I have become addicted to a very specific corner of the internet where people talk about perfume as if scent were a person with a past, and an accumulation of vices. I’ve learned a bottle of liquid can smell like Catholic guilt, a silk slip, the back room of your favorite bookstore, or the exact psychic damage of being a thirty-three year old liberal living in the hellscape that is Iowa.
What intrigues me isn’t actually perfume itself, even though I am far from immune to the seduction of a beautiful bottle and deranged note description. It’s the way perfume reviews have become a language for personhood. They allow us to say what would otherwise sound unmanageably intimate. Not she is loyal, but she smells like the inside of a suede bag carried through a rainstorm. Not he is emotionally unavailable, but he opens with bergamot and disappears into the night like smoke. Perfume descriptions speak to one of our oldest convictions, which is the belief that the soul can be rendered in exquisite detail if we look closely enough.
And maybe that is why I started thinking about my dinner group this way. Not as archetypes, and not as caricatures, but as scents. The women I love most do not arrive in my mind as a list of traits. They arrive as layers and the unmistakable feeling they leave on a room.
A good perfume review asks you to surrender to a kind of synesthesia. So now with the help of perfume catalogs and google, I am borrowing the form for my own silly little purposes.
The first is The Raven.
There would be no skin musk masquerading as intimacy. No white tea pretending to be restraint. She would smell alive. Slightly feral, still glamorous, the equivalent to someone answering the phone on the second ring and saying, tell me everything. The opening would be bright and almost medicinal, something sweet enough to border on illicit, like the sugary taste Adderall used to leave on the tongue. Then something bright would cut through it, not fresh-cut grass but the startling color of her eyes, split and strange and beautiful enough to make my own eye color seem lazy. Like getting lucky enough to see the northern lights over the Midwest in winter.
After that, the perfume would get more interesting. Tobacco, obviously, but not a heavy tobacco. American Spirits have their own specific register. Dry, papery, faintly bohemian, the scent of someone whose preferences are shaped as much by emotion as by taste. There would be worn denim too, not in the kitschy novelty-fragrance way, but the sun-softened smell of vintage jeans that have been cherished. Jeans that have been slept in overnight on my couch. And then, ink mixed with unopened perfume samples tucked into a stack of fashion magazines. Of course, being saved for some perfect occasion. That occasion might be a twenty-first birthday, or martinis at home and a conversation that could go on for fifteen years, and then fifty more. There would be the ghost of lipstick on a coffee cup, abandoned as one rushes to straighten their apartment before company. Sometimes a mess, but always a mess arranged around beauty, or at least a beautiful story. Maybe that is why I love her so much, she is a collector of beautiful things, and year after year, she chooses me.
And then the base. Night air through a cracked car window on an overnight drive across the country. The highway at an hour when everyone becomes a little more honest. Something metallic and cool, then soft again. The smell of being exhausted enough to tell the truth in all its rambled forms. That is the real note at the center of her, I think. Not chaos, though she has plenty of it, and not taste, though her taste is truly impeccable. Devotion. She is the person you call when the night has gone sour and your own mind has turned against you. Some women save your life with grand gestures. Some do it by answering. Somehow, my raven does both.
This is important, her perfume would need to misbehave a little. Sweet first, then smoke, surrounded by shiny things. It would smell like your favorite pair of jeans, green specked eyes, tobacco paper, and the air outside at 2:22 a.m. I think people would say it smells like having capacity under emotional emergency and being known at your rawest and loved anyway.
If I were a perfumer and had the skill to bring these sentiments to life, I would call it Drive home. Or maybe Split Green. A perfume that sounds elegant until you realize it is really about staying alive. It would be a perfume described as a scent that pulls you back and drags you through the long nights that might have killed you if you were left alone with them.
