Perfume Safari

Britt-Nicole and I went out perfume shopping yesterday. Britt-Nicole is a friend of mine and she likes perfume, but doesn't own enough of it, so we decided to go out and see what we could shake down from the stores. We figured being in the post-Valentine's-Day clean-up phase, we'd get some bargains.

We started out at Walgreen's, not exactly the high end of the perfume universe, but Britt-Nicole likes it there. It's not a bad store if you know what you want. We wanted to try some of Brittany Speer's new fragrance, Curious. The big bottle has the squeezer atomizer on it.

One thing you have to say, cool perfume bottles are definitely back in. Even the little bottle of Curious was still pretty gorgeous. It looked like something that Jeannie in I Dream of Jeannie would have owned. Brittany had just shaved her head that day, which normally I would have taken as a bad omen, but Britt-Nicole isn't that superstitious.

Britt-Nicole bought Curious. She had actually been thinking about buying it before our perfume safari, but it was a nice kickoff to the day.

Having found some loot at Walgreen's, we moved on the CVS, where the nice lady in the store told us to go to a department store. At Walgreen's, they keep perfume under lock and key, but at least they let you smell it. At CVS, you can't even smell it. They'll unlock it only if you're willing to buy it.

So we headed to the mall and went to Dillard's and milled around the perfume display. It can get pretty confusing trying on lots of different scents, so we had the little coffee bean sniffer between rounds to help cleanse our nostrils.

One thing we didn't like: multiple perfumes by the same people with similar names. We wanted to try Burberry. Do you know there's three of them? Just to help you keep things straight, they're all named Burberry. What about Beautiful? Three of them, too.

Even celebrity perfumes now come out in multiple entries. Beyonce has two. So does Brittany.

I couldn't resist some historical hunting. I am very big on retro scents these days, and I really wanted to try out Youth Dew. It's by Estee Lauder, and it was introduced before I Love Lucy was in reruns. Nobody wears this stuff, and I didn't even know what it smelled like.

Well, when you try it, you can understand why this can't be on anybody's top-ten list. It's a wonder that Estee Lauder hasn't quietly retired it.

This perfume was so strange that even Britt-Nicole, who has an admitted affinity for certain "old lady perfumes," found it unpleasant. It's what perfumists would call an "Oriental" scent but there are Oriental scents that are quite pleasant. This stuff was strong and strange. The name seemed bizarre to me, since it smelled neither youthful nor dewy.

Now it isn't wretched or anything like that. It's just not even remotely like perfumes on the market today. The only person I can imagine wearing it is Bette Davis.

I bought some Irresistable, which was left over from the Valentine's Day Massacre. It's a Givenchy scent, very light and summery. We got a bunch of samples and, since we pretty much sprayed ourselves from one end of the counter to the other, we left the store in a big cloud of fragrance.

There is something contagious about perfume shopping. When I bought perfume, a stranger at the counter told me I'd love it. When Britt-Nicole and I stopped for coffee later at a drive-through, the coffee lady asked where we had been and then we discussed perfume. She had Burberry classic at home along with some other scents, but she didn't know about Burberry London.

The weird thing was how excited everyone was. Buying perfume was like a big adventure. You don't get that same kind of response if you go out and buy corn flakes.