Incredibly Specific Queer Perfume Recommendations Part 5: Scent for a Crucial First Date and Scent for a Gay Baked Treat
in which we say "creamy" three times
Helloooo my lil’ huffers! It’s time for another edition of Incredibly Specific Queer Perfume Recommendations!
Before we get going today, I want to first thank you so so much for reading this. I’ve been thrilled and humbled by how many of you have voluntarily signed up to read the things I’m nattering on about, whether that’s perfume or Zamboni Life® or any other nonsense that’s taking up space in my brain. I love doing this.
Also true: I did not really understand how much time it would take to put together a twice-weekly newsletter, even though several of my friends and two actual Substack professionals warned me that trying to publish twice a week was too ambitious, starting out. But we learn by doing, right?
This is leading up to me telling you I need to change my publishing schedule on here to once a week. I hope you are not mad at me forever about it!!
From here on out, we ride on Tuesdays.
OK! Back to perfume. Incredibly Specific Queer Perfume Recommendations 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’ve had a crush on someone for years, and tonight, you’re getting drinks for the first time.
Holy shit, it’s happening. Code Red in the group chat, all hands on deck, your hopeless crush – the hot, hot person who has always been monogamously partnered or non-monogamously dating so many people at once that you hung back for years, unwilling to make a chaotic play for their hot heart – has asked you to get drinks tonight.
You. The person who has wanted them since you first met in 2016.
And you’re not even sure if it’s a real date.
Forget the outfit; what are you gonna smell like?????!!
OK. Let’s take a nice deep breath.
This is what you’re going to wear:
L'Air Du Desert Marocain by Andy Tauer
Spices. Heat. Worn stone steps, ripples in sand, a hot wind whipping the flags flying above an ancient city. L’Air Du Desert Marocain is the scent of waking up naked, too hot for even the sheets, as the shadows begin to lengthen into evening. It’s a searing, dry, resinous warmth of a smell, a spiced inhalation that makes you swallow hard. It’s unforgettable.
And holy fuck, is it thirsty. This perfume is incredibly sexy, and it’s weirdly familiar – there’s something in you that’s gonna know this smell, somehow. It’s strong; it leaves a trail behind you that’s almost visible, a twisting thread someone could follow to find you. A queer once trailed me across the patio at El Rio in San Francisco to ask me about this perfume. They grabbed my arm; the request was urgent.
There’s coriander and cumin in here (fun fact: cumin is sometimes used to create a tinge-of-human-sweat smell.) There’s patchouli and vetiver and cedar. There’s a lick of jasmine, there’s an herbaceous woody feeling, and it’s all overlayed on a dry, dry amber, without a hint of sweetness. Think: flames that surround but don’t burn you.
If L’Air Du Desert Morocain was a fabric, it would be a rich burgundy velvet. If it was a drink, it would be drops of dark red wine on your beautiful crush’s lips. Wear this on your first-date-that-you’re-not-sure-is-a-date, and make your intentions olfactorily clear.
Failing that, though, darlin’, have you considered just telling your crush you like them?
Reader Question: “How can I smell like a delicious gay baked good in a restrained and sexy way that is not maternal? I'd like to think I could pull off Threateningly Mysterious Woods Witch but I think my vibe is more "slightly herbal gluten-free cinnamon roll."
-K
OMG, K!!!! How did you know I have been dying to write about gourmand perfumes but restraining myself until someone asked??! THIS IS SO EXCITING!!!
Gourmand perfumes, if you haven’t been ~formally aquainted~, are a category of perfumes that smell… edible. In some way. Think vanilla scents. Or chocolatey ones. Caramel, sweet citrus, candy, fruit, coffee, honey – gourmand scents typically have notes that smell dessert-y. They don’t always have to smell like something you’d like to take a bite out of, but they do always invoke a sense of being vaguely edible.
I love them.
Not everybody does. We need to know that going in. Some people live or work with middle and high-school-age children, and those children often enjoy covering themselves in airless, atomic clouds of cotton-candy-scented body spray that can be smelled from space. I can see how that might put you off gourmands. Some people had a bad experience in their own high school years with Bath & Body Works’ Country Apple and Cucumber Melon body sprays and have hated anything that smells edible ever since. Some people’s mothers burned one too many fake-vanilla-scented candles in the house. Some people simply hate dessert.
