WOOD SAGE AND SEA SALT

Ambrette seed. Sea salt. Sage. Red algae. Grapefruit.

2/22/15

Why do we dress differently from day to day?  Several reasons, probably.  Season and weather, circumstance, and mood all contribute.  Some days, we feel sunnier and brighter and want to wear colors to reflect our optimism and joie de vivre, whereas some days we might feel like a more neutral palette reflects that day’s apathetic attitude, or we wear dark colors because we might want to give an edge to what we are presenting.  I believe that the same is true for scent.  For me, personally, I have found that wearing the same perfume for days in a row does not always create the same effect.  What on Wednesday can conjure charming nostalgia, can on Thursday be an irritation, or I do not like it as much on that occasion.  Even if there is a perfume that you are in love with, wearing it day in and day out may eventually tire you and that initial moment that piqued your interest with it is not as easily expressible.  You might have a hard time drawing out what it was that you initially liked, and it might only be a shadow of that remembrance instead of that first excitable candidness.  For me personally, I have learned not to wear the same perfume two days in a row.  I may wear it often, but if I go away and come back, I get a much fresher take on the scent.  There can also be night scents, ‘going out scents,’ work-appropriate’ scents, scents that bring comfort, or nostalgia, or thoughts of summer in the depths of winter.

So saying, Wood Sage and Sea Salt is a ‘calm day-by-the-sea’ sort of scent, a fairly pretty, but unmemorable day.  The tide remains low.   It’s the day where you can take a nap on the sand, but you were hoping to watch surfers, see a dog joyously bounding in and out of the lapping waves, and laugh at children who build up their sandcastles, only to have the tide come in and knock it all down.  And you leave disappointed.  It is evocative of the seaside, but not the ocean, in all its tremendous awe.  You don’t feel the power, and the vastness and the grit, nor do you get sprayed by breaking waves. You don’t feel the rush of excitement.  Like the name suggests, salt and sage are present, along with ambrette seed for a faint muskiness and a subtle odor of grapefruit.  It smells prettier than it sounds, but is faint both in terms of potency and longevity.  I feel like the ice cream dropped from the cone before I got a chance to properly taste it with this fragrance.

Rating: 2 1/2 sun-baked seagulls squawking on  a distant rock.