Perfume Diary: Indoor Cat (HF)

It's very cold, very suddenly. All month it's been in and out, days when you just need a sweater and days when two sweaters and two coats aren’t enough, but last night and today the cold slammed down over New York like a glass catching a bug on a counter. I grew up, mostly, somewhere where it was rarely ever really cold, which meant very cold days brought with them a sense of specialness. Everything felt precious and graspable when I could see my breath in the air, a holiday, an occasion, a party. We never had snow days, but strikingly chilly days nevertheless had a little bit of the same feeling, the rules relaxed, the increased possibility that somehow something big might happen. 

Because of the changes in seasons and climate, even in New York a cold day feels kind of like this now, holiday and monument and relief. Last night I went to have drinks with a very old and dear friend whom I hadn’t seen in several months. I felt as though I had been let out of school; there was salt on the streets and everything seemed to hold its breath. It was breathtakingly cold on the walk from the train, but inside, and even outside, everything sparkled. I navigated the rabbit warren of low and unmarked streets downtown, where old businesses preserved from previous decades as though in amber, dry cleaners and shops selling fake handbags and costume jewelry and off-brand perfume, lit up the sidewalk with their anachronistic fluorescence, blazing out of the early dark. The night cracked and splintered brightly in the cold like glass, and then inside it was gratefully warm, the way the sudden drop in temperature makes indoors matter more, delineating doorways and boundary spaces. 

Before I left, I’d sprayed on a sample of Amina Vinci’s strange new Sesame Chān, an odd, nutty, gourmand-vetiver, which sounds a little nonsensical when I write it down, and smelled a little nonsensical when I first put it on The vetiver was sharp in the opening, and the sesame was bracingly food-like, as though I had spilled a take-out container of sesame noodles immediately after spraying on a broad-shouldered midcentury-traditional vetiver fragrance. I love sesame noodles, and I love big armchair-smug vetivers, so I can’t say that I didn’t like this, but I wasn’t sure yet; it seemed too strange, like a joke I didn’t quite get. 

But in the cold, and as it spent more time on my skin, it came alive. It was still strange, but the strangeness softened and deepened, stretching out like a cat. It smelled a little like a cat, or at least that was how it made me feel, like a cat sunk into blankets all day while the cold howls uselessly outside. It smelled like a pile of soft breathing fur hoarding warmth in a ball in the middle of an unmade bed. Gradually the food note became less aggressive, and reminded me instead of the warmth of the late hours of a party where lots of heavy food was carried inside and warmed up in the oven and consumed, and now everyone is slow and satiated, sunk into couches, more willing to be forgiving with one another as conversation calms, as laughter comes easier, warm as a mug cupped between hands.  

I surreptitiously smelled my wrist all night; when I got inside, to a glittering downtown bar where louder scents overwhelmed the room and where the cold night had whipped up a party atmosphere out of a weeknight happy hour, I lost track of it - despite its bold and strange primary notes, this isn’t a fragrance with much sillage. It isn’t big, or at least it doesn’t project. It was instantly lost in the indoor swirl of better recognizable florals and trendier woods. But close to the skin, like a secret, it smelled like a warm blanket, like whispering reassurances to myself. The vetiver and the sesame had come to some kind of understanding, blending into one coherent softness that smelled like a gentle voice and a warm bed. It’s not a glamorous fragrance, but it is sexy, I think, in a closed-door sort of way. I went home early, and I wasn’t as cold as I thought I would be, walking to the train with the memory of warmth, and the anticipation of it at home, carried in my body like supplies laid in for a long winter. It smelled like that, like leaving the party early, knowing you have a warm room waiting for you, not too far away, tucked into the back seam of the night.  —HF