I am also devilishly interested in scent and am on a journey to find my favorites. I'm currently collecting teeny tiny samples because a) that shit is expensive and b) a little goes a long way for my very sensitive nose. Do you have a Fragrantica account and if so may we follow you there? Will you share your most poetical and storied perfume reviews and memories? If there's anything I love better than perfume, it's hearing people wax eloquent about it when they share those bring-me-to-my-knees memories that scent evokes. Who are your trusted YouTube perfume reviewers? I am LIVING for this column.
oooh thrilled to hear you're on a scent journey! that shit IS expensive, i knoowwww. I don't have a fragrantica account because i love to lurk, and, while i love to read reviews on fragrantica, i also get really frustrated on there, because an absolute masterpiece of a perfume will have someone on there who's never liked anything but cotton-candy walgreens spray reviewing it like "thumbs down, my bf hates this." So my patience on there is thin! I do love all stories about perfume, though<3
Alkemia Perfumes !! https://alkemiaperfumes.com/ i thot i was the only one, but in the closet ( or just at home) cuz so many folks have chemical sensitivity. i do avoid essential oils, but there is this whole other world of perfume oils. local made in Amherst MA woman alchemist. site had phermones!! i wind up liking MYSELF!! and gender curation!! wear a scent locket in the pocket of my butch chamois shirt so can sniff along the day. Arabesque is my fave of theirs. very reasonable. old butch in the woods
Wow these look great!! I'm gonna have to sniff some samples from this brand, I'd never heard of them! Perfume oils are a wonder– they stay so close to the skin, they're like a secret only you and the person you're hugging know.
they are a great business, in all ways. makes scents its a woman's creation. quick service and willing to message dialogue. i follow them on facebook to get seasonal announcements and periodically select a sampling of their new offerings and go read more on their website. so much to learn about scent groupings, creative wearing of oils and ways to experiment , and really affordable. at home aroma therapy with my backup butch selection is Deus ex Machina. in addition to carrying a scent locket i will stick a bandana dosed with perfume oil in a coat pocket, for when i get studly vapors :)
First, hiya! Good to see you back, I’ve been missing Effing Dykes for years!
So I have 2 perfume questions!
1. I used to use Tom Ford’s vanilla tobacco but it was OVERPOWERING so I switched to Tokyo Milk’s (aka Margot Elena) ‘Poe’s Tobacco’ . I adore it but they have stopped making it… any recommendations for smelling like a vanilla bean in a gentleman’s library?
2. When I want to smell like the 80’s I use Davidoff’s Cool Water, and for the 90’s it’s Issey Miyake’s Eau d’Issey… how about you? What evokes the 90’s or 80’s clearest for you?
Look forward to hearing back from another perfume nerd! I only have about 40 perfumes but I’m getting there…
Hi Victoria!! Thank you for reading the nonsense coming out of my brain! I love both these questions and I am thrilled you're into perfume!! and I also know I'm going to lose track of your questions if they don't get popped in this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdcVTiUNo3FUk7JAH6ZU_omjjDZNkY8HyoxcfRFMh75U49ifQ/viewform - would you put 'em in there? I wanna answer them and not lose 'em! <3 <3
YES, I am SO happy I found your Substack! After reading Moby Dyke, I was AGHAST that I couldn't find you on socials!
What do you think of more "natural" perfumes, like Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, for example? I haven't worn fragrance in years because I have disabled friends who are very sensitive to it (asthma, MCAS, the works), so I feel like a jerk going in public spaces and making them less accessible... HOWEVER, some of my sensitive friends specifically can tolerate things like BPAL! Are there truly evil chemicals lurking in more mainstream perfumes?
Wow, after a lifetime of badmouthing perfume, I've suddenly found myself thinking about stopping by Sephora and smelling some things?? Not sure where this has come from, but here we are, and this is well timed. Any recommendations for a perfume to mask the pervasive smell of breastmilk and fatigue and project the hope that someday my brain will function well enough to write academic prose again? But also a chillness with slowing down and enjoying parental leave with my very chunky baby and two year old who insists "I'm very chunky too!". Does that count as an occasion?
Definitely an occasion!! I'm glad you're having a chill time and enjoying your lil babes. And I'm happy your nose is coming back! I've heard being pregnant changes how you smell scents, and I also know that sometimes our interest in scents goes in waves. (If I'm sick, or just getting better, i can't stand wearing perfume, for instance.) Bc your baby is so little, I'm guessing the #1 thing they like the smell of is you – your skin, your smell. But for you– for a parent who might like, sometimes, to feel fresh and awake and not at all like breastmilk, I would recommend something very simple and alcohol-free but also wonderful. There's a French brand called Mustela that makes a beautiful inexpensive fragranced water for babies (and their parents! it's really popular) called Musti Eau de Soin and i saw it at Target recently and gasped. You used to have to special-order it!! There's also another (more expensive) fragranced water called Bvlgari Petits et Mamans and goddamn, is it good. It's citrusy and zingy but also slightly floral, with vanilla and iris softening things up. It's very inviting, a bit powdery but warm, and I went through my sample of it in about three seconds. One of these might be just the thing to make you feel like the moment you're in is incredibly special and cuddly and soft and also a little fancy <3
ALISON!! Hiiii!!! This is exciting, to see you here!
