Understanding Perfume Families: A Beginner's Guide (eBook)
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What are Perfume Families and Why Should I Care?
Perfume families, also known as fragrance families and olfactory families, are perfume categories based on a fragrance’s most prominent scents.
Knowing how to categorize your fragrances will help you to more easily shop for perfumes you’ll love, spend less time looking for a perfume you’ll love, and prevent you from wearing the wrong perfume at the wrong time.
By knowing a perfume’s olfactory family, you’ll know which perfume family smells best on you, which family you like the best, and which family to wear according to season.
If you have a fragrance that smells great on you, learning which perfume family it belongs to will help you find more perfumes that will smell great on you.
Weather Affects My Perfume’s Smell?
Yes, it does. Have you ever bought a new glorious-smelling perfume for a summer holiday and received loads of compliments, but those compliments stopped coming when you wore the same perfume in autumn? It’s because you wore a perfume that belonged to a fragrance family designed for warm-weather use.
Are You Easily Data-Overwhelmed?
Perfume-family classification is a complex topic. Its complexity is enhanced by the fact that professional perfumers often disagree on which family to place a fragrance. Just to make it more confusing, there are not only families, but subfamilies and sub-subfamilies and more.
Keep It Simple!
Breaking such a complex topic into a fast easy read will give you a solid foundation that can be built upon and expanded. For hobbyists who only want to know the basics, “Understanding Perfume Families: A Beginner’s Guide” is all you need. For those of you who want to expand your knowledge, “Understanding Perfume Families: A Beginner’s Guide” will give you a strong base to build on.
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Heard it through the family grapevine that my dad is unhappy with me that I never had kids, nor intend to, because "that is the end of our line, and everything I do in my life, everything that's in the family, will be inherited by my nieces and nephews on my husband's side." Apparently, had he known ten years ago, he would've have gone and had other kids besides me. (For context, both my parents are only children and my brother has a severe disability).
To which I say... What in the bloody hell kind of medieval thinking is that? Are we royals or whatnot in that we need "heirs"? The meaning of life does not lie in children for everyone. Everyone has a different legacy and contribution they can make to the world.
On the other hand, a part of me still grieves that I didn't have children, and likely never will. Before I had the bad drug reaction that messed me up for a good chunk of this year, and which will probably take years to recover from, I still did not consider myself a mentally healthy enough individual to have children. Frodo with his PTSD and ring sickness might (spoiler) be saved by the prospect of having a child in FoM, but I'm not that sort of person; I 100% know that approach won't work for me. Instead, having a child would just make everything 500 times harder. I decided early on for myself: children or career, both are impossible, and I chose career because even medicine is (usually) not a 24/7/365 commitment -- unlike parenting.
And yet, somehow, in every story I write or conceive, the plot always bends toward the characters having a child, no matter how heavy their burdens are already. I guess that might say something about my inner grief and desires.
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Whenever I smell lilac, I’m transported back to childhood, I close my eyes and my face is buried in a waxy sweet, cool fatty clump of pastel purple stars, auditory hallucinations emerge of happy bugs, buzzing.
My Grandfather has played the accordion since childhood. He had to practice every day after school or my Nana would tell him he was being idle and neglecting one of his responsibilities. Kids didn’t get an easy ride, in those days 🤣.
By the time he was stationed in Hawaii as a young man, after years of playing for school performances, church functions and Parent-Teacher and charity events, he was quite good on the accordion. Good enough that he could dip into pretty challenging pieces on the spot, in public and play with ease and confidence.
True story (and if you’ve seen this scene in films before, I guarantee it was based on eye witness accounts of this exact event, spit through a wave of laughter):
My Grandfather just missed active war theater by a couple of weeks and ended up stationed in Hawaii for the duration of his service. They were all sitting back-up but a peace declaration was made before they were scheduled to ship out.
In the meantime, they went through the routine prep motions and kept busy with duties and entertainment.
The USO would provide live music and variety shows, celebrity visits and physical display feats to entertain stationed service members. This usually involved an outdoor stage performance, “meet and greet” interactions and shared meals between the service members and USO workers and performers.
There was a transportation issue with The USO crew before a performance scheduled at the base and at the last minute, they weren’t going to be able to arrive on time that evening. It probably wouldn’t be until the next morning that they’d arrive.
It wasn’t like it is now, where there are offices and agreements between local companies to fill in for performance cancellations; back then it was tours, a group touring for a period and that was it.
The cook was already preparing the special meal and the service guys had already started gathering on the field for that night.
My Grandpa is a lovely person, with a big heart, who will help anyone. He was training to be a Chaplain in the service and planned on being a priest before he met my Grandmother—a town beauty from Massachusetts—at a Valentine’s Day dance, when he returned home for a visit.
Being the ever-helpful good guy, he knew this was something he could really come through on: He had his accordion!
