Wednesday Scent Confession: Iris On My Wrist, Legends On My Mind

It’s Hump Day, it’s International Stuttering Awareness Day, it’s National Nut Day, and my wrist smells like discipline with a secret. I pulled out Prada Infusion d’Iris in its original formula, the one I abandoned when I fell for Infusion d’Iris Absolue. I haven’t worn the OG much lately, but a nudge from Dawn yesterday sent me back to that pale-blue silk of a scent. If you say you love iris yet never wore the original, we need to talk.

The OG is starched linen and clean bone, that immaculate carrot-cold iris stacked with soap, musks and a breath of incense. It is the sound of your heels on museum marble, calm and a touch aloof. I forgot how narcotic that cleanliness can be, because I keep catching myself sniffing my arm like a teenager who just discovered skin chemistry. No shame. The pleasure is real.

Then there is Infusion d’Iris Absolue, deeper, resin-glossed, a little golden around the edges. Think benzoin and vanilla giving the iris a late-afternoon glow. If the original is your white Oxford shirt, Absolue is the same shirt after sundown with lipstick in the pocket. I love both, but today the austerity felt right. Sometimes restraint is the most provocative move.

Maybe the calendar planted the seed. Birthdays for Franz Liszt, Doris Lessing, Robert Capa, Catherine Deneuve and Jeff Goldblum are today, and tell me that’s not a pantheon of charisma. If any perfume channels Deneuve’s poise without trying too hard, it’s the OG Infusion. And if anyone could wear Absolue and make it purr ironically, it’s Goldblum.

I’m also plotting 10/24. I plan to wear whatever I love most that morning and decide what I want it to say about me when it trails in the air. Or I might pick something a friend enabled me to buy, because we all have that one person who whispers just do it and then disappears like a perfumed accomplice.

For now, I’m staying with Prada Infusion d’Iris. It’s cool, precise, and quietly subversive. On a day dedicated to voices, hesitations and a few delightful nuts, a serene iris feels like the most elegant way to make some noise.