OK: When I was 16, I was wearing SHIT-TONS of Clinique Happy, which I saved up my babysitting money for months for. There was a visible cloud of it around me at all times, a neon peach glowing aura, and my dad wouldn't let me wear it in the house. I still love it.
I also wore the hell out of Gap Grass– I worked at the gap, and I probably went through 3-4 bottles of it. That shit was photorealistic! The best grass scent i've ever smelled! And get this: a year and a half ago, one of my friends, knowing I'd loved that perfume and it had been discontinued, gave me a brand-new, still-in-the-box, bottle of Gap Grass from 1998 as a wedding present!!!! I cried.
OMG ALSO: One day when I was 16, I smelled Abercrombie Woods for men, and that was it. I asked for it for Christmas, and from then on, I wore it anytime I was ~feeling subversive~. I seriously thought I was the first girl to ever think of wearing men's cologne.
And yep, I own all three. They're up on my "memory" shelf. The original formula of Abercrombie Woods was hardest to track down, and bottles of it had become wildly, hilariously expensive online, but last year I finally found a seller on ebay who had no idea what she had and I bought it. I was CACKLING
LOVE THIS. ohh, Clinique Happy! I just recently got a sample of that and it brought me back in time (my sister-in-law used to wear it, I think). I was a Gap DREAM person but I do remember Grass as well! by the way, all this reminded me that when we were at Groupon, you gave me a bottle of Lady Gaga's perfume! (I don't recall why ...!)
I feel it in my SOUL that you were a gap dream person! And i know why re: Lady Gaga - it was Fame, and i had been so excited, bc it was supposed to smell like blood and all things dangerous, and the liquid was black, but when I got it, it was just a super-meh fruity floral, like all other celebrity perfumes at the time, and i was so mad!! and you wanted to try it, so i was like TAKE IT
The forever and ever classic old-school high femme perfume (fight me) is Fracas, which my wife, despite her impeccable butch credentials, did not love, and insisted on calling Frack-Ass. The riotous excess of white flowers! The edge of glittering metallic finish! The nostalgic callback to the 1950s! It is a dream within a dream of Femme Fatale-ity, and I love it.
I am also devilishly interested in scent and am on a journey to find my favorites. I'm currently collecting teeny tiny samples because a) that shit is expensive and b) a little goes a long way for my very sensitive nose. Do you have a Fragrantica account and if so may we follow you there? Will you share your most poetical and storied perfume reviews and memories? If there's anything I love better than perfume, it's hearing people wax eloquent about it when they share those bring-me-to-my-knees memories that scent evokes. Who are your trusted YouTube perfume reviewers? I am LIVING for this column.
oooh thrilled to hear you're on a scent journey! that shit IS expensive, i knoowwww. I don't have a fragrantica account because i love to lurk, and, while i love to read reviews on fragrantica, i also get really frustrated on there, because an absolute masterpiece of a perfume will have someone on there who's never liked anything but cotton-candy walgreens spray reviewing it like "thumbs down, my bf hates this." So my patience on there is thin! I do love all stories about perfume, though<3
Alkemia Perfumes !! https://alkemiaperfumes.com/ i thot i was the only one, but in the closet ( or just at home) cuz so many folks have chemical sensitivity. i do avoid essential oils, but there is this whole other world of perfume oils. local made in Amherst MA woman alchemist. site had phermones!! i wind up liking MYSELF!! and gender curation!! wear a scent locket in the pocket of my butch chamois shirt so can sniff along the day. Arabesque is my fave of theirs. very reasonable. old butch in the woods
Wow these look great!! I'm gonna have to sniff some samples from this brand, I'd never heard of them! Perfume oils are a wonder– they stay so close to the skin, they're like a secret only you and the person you're hugging know.
they are a great business, in all ways. makes scents its a woman's creation. quick service and willing to message dialogue. i follow them on facebook to get seasonal announcements and periodically select a sampling of their new offerings and go read more on their website. so much to learn about scent groupings, creative wearing of oils and ways to experiment , and really affordable. at home aroma therapy with my backup butch selection is Deus ex Machina. in addition to carrying a scent locket i will stick a bandana dosed with perfume oil in a coat pocket, for when i get studly vapors :)
Also also! I want the finest Petrichor I can get! Demeter’s Mud was good until someone said they could smell mold, and I couldn’t unsmell it.
I ALSO WANT THIS, it still (imo) does not exist!! Someone make itttttt, we need it!
First, hiya! Good to see you back, I’ve been missing Effing Dykes for years!
So I have 2 perfume questions!
1. I used to use Tom Ford’s vanilla tobacco but it was OVERPOWERING so I switched to Tokyo Milk’s (aka Margot Elena) ‘Poe’s Tobacco’ . I adore it but they have stopped making it… any recommendations for smelling like a vanilla bean in a gentleman’s library?
2. When I want to smell like the 80’s I use Davidoff’s Cool Water, and for the 90’s it’s Issey Miyake’s Eau d’Issey… how about you? What evokes the 90’s or 80’s clearest for you?
