tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26843475161613174912026-03-03T08:27:09.308+00:00Katie Puckrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12816871787892998256noreply@blogger.comBlogger544125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2684347516161317491.post-78278694974071980922021-05-11T18:31:00.003+01:002021-05-11T20:20:37.448+01:00

Katie,Here’s a screenshot from the Brut USA page on Amazon, and I have questions: First, it’s curious that a ‘70s drugstore cologne is getting into matters political and philosophical, and while I don’t imagine anyone is looking to Brut as an opinion leader on important matters — or on fragrance matters — I’m vaguely troubled by the way it feels like the big fat Tolstoy quote is addressing the

Katie Puckrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12816871787892998256noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2684347516161317491.post-66615582963759053942019-12-13T23:54:00.000+00:002020-05-03T20:22:42.046+01:00

Katie, Have you tried anything from Jardins D’Écrivains? Its perfumes are said to be inspired by great writers and literary movements and based on the two I’ve tried, they seem additionally inspired by soap. First is Junky, after William Burroughs (you finally made it, Bill), which is not nearly as complex as its long list of notes (hemp, rosewood, iris, violet, gardenia, cedar, Japanese

Katie Puckrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12816871787892998256noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2684347516161317491.post-51441978806437876412019-12-10T00:50:00.000+00:002020-01-27T18:23:40.515+00:00

Dan, Made in Heaven by A Lab on Fire smells like the classic Kmart smell, which is a warm, sweet, nutty smell. I always loved that smell, the way it summed up the cheap but comforting claustrophobia of Kmart. Does Kmart still exist? Katie Katie, I know the smell! Though maybe only because you mentioned it. And not from Kmart, which I don’t think I’ve ever visited, but

Katie Puckrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12816871787892998256noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2684347516161317491.post-9350293966510536212019-11-03T00:44:00.001+00:002020-05-03T20:25:02.244+01:00

A couple of weeks ago, I was on the London Underground heading home after a long day. It was around 8 in the evening, and I boarded a car at the end of the train that looked to be completely empty. As I stepped inside, a glorious thing: the entire carriage was fragrant with roses. It was like some kind of olfactory hallucination. The London tube is notoriously hot and dirty, and not in a

Katie Puckrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12816871787892998256noreply@blogger.com18London, UK51.5073509 -0.1277582999999822351.1912379 -0.77320529999998222 51.8234639 0.51768870000001777tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2684347516161317491.post-1088217943321675082019-10-20T15:05:00.000+01:002020-05-03T20:25:50.789+01:00

Katie, As you already know, my parents were quite old, even when I was a little kid (especially then, it seemed), and Depression-era thrifty, so I grew up with a 1952 black-and-white Zenith console television. Its five or six channels were so grainy, it felt like an uncertain step between radio and TV. Only in the late-70s did my father finally bring home a used color set, and while its

Katie Puckrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12816871787892998256noreply@blogger.com6London, UK51.5073509 -0.1277582999999822351.1912379 -0.77320529999998222 51.8234639 0.51768870000001777tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2684347516161317491.post-27020679968365633212019-10-17T01:04:00.000+01:002019-12-14T00:49:22.293+00:00

Hi. Remember me? I used to do perfume reviews, regular-like. Then I went on a great big goofing-off jag, and in the process misplaced my lust for hunting and gathering smell intel. But once a fumehead, never not a fumehead, because today I tried a brand new perfume and suddenly needed to talk to somebody about it. And who do I know who’s all ears when it comes to matters of the nose? You,

Katie Puckrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12816871787892998256noreply@blogger.com87tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2684347516161317491.post-26101537275236175172017-04-02T00:32:00.000+01:002019-12-14T00:49:39.028+00:00

Katie, As you know, ancillary products are not my thing. Aside from soap, toothpaste and perfume, I only use one product, this G.M. Collin Hydramucine Optimal Gel that I’ve been putting on my face for over ten years. I look okay with it and I’m almost certain I'd look okay without it, but at this point why take any chances? Every other part of me -- which is to say every part not including

Katie Puckrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12816871787892998256noreply@blogger.com32London, UK51.5073509 -0.1277582999999822351.1912379 -0.77320529999998222 51.8234639 0.51768870000001777tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2684347516161317491.post-40371626376895043442016-11-05T22:16:00.000+00:002017-04-02T00:43:22.138+01:00

Katie, Lately I'm just wearing a bunch of lavenders and eau de colognes. Which makes me feel guilty because, jeez, why do I own so many damn perfumes if I'm perfectly fine wearing a simple lavender every day? Maybe it's like those people who have to buy a big fat house before they realize they never wanted a big fat house. Except I always hate those people. They're so self-congratulatory

