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Getting Started

Loving Fragrance: Connoisseurship vs Snobbery

Photo-of-Giovanni-bonamy-photo-credit-sean-p-waters
Photo of Giovanni Bonamy – Credit: Sean P Waters

By: Freddie Jones

To me connoisseurship has nothing to do with snobbery, actually it’s the very opposite. Snobbery is blindly accepting (like a form of superstition) that a received taste is a superior taste, while connoisseurship is a genuine attempt to investigate the relative qualities, constituents, craft, meaning, artistry, history etc behind whatever thing it is one is passionate about in order to develop a personal taste built on creating a meaningful personal context to that thing. In any company of genuine connoisseurs none of our tastes should be or indeed are the same, nor do or should we agree about what we like about those things we like in common or indeed about why. Our feelings about the object of our passions are our own, the stories we have painstakingly developed for them unique.

The joy of discussing a shared passion with fellow connoisseurs is the freedom to talk quite frankly and openly. Neither needing to sugar any pills nor temper any enthusiasms. Admixtured in that frankness is the implicit knowledge of a fellowship in eccentricity. It is after all highly eccentric on our collective part to be quite so preoccupied as we are with perfumery. Doubtless most would think us quite unhealthily obsessed in fact. But having sought one another out we form our own little academies of eccentrics and that is very rewarding.

That said I’m indulging today in my not at all guilty pleasure in loving unabashedly charming, uncomplicated (even trivial seeming to some) compositions while wearing Dangerous Complicity by Etat Libre d’Orange. Cherries, suede, and florals and all the better for it. Dangerous Complicity isn’t a typical perfumisti’s perfume I’ll grant you, but I have many profound (at least to me) reasons for loving it. The nude lad is included for similar reasons of gratuitous enjoyment of prettiness and perceived vacuity.

For more of Freddie’s connoisseurship, check out his Fashion tumblr here.

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Getting Started Travel

Government Assessing Fees for Perfume Shipment

I won a bottle of perfume from O’driu (Eva Kant is quite wonderful by the way) and it was shipped to me via Federal Express. Three weeks later, I noticed a $20 charge on my checking account from Federal Express. I called Fed Ex and was referred to their Duty and Tax department and was told that I was responsible for all taxes and fees. I asked who gave them permission to charge my checking account – they said they looked up the recipient address, found my account and charged the credit card on file (I do have a FedEx account but was unaware they were allowed to make charges that I didn’t authorize.) I then asked how the $20 was calculated and was told that since it was a low dollar amount that there was no duty (as I expected.) The $20 fee was for special handling by the federal government.

Just a heads up for everyone to be very wary when ordering and receiving items from overseas. You have absolutely no recourse nor way to dispute these kind of charges.

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Getting Started

What is a jammy rose?

Think of what a jammy or fruity wine would be vs a dry wine. It’s not necessarily fruity but there is a sweetness and a lushness to it.

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Getting Started

Linear

While most fragrances follow a fragrance pyramid (with top, middle and base notes), fragrances referred to as linear stay pretty much the same throughout the entire span of the experience.