[Image]
i love perfume. in fact, i'm a little mad for it. and i have a rather obscene amount of it. just in the past few months, i've bought:

tom ford - white patchoulivera wang - bouquetmac - creations hue: turquaticcalvin klein - eternity summerburberry - summerchanel - no. 5 eau premierekenneth cole - blackmont blanc - individuelmichael kors - islandpart of it is because i am too frequently in a duty free. and it's not because the perfume is necessarily cheaper there, it's more because it's there in such a decadent, sinful array. they have it all (even the juicy couture now, monica). and no one is snotty to you like at the department store perfume counters. you can try everything (i cannot wear the juicy couture, for example and both me and everyone who had to sit near me on a recent flight to singapore wished i hadn't tried it). and you're quite unaccosted and unmolested by sales people (except in singapore, where they must be on commission, but you can deflect them by walking around on your mobile phone), which i like. i want to see what catches my eye and spritz it on myself, not have someone else trying to force something on me. i must have my own opportunity to commune with the perfume. to bond with the pretty bottle. to swoop myself in the heady scents. 
ever since my summer voyage on the volga river from kazan to moscow, in which i was wearing white linen breeze, i've realized that perfume and memory are intertwined. to this day, when i catch a whiff of white linen breeze, i am instantly transported to the volga. so, what is now quite possibly an unhealthy obsession started innocently enough. 
when i started my last job, i went on a familiarization trip onboard an LNG carrier. i knew i would want to remember it, so i fittingly bought ralph lauren's blue, since i would be sailing on the blue of the mediterranean. on my first trip to korea and the shipyards, i was so excited that i bought kenneth cole's black (the one i replaced in the past couple months, because i love love it so much) in order to trigger a scent memory later. it worked like a charm.
so, it seems that whenever i've gone somewhere special, i've bought a new scent. sometimes i get one because it's a small size and will fit nicely in my makeup bag for traveling.  somtimes it's because i've read about it in that infernal sunday lifestyle magazine. but mostly, because i'm a bit obsessed.  
what are you obsessed about?