Thursday, October 23, 2008

CB I Hate Perfume

I've been wearing CB I Hate Perfume for months now and I love it more than I ever expected to. I never really enjoyed perfume before (not to mention that my profession frowns on it) but what I wasn't enjoying was the headache inducing, synthetic smelling scents. The perfumer, Christopher Brosius, sums it up far better than I ever could in his manifesto explaining why he hates perfume.
They're very unusual scents, my favorite is called Winter, 1972, and it's described as a field of untouched new fallen snow, hand knit woolen mittens covered with frost, a hint of frozen forest & sleeping earth. It smells exactly like that. I would never have imagined I'd want to smell like cold dirt but I do. I love it. They're very personal, intimate scents; they don't accost everyone around you and leave headaches in their wake. And there is certainly something for everyone, the scents range from the smell of tomato vines (another favorite) to the absolutely spot on scent of burning maple leaves.
If there weren't enough reasons for me to love this line already, he has a scent called In The Library. Described as English Novel taken from a Signed First Edition of one of my very favorite novels, Russian & Moroccan leather bindings, worn cloth and a hint of wood polish, it is very nearly the scent I've been looking for. Unfortunately, it's slightly too sweet for me, more vanilla and pipe tobacco. Having experienced so many of Christopher Brosius's scents and finding almost all of them very accurate I can only imagine that that favorite novel of his smells like that. His gallery in Brooklyn sells many more accords (single note fragrances) than the website and among them is one called English Novel. I can only hope that a trip back East is in the works for me so I can stop by and smell what is possibly the scent of my dreams. Of course, if I should be feeling particularly flush anytime soon (or not so soon) he does custom scents.
HOWEVER, (this is surely a novel by now) the real reason I need you all to know about this line is that I think everyone would love it but not enough people are familar with it. This fact was confirmed by me when I did a Facebook search to see how many people had it listed on their page and the answer came back as two; me and the perfumer himself.


2 comments:

Nor said...

lily, congraulations on actually making me want to buy perfume (something i have never in all my life wanted to do).

Lily said...

this is totally different than any other perfume! try it, it's so worth it! so wonderful.