Spring is a slutty season, so let’s talk about tuberose. The very dear friend who originally introduced me both to tuberose and to perfume itself once told me that her mother had said, about Frederic Malle’s Carnal Flower (my single favorite perfume, more on that later) that it made the wearer smell like “she wasn’t going to die wondering.” This phrase is the single most glorious way to call someone a big slut that I have ever heard. Not going to die wondering is exactly what spring is about, the salivating, dangerous impulses that rush into the blood when color and sunlight come back into the world. We want to know everything. Half-constructed plans seem blessed by the dewy early morning, and whispering crushes turn as quickly into full-blown love as a match struck on top of a pool of gasoline. It is an easy time to say yes, to assume it will all work out, to grab selfish handfuls of everything made even the least bit available, making sure there is nothing left about which one might die wondering. It is a season to eat the fruit and get at the knowledge, dripping sticky all over one’s bright-scented hands. It’s a good season for tuberose, an aggressively beautiful, selfish white flower so creamy as to teeter at the edge of counting as a gourmand, a note that smells like wanting more and more again.
Carnal Knowledge: On Tuberose (HF)
Carnal Knowledge: On Tuberose (HF)
Carnal Knowledge: On Tuberose (HF)
Spring is a slutty season, so let’s talk about tuberose. The very dear friend who originally introduced me both to tuberose and to perfume itself once told me that her mother had said, about Frederic Malle’s Carnal Flower (my single favorite perfume, more on that later) that it made the wearer smell like “she wasn’t going to die wondering.” This phrase is the single most glorious way to call someone a big slut that I have ever heard. Not going to die wondering is exactly what spring is about, the salivating, dangerous impulses that rush into the blood when color and sunlight come back into the world. We want to know everything. Half-constructed plans seem blessed by the dewy early morning, and whispering crushes turn as quickly into full-blown love as a match struck on top of a pool of gasoline. It is an easy time to say yes, to assume it will all work out, to grab selfish handfuls of everything made even the least bit available, making sure there is nothing left about which one might die wondering. It is a season to eat the fruit and get at the knowledge, dripping sticky all over one’s bright-scented hands. It’s a good season for tuberose, an aggressively beautiful, selfish white flower so creamy as to teeter at the edge of counting as a gourmand, a note that smells like wanting more and more again.