Party Notes

I chatted with my friend José last night about scent; His seven year old daughter, he says, spends hours and hours in the bathroom, ‘making perfume’. I told him the next time they came over for dinner we could smell perfume together and talk about their compostion. He says she is very interested in chemistry; the parents are both extremely talented scientists—maybe she could become a parfumier ; )

Then Jose and I got to talking about his memories with cologne. He says Shalimar and Tribú remind him of old lovers. Chanel no. 5 is his mother. His father, a wealthy and powerful Mexican artist and politician, is YSL. He himself wears Lacoste. His wife wears nothing.

My dear friend Julie, 7 ½ months pregnant, wandered around the party smelling amazingly exotic, yet intensely familiar; It took me awhile to figure out that she was wearing Sensuous, one of my very favorites. It smelled fabulous on her, and it was a very cool experience to smell it on someone else besides me—I’ve almost gotten to the point where I am not even aware of that scent on myself, it has become such a part of my makeup.