Look forward to hearing back from another perfume nerd! I only have about 40 perfumes but I’m getting there…
Hi Victoria!! Thank you for reading the nonsense coming out of my brain! I love both these questions and I am thrilled you're into perfume!! and I also know I'm going to lose track of your questions if they don't get popped in this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdcVTiUNo3FUk7JAH6ZU_omjjDZNkY8HyoxcfRFMh75U49ifQ/viewform - would you put 'em in there? I wanna answer them and not lose 'em! <3 <3
YES, I am SO happy I found your Substack! After reading Moby Dyke, I was AGHAST that I couldn't find you on socials!
What do you think of more "natural" perfumes, like Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, for example? I haven't worn fragrance in years because I have disabled friends who are very sensitive to it (asthma, MCAS, the works), so I feel like a jerk going in public spaces and making them less accessible... HOWEVER, some of my sensitive friends specifically can tolerate things like BPAL! Are there truly evil chemicals lurking in more mainstream perfumes?
Ok i LOVE BPAL! And I feel like I should address the "evil chemicals" thing in a full post!! Happy you're here!<3
Wow, baby perfume is a category I did not expect to exist! Going to try!
Wow, after a lifetime of badmouthing perfume, I've suddenly found myself thinking about stopping by Sephora and smelling some things?? Not sure where this has come from, but here we are, and this is well timed. Any recommendations for a perfume to mask the pervasive smell of breastmilk and fatigue and project the hope that someday my brain will function well enough to write academic prose again? But also a chillness with slowing down and enjoying parental leave with my very chunky baby and two year old who insists "I'm very chunky too!". Does that count as an occasion?
Definitely an occasion!! I'm glad you're having a chill time and enjoying your lil babes. And I'm happy your nose is coming back! I've heard being pregnant changes how you smell scents, and I also know that sometimes our interest in scents goes in waves. (If I'm sick, or just getting better, i can't stand wearing perfume, for instance.) Bc your baby is so little, I'm guessing the #1 thing they like the smell of is you – your skin, your smell. But for you– for a parent who might like, sometimes, to feel fresh and awake and not at all like breastmilk, I would recommend something very simple and alcohol-free but also wonderful. There's a French brand called Mustela that makes a beautiful inexpensive fragranced water for babies (and their parents! it's really popular) called Musti Eau de Soin and i saw it at Target recently and gasped. You used to have to special-order it!! There's also another (more expensive) fragranced water called Bvlgari Petits et Mamans and goddamn, is it good. It's citrusy and zingy but also slightly floral, with vanilla and iris softening things up. It's very inviting, a bit powdery but warm, and I went through my sample of it in about three seconds. One of these might be just the thing to make you feel like the moment you're in is incredibly special and cuddly and soft and also a little fancy <3
I simply MUST know what perfume 16 year old Krista was wearing! And do you still have this in The Cabinet??
ALISON!! Hiiii!!! This is exciting, to see you here!
OK: When I was 16, I was wearing SHIT-TONS of Clinique Happy, which I saved up my babysitting money for months for. There was a visible cloud of it around me at all times, a neon peach glowing aura, and my dad wouldn't let me wear it in the house. I still love it.
I also wore the hell out of Gap Grass– I worked at the gap, and I probably went through 3-4 bottles of it. That shit was photorealistic! The best grass scent i've ever smelled! And get this: a year and a half ago, one of my friends, knowing I'd loved that perfume and it had been discontinued, gave me a brand-new, still-in-the-box, bottle of Gap Grass from 1998 as a wedding present!!!! I cried.
OMG ALSO: One day when I was 16, I smelled Abercrombie Woods for men, and that was it. I asked for it for Christmas, and from then on, I wore it anytime I was ~feeling subversive~. I seriously thought I was the first girl to ever think of wearing men's cologne.
And yep, I own all three. They're up on my "memory" shelf. The original formula of Abercrombie Woods was hardest to track down, and bottles of it had become wildly, hilariously expensive online, but last year I finally found a seller on ebay who had no idea what she had and I bought it. I was CACKLING
LOVE THIS. ohh, Clinique Happy! I just recently got a sample of that and it brought me back in time (my sister-in-law used to wear it, I think). I was a Gap DREAM person but I do remember Grass as well! by the way, all this reminded me that when we were at Groupon, you gave me a bottle of Lady Gaga's perfume! (I don't recall why ...!)
I feel it in my SOUL that you were a gap dream person! And i know why re: Lady Gaga - it was Fame, and i had been so excited, bc it was supposed to smell like blood and all things dangerous, and the liquid was black, but when I got it, it was just a super-meh fruity floral, like all other celebrity perfumes at the time, and i was so mad!! and you wanted to try it, so i was like TAKE IT
Bobbi Brown Beach was the beach equivalent of that grass.
The forever and ever classic old-school high femme perfume (fight me) is Fracas, which my wife, despite her impeccable butch credentials, did not love, and insisted on calling Frack-Ass. The riotous excess of white flowers! The edge of glittering metallic finish! The nostalgic callback to the 1950s! It is a dream within a dream of Femme Fatale-ity, and I love it.