Lazy 3-Day Weekend Scent Confessional: Notes I Swore Off... Until I Didn’t

If winter had a soundtrack, mine would be a low growl of amber and smoke. Yet here we are, 40-ish days from the season’s finish line, and I’m craving trouble. The best kind is a note you used to hate that suddenly feels like a dare you want to take. This weekend I’m leaning into reversals and letting a few exiled bottles back on the vanity.

Patchouli is the obvious redemption arc. Too many of us met it through the sugar bomb of Mugler Angel, then swore eternal vengeance. But patchouli can be satin, not corduroy. One wrist of Chanel Coromandel and you understand: cocoa-powder dust, crisp incense, a lacquered corridor lit by dim chandeliers. I wore it to buy bread and felt like I owned the boulangerie.

Tuberose was my villain phase. Then Frédéric Malle Carnal Flower cracked the code with eucalyptus air and a bite of green. If you want a silkier approach, Diptyque Do Son is sea-breeze tuberose that behaves in public yet still flips its hair.

Musk is where the plot twists. Clean can be chic or clinical. Narciso Rodriguez For Her wraps like rose-tinted cashmere, while Byredo Blanche is crisp sheets that never soften. When I want to smell like skin with a secret, I reach for Juliette Has A Gun Not A Perfume and let cetalox whisper instead of shout.

As winter loosens its jaw, I like a bridge scent. Serge Lutens Chergui is toasted hay and honeyed tobacco, the coziest goodbye to the cold. Then I pivot to sap-green fig with Diptyque Philosykos, and finally let Hermès Un Jardin sur le Nil sluice through the system with grapefruit pith and river light.

And because a 3-day weekend deserves a toast, I’ll pick bubbles without the headache. Etat Libre d’Orange Remarkable People fizzes like grapefruit Champagne, and By Kilian Apple Brandy on the Rocks turns a night in into a velvet booth.

My weekend line up:

• Comfort now: Serge Lutens Chergui
• The bridge: Diptyque Philosykos
• First hint of spring: Hermès Un Jardin sur le Nil
• Patchouli glow-up: Chanel Coromandel

On my skin as I type: a half spray of Guerlain Shalimar hiding under cashmere. If your perfume smells a little like temptation today, you’re doing February right.