In the real world, I think she would be Maison Violet Un Air d’Apogée, a perfume that smells like a woman with the keen ability to recognize overlooked beauty. Its structure of anise and sage, honey, mimosa, iris, cedar, Balkan tobacco, leather, and labdanum gives it the same lovely tension she does. Ash and softness, glamour and fatigue, taste sharpened by chaos. If I wanted to push her darker, I would put her in Heretic Midnight Toker, which feels more tobacco-stained, more rebelious, more 2 a.m. confession, all clove, orris, apricot, tobacco, vanilla, birch tar, and labdanum. If I wanted to make her warmer and more worn-in, more vintage denim and cross-country devotion, I would choose Maya Njie Tobak, with tobacco leaf, leather, vetiver, musk, tonka bean, and cinnamon. But Un Air d’Apogée is the truest match. It smells the closest to what she is, which is not simply stylish or wonderfully chaotic, but unfailingly there at the exact moment you need her.
Next, is the Canadian Goose.
She is the kind of woman who makes the word nurturing seem much more powerful than it usually does. It is too small a word for someone so various. She lives out at what we call the prairie house, which is, once you’ve been there, the name it was always meant to have. She is a published author, retired burlesque dancer, matriarch, artist and head chef at a farm-to-table nonprofit restaurant built around the radical (to some) idea that people should be fed without first having to audition for mercy.
What stays with me most is her smell. Not perfume, though I think all real perfume is trying, in one way or another, to imitate the experience of having been somewhere meaningful and not quite being able to wash it off. Her house has a scent so distinct that after coffee at her drawn-on kitchen table, after an afternoon spent talking the way women do when they trust one another enough to be fully cracked open, I can still smell her on my sweater days later. It is one of the most intimate things I’ve come to know about a person, that their life can cling to you like it always belonged on your skin.
If I were bottling her, I would start with water and sun and earth. Creek water, not spa water. Dew gathered on leaves before the day gets its hands on them. Then the darker, softer underside of the landscape. Wet wood, old logs giving themselves back to the forest floor, the clean animal musk of fur warmed by sun and safe shelter. There would be something edible in it too, but not gourmand, nothing frosted or girlish. Plums, maybe, like the plum wine she loves from our favorite restaurant long closed down. Ripe tomatoes splitting slightly on the counter. A kitchen that has been cooked in, not styled. And beneath all of it, a spice that reads less as heat than as steadiness.
In her, these qualities do not contradict each other. She is domestic without being domesticated. Sensual without ever seeming self-conscious about it. Capable in a way that makes capability feel erotic again, restored to its proper register. So many women are asked to become consumable by choosing a lane. mother or artist, caretaker or seductress, serious or lush. She has escaped this trap by becoming fully herself inside all of them. She smells, in my imagination, like the rare perfume that can hold green life, animal softness, kitchen abundance, and a little mystery without collapsing into novelty.
I would call her perfume Prairie House. Like the home she has built, this name feels inevitable and wholly what it was always meant to be.
In the real world, I think she would wear Parfum d’Empire Corsica Furiosa. It carries the wild green bite I imagine around her, with tomato leaf, moss, pepper, honey, plum and labdanum. It feels the closest to her particular mix of homestead beauty and cultivated heat. If I wanted to pull harder on her forest-floor side, I’d put her in Andrea Maack Coven, which the brand describes as a clean forest after rain at dawn, built from oak moss, cedar wood, galbanum, clove, vanilla, labdanum, and whiskey. If I wanted to emphasize her softer, furred, more sheltering warmth, I’d choose Zoologist Chipmunk, with nutmeg, cardamom, hazelnut, fir balsam, oak, cedarwood, earthy notes, and animal notes. But Corsica Furiosa is the truest match. It smells like a woman who could feed you, undress onstage, hand you a book she has written,and send you home still smelling faintly of her kitchen.
And then, there was The Great Blue Heron.
The Great Blue Heron first appeared to me eating peanut butter out of a gallon jug in an office cubicle, which is exactly the sort of behavior that makes my affection immediate. Some people introduce themselves through polish. She introduced herself through appetite and mild disregard for propriety, and I have trusted her with my life ever since. She is quirky, yes, but not in a performative way. At her core she is animated by a kind of kindness that feels almost economically irrational now. She is the kind of friend who shows up again, and again, and again, which may be the rarest luxury left in this life.