Katie Puckrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12816871787892998256noreply@blogger.com35tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2684347516161317491.post-46249406459988526242016-03-28T22:37:00.000+01:002019-12-14T00:46:11.219+00:00

Katie, Have you worn any of the Eris perfumes yet? It's the line created by Scent and Subversion author Barbara Herman with Antoine Lie. I got my samples and immediately put on Belle de Jour for no reason other than I’m compulsive and it’s the first sample my pudgy fingers pulled out of the bag. Catherine Deneuve: will the real Belle de Jour stand up? It’s...nice. I kept thinking these

Katie Puckrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12816871787892998256noreply@blogger.com42tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2684347516161317491.post-67410898098600371872016-03-23T18:00:00.000+00:002016-03-29T00:16:31.637+01:00

Johnny Depp: he who smelt it, dealt it. Deep in the Mojave, Johnny Depp is rolling down his sleeves after fixing a flat on his Volvo 245 DL. Suddenly, a mephitic odor assails his handsome, kohl-rimmed nostrils. “What the...?” Johnny's brow crumples into furrows, his mouth into a moue as he strains to identify the source of the stench. Roadkill? The sun-ripened remains of a coyote's dinner?

Katie Puckrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12816871787892998256noreply@blogger.com63tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2684347516161317491.post-59902708551111377462016-02-03T00:57:00.000+00:002019-12-14T00:50:13.825+00:00

Katie, Have you ever gifted an expensive bottle of perfume to someone without knowing whether or not they’d like it? Which is yet another version of, “Are you sometimes stupid like I am?” Beth is one of my only friends who loves perfume and despite that, she recently purchased a whole bottle of Le Labo Santal 33. Because she loves it. And as her friend, I should support her decision,

Katie Puckrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12816871787892998256noreply@blogger.com54tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2684347516161317491.post-78396312791315031412015-09-15T09:05:00.000+01:002019-12-14T00:51:16.224+00:00

For a brand known for its chic eccentricity, Comme des Garçons can also surprise by keeping surprises to a minimum. I refer specifically to CdG's perfumes that comprise a virtual forest, a world of woods which includes the Incense and Blue Series, along with Black, Serpentine, Laurel, Hinoki, 2 Man and Wonderwood. (Hmm, seems I was complaining of "wood fatigue" back in my 2010 review of

Katie Puckrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12816871787892998256noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2684347516161317491.post-45486691106761437392015-09-11T07:59:00.000+01:002016-02-01T13:20:59.613+00:00

Hi Katie, I am looking for a summer perfume I can wear during the day. I'd like it to embody the beach where I spent my summer months growing up. There's a shady dirt path that leads there, the dirt pounded smooth by decades of bare feet. There are roots to trip over if you don't know the geography, and lots of ivy. At the end of this path there's a heaping helping of dark pink rugosa

Katie Puckrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12816871787892998256noreply@blogger.com50tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2684347516161317491.post-34388808693233515422015-09-07T21:50:00.000+01:002019-11-25T17:28:45.817+00:00

Hello! I'm cranking up ol' KP Smells clown car again, and while I'm lubing the chassis, I thought I'd share something I wrote for the The Guardian in June. "Bottling the Smell of Dead People Won't Capture Their Essence" concerns Olfactory Links, a French company which aims to make a perfume out of the smell of clients' deceased loved ones. You can read the article here. A provocative topic

Katie Puckrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12816871787892998256noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2684347516161317491.post-1711773726709726152015-06-04T00:30:00.000+01:002019-12-14T00:51:37.312+00:00

Katie, As you know, this The Different Company Rose Poivrée drama of mine goes back over a decade. I'd owned a big canister of the original civet-heavy formulation, the one that Luca Turin famously said smelled like dirty underwear, and because I was young and I thought perfumes had to smell nice, I never had the nerve to wear it and finally sold it off. At the time, I knew nothing of

Katie Puckrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12816871787892998256noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2684347516161317491.post-28394402096390844402015-04-29T11:13:00.000+01:002016-02-01T21:00:23.320+00:00

David Bowie is described as “the best-smelling human I ever met”, by Arcade Fire musician Will Butler. The Thin White Duke's fumes came up in Butler's conversation with BBC 6 Music's morning goddess Lauren Laverne last week while promoting his debut solo album Policy. Never one to let an intriguing detail slip away, Laverne pounced, insisting firmly, “I am going to require some more adjectives

