE WAY YOU APPLY THIS PERFUME????
Foxglove comes in a (handmade! by a real artist!) porcelain bottle with a 22k gold-dipped wand. LOOK AT THAT WAND, are you fucking kidding me??? Can you imagine what it would DO to someone to watch you put this on?? Imagine taking the stopper out of the bottle and allowing perfume to drip off the tip of this gold wand and onto your chest. Are you imagining it? Imagine it!! BECAUSE YOU ARE GOING TO GAG SOMEONE when they see you do this, they’re going to remember you in this perfume forever!!
To be honest, I would buy Foxglove for the bottle alone, even if the perfume was only just decent. But Foxglove is glorious – a green, unsweet, juicy burst of nature, and it’s reserved – it takes its time to show you all the facets of itself. It doesn’t overshare; you have to get to know it.
Does that sound like you? If it does, get ready: You’re about to ruin anyone lucky enough to get close to you.
Reader Question: “I need help. My signature scent is dated! Big time. I’ve been wearing men’s Acqua di Giò [Armani] for a decade or more and I’m looking for recommendations for a new scent for everyday use. I’m a hard femme millennial political/socialist/creative queer woman who’s also a mom and wife. The only other scent I can remember loving was RALPH by Ralph Lauren lol. What do those scents have in common? Freshness and the year 2004?? Please help.”
-Mari
Mari!! Thank you for this very specific and time-travely-feeling brief! I can definitely help. Before we go any further, though, I have to tell you something:
I fucking love Acqua di Giò.
I really do! It’s a classic at this point! If you walked up to me and I smelled it on you, I’d whuffle you like an undertrained labrador retriever!!
That being said, there are so many people out there who also love this perfume (and so many of them are cis straight men in defeated khakis) that we gotta get you your own special scent. J’agree; it’s time for an update!
Now, in your question, you mentioned that you’re the type of person to own and wear one scent only, and you need a perfume that would be able to handle fancy work meetings, dates, and preschool events.
Let’s do this. Here are my recommendations for an update on your One Perfume to Rule Them All:
Eau Divine by Divine
I’m about to do something really annoying, Mari. My top rec for you is… a perfume you can only get from a small niche perfume house in France.
I’m sorry!! It really is perfect, though! And so chic! And no one else will have it! (It’s orderable online, and it also comes in refillable bottles of varying sizes, including a cool metal travel version, so it’s an excellent choice for a serial perfume monogamist like you.)
Eau Divine is going to nail your brief. It’s androgynous; it’s got that refreshing-splash-of-cool-water feeling, it zings with Italian lemons, it has a body made of light, fresh orange blossom that’s studded with ginger, star anise, and nutmeg, and it’s warmed by beautiful musk and ambery notes – just enough to give it some oomph.
Beyond all that, Eau Divine manages to smell somehow crisp and sparkling. It’s the olfactory equivalent of sitting in a cypress-walled garden on the Amalfi coast, sipping the nameless fizzy white wine that’s been served before lunch.
Eau Divine is bare feet on hot stone, an unbuttoned holiday for someone who’s usually too busy to get away. It feels like a relative of Acqua di Giò, but one who’s come into money under hazy circumstances.
Eau Parfumée Au Thé Vert by Bulgari
Mari, I’d like you to meet my friend, Eau Parfumée au Thé Vert, an absolute banger of a classic aromatic citrus perfume! Launched in 1992, this scent still smells modern, like it could have been created just this morning, and I have a hunch it might be exactly what you’re looking for.
Genderless? Of course it is, perfume has no gender but this one especially doesn’t. Good for any occasion? Yep, au Thé Vert would be as witty and captivating on a date night as it would be during a formal meeting, where it would lighten the mood by saying something sassy. I chose this for you, Mari, because it blends what I suspect you like about Ralph by Ralph Lauren (the approachable, clean-girl fruity shampooness of it all) with what I bet you like about Acqua di Giò (that exciting citrus opening with an unsweet construction of floral and woody notes.)
Basically, Eau Parfumée au Thé Vert is sunny-green and bright. It’s lemon and mandarin squeezed over a clinking glass of iced jasmine green tea, a twist of bergamot run around the rim. It’s clean-clean without being shrill; after it opens, it’s fresh and soft, drifting over a base of cedar, sandalwood, and amber that lasts for several hours.
This is a breezy, uncluttered perfume – it feels effortless. If this becomes your signature scent, get ready for a lot of people to surreptitiously sniff your hair when you hug them.
Wild Card Rec: Melograno by Santa Maria Novella
In 2006, the Bond movie Casino Royale came out. Near the end of the film, James Bond opens the bag that his love interest, Vesper, has left behind in Venice. Inside, he finds a single seashell, Vesper’s (fake) passport, and a well-loved bottle of Santa Maria Novella’s Melograno.
Picture me, a babydyke newly interested in perfume, gasping aloud in the theater. I didn’t know what that bottle was!!! Picture me renting the DVD just so I could pause the movie at the aforementioned part and squint, trying to read the label on the perfume.
Melograno. Melograno. I had to smell it. It took me years to get my nose on this perfume, but when I did??? WOW.
Melograno, which means “pomegranate” in Italian, is made by the oldest still-running apothecary in the world, Santa Maria Novella. Founded in 1221 by Dominican friars in Florence, SMN has a bunch of cult perfume classics, but Melograno is one of their most beloved scents.
Why am I telling you all this, Mari? Is it because I’m a gay scent-obsessive who wants you to join my freaky perfume cult??
YES! But also I think you might really like Melograno, based on what you’ve told me!! It’s nothing like the other two scents I’ve recommended; it’s a real left turn from either of them, and yet… there’s something that links all three of these scents.
And that is a sense of EXTREME, effervescent cleanliness. Melograno smells like a huge, expensive, brand-new bar of citrussy white soap, Mari. It smells like tiny soapy bubbles popping with a bitter orange scent, a subtle twang of tart pomegranate in the air, some dry musk and oakmoss in the base. It’s simple and lovely and comforting.
Melograno is elegant. It will never be discontinued. It’s unfussy and clean, the version of you that’s bare-faced and wet-haired from the shower, giggling with your family on a Sunday morning.
That’s it for this week’s Incredibly Specific Queer Perfume Recommendations! I’ll be back next time to answer more questions.
In the meantime…
Do YOU have a perfume question?
Ask me here on this form that is linked right here!
Byeeee!
Hi long time listener first time caller Mari here… thank you for this!!!!! is there any way to get samples of these?? do any outlast others?? a big problem with Acqua di Gio is how fast it fades!
I just have to say that every time I read one of your incredibly specific queer perfume recommendations, I feel like you're writing them for me, specifically!!!