He’d go up on stage, bail the planners out and save the day!
So there he is, walking out on stage, with his accordion. He starts playing.
There’s silence. Then mumbling from the crowd. Then groans. The groans grow louder. The groans form into grunts and growls. The growls become expletives. The expletives became louder.
“What the &$@% is this?!” he heard the guys yelling.
“Where are the girls?! BRING OUT THE GIRLS!!!!”
Everyone began booing and hissing. He kept playing his accordion but with more energy.
Then, no exaggeration: He felt something wet splatter on his face. More wet slop.
The cook had come out with vegetable waste and was passing it out to the guys. They were literally flinging tomatoes at my Grandpa onstage 🤣.
He finished his set and then calmly walked offstage and cleaned his accordion in the back. He’s a remarkably resilient and optimistic man and that’s why he was able to tell all of his grandkids this story, exactly like that (well, minus the expletives; I heard those mumbled, as an adult years later 🤣) with laughter in mouth and a twinkle in his eye. He’d tell us that sometimes people won’t like you, will make fun of you doing something you worked hard at but do it because you love it and eventually, someone will think it’s beautiful, too. That’s how he won over my Grandma 🥰.
Back to lilacs. My Grandpa would bring out his accordion to play at the holidays and cookouts. We loved listening and dancing to it; the jauntiness of an accordion is compatible with childhood joy and lack of cynicism. It’s just fun to hop and jump to.
When my cousins from New Orleans came up to visit, there was a particularly raucous performance including my Grandpa, my Uncle and my cousins.
My Uncle isn’t exactly an Elvis impersonator but was an Elvis tribute performer at the time, who would sing at local events and would sell independent cds with his voice on them, at his performances.
I still remember him calling me over to the stereo whenever we had a family get together and asking me what I thought about some tracks he’d just recorded at a little, local studio; he was also the Uncle who made me mixed tapes my whole childhood and teen years of 50’s and 60’s rock and pop, the music of his parents’ generation. I was probably the only kid in the 90’s humming “Blue Velvet” by Bobby Vinton and “Venus” by Frankie Avalon through the halls of my school 🤣.
“What does this all have to do with LILACS?!” you’re probably wondering. I’m getting there 🤣.
My New Orleans cousins have a Zydeco band and at the time, they were organizers of a Zydeco festival every year. They brought their instruments up here to Connecticut with them and planned on playing some songs for us.
Sunlight dappling the grass, under two old trees, tables full of cold salads and grilled foods mixing with the intoxicating scent of lilacs and my Grandpa comes running out with his accordion to join my cousins. My uncle starts singing. All the kids start dancing in the grass, around the lilac bushes, to Zydeco styled Elvis songs. And everything was right with the world 😌.
All it takes is one breeze of lilac to tickle my nose and I’m right back there. Dancing in the warm grass, with the cheerful, chirpy sound of Grandpa’s accordion, playing in my ear.
(Photo from “Britannica.com”)
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I tried a cocktail last night called the Last Word, made by my favorite eccentric uncle-in-law who was in town. My uncle is a bit of an adventurer: he studied at Oxford, worked for the Indian Health Service, had a medical practice for a while on a remote island in Washington state, and us now going to work as a doctor for expats in China. He also makes excellent drinks: I know what I’ll be ordering the next time I’m in a bar. Fun fact: the Last Word contains Chartreuse, which is made in limited quantities by a group of monks in France who take a vow of silence. The recipe is secret. It is therefore oddly hard to find, particularly due to the homemade “cocktail craze” that began during COVID.
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Lovingly named after lyrics taken from Marilyn Manson’s 𝘚𝘯𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘌𝘺𝘦𝘴 𝘍𝘰𝘳 𝘚𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘦𝘴 song from the 𝘗𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘈𝘯 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘍𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘺 album.
This can be used as a shelf standing upright or used as a storage organizer laying flat on a dresser or wherever you decide to put this little macabre piece.
𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐀𝐋𝐒 𝐔𝐒𝐄𝐃
Resin | Alcohol Ink | Acrylic Paint | Glitter | Confetti
𝐌𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐔𝐑𝐄𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐒 / 𝐃𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒
𝐇𝐄𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 9.5”
𝐖𝐈𝐃𝐓𝐇 5”
𝐃𝐄𝐏𝐓𝐇 1.5”
𝐖𝐄𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 13.7oz
𝐅𝐔𝐍 𝐅𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐒
Quicklime was often used over plague or cholera burials to prevent the spread of disease, thought during this period to be transferred through noxious bad air known as miasma.
In practical usage, quicklime is being used not to destroy but to prevent disease from spreading.
Lime is one of the major finds in many forensics cases dealing with clandestine burials due to this popular notion of its ability to remove the identity of the deceased and destroy the remains.
𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐆
https://youtu.be/LprxB7dQ_Oc?si=7RYPqM4xPkdZsBZO
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