When I think of her, much like the Canadian Goose, I think of water first. Not tropical water, not the falsified blue of resort fantasy, but the mighty, living water of oceans and Great Lakes. She sails, which feels less like a hobby than an inheritance of temperament, something passed down from her father and stitched into the way she moves through the world. She reminds me of the smell of snow before it becomes stained. Of arriving ten minutes late with a smile so disarming you immediately forgive the delay and start having a better time because she is there.
If I were bottling her, I would begin with fresh air and brightness. Something windswept and mineral, with enough minerals to suggest open water and enough light to keep it from turning stern. Then I would add flowers, but only the kind that make you feel more awake, not more decorated. Spring flowers with stems still full of water, petals with their appetite intact. Nothing syrupy, nothing cosmetic, nothing that would make you feel trapped inside someone else’s routines. She has too much forward motion for that. There would be green in it too, something like shoreline grass or leaves snapping back after rain. And under it all, some clean, smiling softness that keeps the whole thing from becoming rigid.
What makes her difficult to reduce is that she is both buoyant and dependable. So many bright people are treated as if brightness itself is their only offering. But her lightness is not superficial. She seems hungry, in some deep and non-food-related way, for other people to feel more possible around her. That is what I mean when I say I picture a smile before I picture anything else, the kind that makes a room feel easier to be in.
I would call her perfume Late to the Marina. Or maybe Fresh Water Smile.
In the real world, I think she would wear D.S. & Durga Rose Atlantic. It has exactly the kind of airy brightness I imagine on her. Bergamot, petals, lemon oil, linden, rose accord, dune grass, salt water, and white moss. On the brand’s website it reads like breeze and flowers without drowning in sweetness. If I wanted to lean harder into her quirkier, more unexpected marine side, I’d choose Zoologist Seahorse, which pairs tuberose with seaweed, sage with neroli, and fennel with vetiver, and describes itself as a wave of joy and abandon. That is very her too, especially the part where delight and oddness arrive together. If I wanted to pull out the cleaner, more sailboat-on-open-water facet of her, I’d choose Heeley Sel Marin, with lemon, bergamot, sea salt, moss, algae, vetiver, and cedar. But Rose Atlantic feels truest. It smells like someone who belongs to wind, water, and friendship, and somehow always arrives carrying flowers.
Next is the Bison.
The Bison smells, in my mind, like the part of womanhood that was never meant to be decorative. There is something sacred about her, something deliberate, and formidable, as if beauty in her case has been put back in its older, holier place: beside strength, beside usefulness, beside the willingness to defend what matters. When I think of her, I think of hair pulled back for battle. I think of a mother’s fiercness and the metallic sting of a sword. I think of old book pages, clay dust, hands that know how to make and mend. She has the gravity of someone people once would have built rites around.
What I feel with her is an intimate kind of safety. Safety, with certain women, comes sharpened. It comes with a clean eye, a sharp tongue, and an unwillingness to flatter what should be challenged. She is, in every sense, a girl’s girl, which is to say a protector of women. You understand, around her, sometimes love shows up willing to fight for you.
If I could bottle her, I would begin with metal and incense. Not church incense meant to pacify, but temple smoke, battle smoke, something that rises from heat and ritual at once. Then I would bring in leather, dry woods, moss, and the ambered warmth of whiskey held just close enough to read as memory instead of vice. Beneath that, something earthen. clay, parchment, the dust of old pages, the mineral quiet of pottery before glaze. She feels like the sort of woman modern collapse would be no match for. Fire, soil, weather, hunger, tools. None of it intimidates her.
What moves me most is that her holiness is practical. She does not glow in a fragile way. She endures. The perfume for her would have to understand that protection is sensual too, that devotion can smell like fire smoke and old paper and still be unmistakably feminine, still be unmistakably a woman defending those who need it. The sort of fragrance that does not enter a room so much as take a position within it.
I would call it Braided Steel. Or maybe Saint of the Sword Hand.
