My search for a new go-to perfume has been much more interesting than I could have ever predicted. I've long since given up the spray-and-smell method of fragrance selection as being not at all sufficient. Stalking my local perfume counters got me a whole bunch of nothing but a headache and some boring conversation with sales folks who know not much more than I outside the marketing materials plastered all over every glass and chrome surface. Even more frustrating is the fact that any given perfume counter sports exactly the same perfumes as any other (why I thought it would be otherwise when stores all seem to have the same clothes I couldn't tell you). Turns out there's a whole world of perfume blogs and books and websites and...did you know that the New York Times has a perfume critic? It does, in the dreamy Chandler Burr.

Googling phrases like how to pick a perfume and what perfume should I wear if I liked Magie Noire brought me to Perfume Smellin' Things. An excellent beginning, this blog helped me frame my search more as a quest for how I want to feel alongside how I want to smell. From there I ended up at Bois de Jasmin and spent hours reading review after review and then moved into a third perfume blog with a great post sharing the 411 on how to get testers. See? I'm not alone in my disinclination to shell out for a scent that might be a disaster (Angel? I'm looking at you.)

Finally, I ended up at The Perfumed Court (TPC). Score! These lovely folks decant bottles of expensiveness into smaller portions of the merely indulgent. Registering for their newsletter I found myself in possession of a coupon code that allowed me to try six teeny bottles of promising perfumes selected via blog reviews cross-referenced against TPC's "scents by notes" study guide and my lists of Brainiac's and my favorite smells. Mine: roses, pepper, leather, port, almond. His: roses, chocolate, leather, Scotch and cigars.

Most of what I ordered from TPC didn't work out as I had hoped, although they were perfectly pleasant (with a notable exception that was more Deep-Woods Off than anything else). One, though, came through in a way that I could not have possibly predicted having read about it - I'd ordered more as a dare to myself than with any real expectation of success. As I type I'm wearing Rose Poivree (by The Different Company) and keep stopping to smell my wrist. It's rosy - but not in a tea-rose-boutonniere way, it's something more genteelly decayed and altogether less cute - and peppery and a wee bit naughty smelling (this article by the aforementioned scrumptious Chandler Burr explains why, but trust me that YOU DO NOT WANT TO READ IT. Consider yourself warned and don't come crying to me if you get grossed out. It's interesting, though.)

Not unlike myself, Rose Poivree has a bit of a mixed reputation. Some consider it a masterpiece, others a catastrophe. In the article linked above (which, remember? you don't want to read) Chandler Burr calls it "...unsettling and gorgeous, the perfume that Satan’s wife would wear to an opening at MoMA", a perspective that makes me laugh since I am so very far from embodying that kind of menacing glamour. The companion review gives Rose Poivree 5 stars. On me Rose Poivree smells deep and rich, peppery but not very spicy and rosy but not at all sweet. I love it.

The downside is that Brainiac can't smell it. Either I go around like a romance novel heroine smelling of peppered roses all the time and he can't tell the difference or it's just not a fragrance that registers for him (there's a word for this, but I can't think what it is). I'm keeping it anyway and will likely order a slightly larger bottle soon since my itsy decant is nearly gone and I'm feeling proactively bereft.

Rose Poivree is for me so I can smell my wrist all day long and be deliriously happy and just a teensy bit not-office-appropriate. But what of my quest to replace Magie Noire for encounters more romantic than sitting at my desk? I'm not giving up. The next round of contenders has been selected. Seeing as they involve more roses and spice and perhaps a surprise or two, something more ladylike, almost the exact opposite of the Rose Poivree?

This is so insanely fun.