We get it. We understand.
BUT.
There is nothing like a perfect gourmand on exactly the right person. A femme in a tight sweater leaning over you, smelling so luscious and soft and vanilla-bean-flecked that you could scoop them up with a spoon. Someone muscley on the dance floor in a see-through shirt who, once you get close, smells surprisingly sweet and juicy, like a sucked red Jolly Rancher. A mean top whose skin, unaccountably, smells like peaches and spiced honey. GOOD LORD. The right gourmand is a murder weapon!!!
Here are my top three suggestions for you, K:
Un Crime Exotique by Pierre Guillaume Paris, Parfumerie Generale
What a name!! This is my first rec for you, K, because if you want to smell like a slightly herbal GF cinnamon roll, this is it. Except LIES: it’s so much better than that. This is a full gluten, gorgeous French butter, spice-lashed CINNAMON ROLL OF DESIRE, fresh out of the oven, plump and warm and dripping with creamy, luxurious vanilla icing. You will fall into this one backwards, with your eyes closed, and you will land in plush, melting softness. Un Crime Exotique is rich, opulent – it smells of tea and gingerbread and vanilla and cinnamon and the inside of a perfect creme brulee. It also lasts a long time and doesn’t change much as it dries down. From the moment you spray this on, you’ll be smelling your wrists for hours, unable to stop.
This on a sweater on a cold day? Get out of here!!! People will whuffle your neck like dogs looking for hidden treats, you’ll have to shove them off of you!!!
Love & Crime by Ex Idolo
Love & Crime!! Why do my top recs for you both have the word “crime” in them?? Maybe it’s because I love an incongruous match in perfume. Like, I love when someone who looks mean smells sweet; I love when someone who looks soft and cuddly smells hard and bitchy. I love glaring, clench-jawed mascs in soaring, airy florals; I love sweaty, unwashed-looking punks who smell of dewy English roses. Can’t help it!
OK so: You know how cartoons sometimes show someone putting a saw in a cake and breaking a prisoner out of jail? Apparently that actually happened once IRL! Love & Crime’s scent is based on a true story from the 1920s of a woman who loved her imprisoned fiancé so much she baked him a wedding cake with a hacksaw inside it.
Cute, but what does it smell like?
To me, Love & Crime smells like a photorealistic rendering of a warm vanilla butter cake with a lemon glaze. I mean it is the closest thing to sinking a fork into a mouthwatering, tender piece of just-baked vanilla cake, white sugar frosting, star anise, and all. It’s buttery and creamy, but it’s also better than cake (I can’t believe I’m saying this) because there’s something about it that kind of… beckons you. It literally wants to radiate from your chest and be cuddled with. It’s sexy. It’s sexy cake.
Officially, the notes for this perfume say the opening involves mandarin notes, not lemon, and that there are floral notes, but I don’t really smell them. I smell Sex Cake. Spritz this on and get ready to be consumed.
Wild Card Rec: Kenzo Jungle L’Elephant by Kenzo
If I tell you about this one, K, will you promise me to never wear more than one spray at a time? Kenzo Jungle L’Elephant is a masterpiece, but it’s so unbelievably strong that even two sprays will CHOKE OUT THE ROOM.
You want spice? You want a beautiful, creamy, mouthwatering vanilla? Guess what, you’re getting it, along with a cinnamon-plum note, a detectable anise note, cloves, cardamom, cumin, mango, and orange notes… this a lavish dessert course set out for royalty in a bottle, and it is thick and heady and BIG and you will either love it or hate it, but my guess is you’ll love it. It’s not quite a GF cinnamon roll; it’s sexier and more complicated than that. Also the bottle is gorgeous and it has a ludicrously heavy top, which is always fun.
I would describe Jungle L’Elephant as a perfume for a bombshell – it’s friendly and beautiful and has interesting things to say, and I think it would love a low-cut dress. In no way maternal, and less edible than my other two recs for you, Jungle L’Elephant has a base of vanilla and patchouli that lingers in your memory. It’s the perfect scent for comparing hand sizes with your crush on an evening when it’s too cold to stay outside, but there’s no way you’re going in.
That’s it for this round of 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!
Bye bb!
GLORIOUS
HNNGH we were so close to sexy chocolate perfume recs! Soon...!!!