In the real world, I think she would wear D.S. & Durga Amber Kiso. The brand describes it as “a ritual in the holy Kiso forest” and frames it through temple incense, rare woods, and leather bushi armor, with notes of Japanese cedar, incense, sawara cypress, maple, patchouli, iris, hinoki, leather, and treemoss. It is the closest thing I found to her exact tension of sanctity and steel. If I wanted to pull harder on the whiskey, the old books, and the sense that she has walked out of some half-ruined archive ready to protect you, I would put her in Nasomatto Baraonda, which descriptions cast as a raw, whiskey-led fragrance with warm spices, old leather-bound books, antique furniture, and firelight. If I wanted to emphasize her earthen, sacred, clay-and-reverence side, I would choose La Curie Ossuary, built around orris root, wilted violets, charred wood, incense, palo santo, and what the brand literally call reverence. But Amber Kiso is the truest match. It smells like a woman who could bless you, defend you, and tell you the truth in one breath.
And finally, we have the Wild Painted Horse.
The Wild Painted Horse has the sort of style that makes other people suddenly aware they have been settling. She is slightly intimidating, but in the best way, the way certain women arrive in full possession of themselves. Not finished, she is too alive for that. Her core feels settled. Everything around it is still in motion. She has lived so many lives, and you can feel it. She owns a hair salon, which feels right for someone who seems so inherently intimate with transformation. She is eccentric, but also a minimalist, which is a much rarer combination than people admit.
I would start with green things sharpened, basil or mint. Something herbal and salty, like the hair products she massaged into my scalp when she fixed my bathroom cut bangs. Then I would stain it with color. Jewel tones, earthy tones, a flush of fruit bright enough to catch light without turning into candy. Pomegranate, maybe, or something that behaves like pomegranate, tart and dark and polished. Then the stranger undertow. A little gasoline, or the memory of gasoline, something mineral and dangerous moving beneath. Dark chocolate too, but used with restraint, not dessert, not indulgence, just enough bitterness to give the whole thing backbone. She smells like someone who knows what stays and what gets cut.
What interests me most about her is the tension between wildness and control. A painted horse is beautiful, but beauty is the least interesting thing about it. In my mind, she is a woman with a deeply cemented personhood that is nevertheless still in motion. Someone whose life has had chapters, whose tastes have sharpened through use, whose selfhood has not calcified so much as gained contour. The perfume for her would need to understand that distinction. It would have to be bright without being naive, earthy without the heaviness, and just blurred enough to keep people from thinking they are skilled enough to ever fully understand her, in all her incredible forms.
I would call her perfume Painted in Motion.
In the real world, I think she would be BOHOBOCO Mango Yuzu Gasoline, because it has the exact kind of uniqueness she carries so well. Fruit sharpened by structure, suede and moss under brightness, and that unexpected gasoline note moving beneath it all like the wind. The brand’s notes pairs mango, yuzu, pineapple, blackcurrant, jasmine tea, iris, cedarwood, incense, vetiver, amber, and gasoline, which makes it feel both jewel-toned and feral, polished and a little dangerous. If I wanted to pull harder on her herbal, minimalist, I would put her in Jo Malone Lime Basil & Mandarin. Jo Malone describes it as citrus trees and aromatic herbs on a breeze, with peppery basil and white thyme twisting the brightness of lime. If I wanted to bring out her darker, richer story, the pomegranate, earth, and velvet of her, I would choose Shay & Blue Dark Amber Pomegranate. The brand describes it as juicy pomegranate with cardamom, clove, amber, and cedarwood, which gives it that jewel-toned depth without making it feel sugary. But Mango Yuzu Gasoline feels like a life truly lived.
What I love about perfume, or at least the strange, overly specific language we have built around it, is that it gives us a way to talk about people that feels closer to how they are actually experienced.
Maybe that is why perfume language feels useful to me. It lets me be excessive and precse all at once. It lets me say that the women I love have changed the air around my life, and that even now, long after the dinner party is over, I am still trying to describe what clings to me.
**A note for readers: at differing times over the last two decades, all of us ended up in the same strange basement with a woman who advertised Animal Guide readings. The title of each section reflects the animal she assigned us. In case you were wondering, I am, to my utmost annoyance, a chipmunk.