Inviting and Warm

Today was one of those days – you open your eyes, the rain is beating on the window and you say to yourself, “why must I get out of bed today.” Then you pull the covers off and reality kicks in.

After taking a shower and figuring out what to wear on this most dreary day I thought to myself as I was looking for a fragrance, “warm and inviting.” As I reflect, I’d say that was an interesting choice of words but I guess it was spurred by the weather. As I thought about what to spray on, it came to me Vanille 44 by Le Labo.

I bought Vanille 44 while I was in Paris. Le Labo had the clever idea to release exclusive fragrances in a few cities and Paris was one of them. Prior to purchasing it, I thought to myself, I’m going to buy this thing no matter what it smells like…I mean why not, you can only get it in Paris. So off my lady and I trekked to Colette from the Champs-Elysees with our map in hand and the happiness of child on their way to Toys R Us. Man…when I got there I was busting with excitement, but I was quickly let down by the rudeness of one of the sales people. The only thing that stopped me from slapping this young lady was my up bringing and the thought of the French police screaming at me while in handcuffs…not a good look. Anyhow, after spraying a bit on myself and letting it settle, I wasn’t immediately overwhelmed by it. Was I expecting more, was it to simple…I’m not quite sure. So with the attitude, realizing just how much I was about to spend because of the weak American dollar and the lackluster first impression, I abruptly left. Man was I disappointed. My day came crashing down. I came all this way and didn’t get the one thing I wanted to leave with. FCUK. As the day wore on, I could not stop smelling my wrists. The more I smelled them the more intrigued I became. Sweet, woody, tasty, sweet but woody…unusual but interesting. Long story short, 3 days later I went back to Colette and bought it.

This post took a while to come to me but warm and inviting is just what Vanille 44 is to me. While some perfumers can be obsessed with duplicating what an actual flower is supposed to smell like, Vanille 44 is far from being a purely vanilla scent. It smells familiar and that’s because notes include bergamot, incense and bunch of other goodies. That combination of the sweet and woody scents really play a number on you…as a young lady in the shop said, “hmmm, that’s nice.”