Tuesday Skin Scent: Traveling Bare, Craving Fracas

It is Tuesday, and the calendar is stacked with birthdays for icons who knew how to leave a mark: Johnny Mercer, Alan Shepard, Margaret Atwood, Wilma Mankiller. If they were scents, they would not be shy. I, on the other hand, am traveling and effectively commando, cushioned only by a small jar of DIY lotion that smells like ylang and sweet orange. It sits close, quietly optimistic, the way good hotel lighting never is.

What I really want today is the hush of my long-gone solid compact of Robert Piguet Fracas. Everyone calls Fracas a siren, and she is, but in solid she turns into a secret. That creamy tuberose and gardenia glow is still unmistakable, just pulled to the skin so you have to lean in. It turns the room-filling legend into a conspirator. If you’ve written off big white florals as too much, try them in solid or a careful dab of Parfum. The structure is the same, the volume is not, and suddenly the drama is wearable with a wool sweater and a late check-out.

Somewhere in a drawer I have a mini of Fracas Parfum. It may have turned. Vintage heartbreak is real. Minis are romantic until oxygen wins. If you are nursing your own survivors, do the obvious things and do them mercilessly: darkness, cool temperatures, tight caps, minimal air in the bottle. Even so, time has a mouth.

This week has me thinking about how we dial presence. A bright citrus-ylang lotion is the daytime equivalent of a wink. Fracas in solid is a whisper with lipstick on. Fracas in Parfum is a full curtain rise. Same story, different stage.

I am penciling 11/21 for a vintage day and hoping my Fracas mini still sings. If not, I will remember the compact I wore down to a shine, the one that proved a so-called loudmouth can be intimate when you change the form. That is the game I love in perfume. You set the distance. The rest is chemistry and appetite.