Katie Puckrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12816871787892998256noreply@blogger.com74tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2684347516161317491.post-67726822666720521122015-03-10T01:34:00.000+00:002019-12-14T12:28:54.200+00:00

Katie, Have you tried any of the Frapin fragrances? Until recently, I hadn't. There are entire perfume lines that don't interest me. I don't know why and I'm so apathetic I don't care to investigate why. I see the word "Frapin" and I don't even remember liking perfume. Which reminds me...I've never watched a moment of Friends but recently I saw a reunion of several of the actors from the

Katie Puckrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12816871787892998256noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2684347516161317491.post-24934244176979652332015-03-09T00:22:00.000+00:002015-06-04T00:34:58.726+01:00

Aromatics Elixir by Clinique had been around for 20 years by the time I discovered it in the early 90s. I started off admiring it from a distance: even the most tentative spray hurled a lavish, densely-packed cloud of flowers, moss and woods into the air around me. I wasn't sure I could deliver on the promise of this perfume. I began smelling AE on people I admired, creative, fiercely

Katie Puckrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12816871787892998256noreply@blogger.com34tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2684347516161317491.post-46353652188786181312014-08-29T23:05:00.000+01:002015-03-09T00:25:58.880+00:00

Katie, For me, summer vacation has come to mean traveling from one house in which I don't write to another house in which I also don't write. The vacation houses are always more scenic than my own but they also have more ants and less water pressure and so my state of mind remains about the same. This year would have been no different if only on the morning of my departure I hadn't tried to

Katie Puckrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12816871787892998256noreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2684347516161317491.post-46763385213723635192014-08-10T20:20:00.001+01:002019-12-14T12:54:21.899+00:00

Living in London, the defining perfume of my past few years here has been Molecule 01 by Escentric Molecules. Not a day goes by that I don't nab a whiff of a waft of "the little aromachemical that could" in the city's streets and tubes, galleries and supermarkets. I smell it in double-kiss hellos with film editors, yoga teachers and pop stars' himbo consorts. My friend Brix Smith Start used

Katie Puckrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12816871787892998256noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2684347516161317491.post-35707680051020828272014-07-29T22:58:00.001+01:002014-09-21T20:46:17.231+01:00

Katie, I recently tried the nu_be series, "an olfactory periodic table," which smartly counters the complaint that these new brands put out too many perfumes at once. If anyone criticizes nu_be, it's like criticizing the chemical structure of the whole world. "Too many perfumes? You try living without oxygen!" My initial perception is unavoidably rooted in each perfume's relationship to its

Katie Puckrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12816871787892998256noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2684347516161317491.post-4269777132922778582014-07-28T00:19:00.000+01:002014-08-10T20:54:09.203+01:00

A few years ago, I smelled Prada Amber being worn to great effect by an elegant woman at a TV industry party. The party was a "class reunion" of the first TV show I ever hosted in the UK, the notorious pop culture crash called The Word. The Word was live on Channel 4 every Friday night at at 11 o'clock, an hour of the biggest stars, the hippest bands, and the most shocking, tabloid-freak-show

Katie Puckrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12816871787892998256noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2684347516161317491.post-73552539059334110892014-06-29T23:38:00.000+01:002019-12-14T13:41:32.767+00:00

Katie, I know nothing about most occupations but here's how I imagine roller coaster architects work: they draw up dozens of plans for coasters that are never built because the designs are so unruly, almost every rider would get sick. Eventually, the plans are meticulously reigned in and, because of this, these architects surely see their finished coasters as a compromise. I bet they even

Katie Puckrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12816871787892998256noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2684347516161317491.post-25594052493752588712014-06-25T01:48:00.000+01:002014-06-29T23:44:38.089+01:00

Smelling perfume is my favorite self-mesmerization technique. There's nothing like huffing fancy French fumes to still the squirrels running wild in my head. It's a ritual: drain the brain, spray the scent, breathe, allow colors and words and images to fill the mind. And repeat. And repeat. As perfumer Sophia Grojsman has said, perfume is “medicine for the soul.” The sparky folks behind The

Katie Puckrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12816871787892998256noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2684347516161317491.post-67478712496368718412014-05-15T02:13:00.000+01:002019-12-14T13:45:46.777+00:00

My video review may be about the de-lovely Neroli Portofino by Tom Ford, but this bloggy blurb is concerned with swellegant Tom Ford himself. Specifically, with his declared four-bath-a-day habit. The dapper neatnik manages a global empire of glamour, a long-term committed relationship, perfectly manicured stubble, and a rigorous schedule of executive-level bathing. Hats off (or everything

Katie Puckrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12816871787892998256noreply@blogger.com36