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When I finally got on antidepressants and stopped self-medicating my depression with an life-consuming addiction to amphetamines, I bought, like, 200 bottles of perfume. It wasn’t that before I got on proper medication, I couldn’t smell. It was just that when I was in the thick my depression, smelling something lovely just didn’t bring me any joy. It was too slight a pleasure—like listening to rain or baking cakes—to affect me. The only way I was able to afford 200 bottles of perfume was Dossier. They make dupes of iconic scents at price points of $29, $39 and $49. Their candles are great, too! My favorites are the Diptyque Do Son dupe, the Baccarat Rouge 540 dupe, the Love, Don’t Be Shy dupe (it’s Rihanna’s signature scent!) and, since I live in Florida now, I also love the Le Labo Santal 33 dupe because people chase me down the street to ask me what it is. It’s so sweet and heartwarming watching Floridians smell Santal 33 for the first time. But obviously I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing that perfume back in New York. Being seen as an offbeat and eccentric weird is too essential my fragile sense of self.
Jun 22, 2023
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I love scents, smells, fragrance and have an expensive nose. This Santal 33 dupe is the best I've found and has amazing staying power. Always gets compliments from women 🤔
Sep 19, 2024
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Obsessed with perfume. For a while I was searching for a signature scent, but then the hunt just became too much fun, and now I’ve ended up with a full on vanity tray in my bathroom piled with a different smell for every mood. I used to wear only China Rain, a rollerball scent my mom got me in high school from a perfumery in LA called Spiritbody. I still have a bottle of that, but when I wear it I’m transported to a more insecure time lol. Right now I love Shadow in the Water from Diptyque for when I want to smell clean and romantic. I wear Smudge by Heretic almost every day because it’s colder out and it makes me feel so warm and cozy, like i’ve been sitting by a fire all day, and like I give good advice and paint landscapes. Perfume is definitely a splurge, but it lasts for so long, and I think it’s really special to have a beautiful scent that people can recognize you by. I am going to gatekeep my secret combination of Byredo perfumes that I wear constantly, and I’m sorry about that. It’s just too good and too me.
Dec 20, 2022
Although I have a pretty extensive perfume collection — around 200 bottles, plus hundreds of samples and decants — for the last several years I've only worn a handful of them on a regular basis. Lately I've found myself gravitating to older and vintage scents, particularly classic Guerlains (Jicky, Mitsouko, Shalimar) and Caron (Yatagan, Caron pour Homme). Often dismissed as "old lady perfumes" (which is both ageist and misogynist!) they're the best examples of perfumery as high art I know. There are decades-old vintage samples out there if you know where to look or get lucky at an estate sale, but even the contemporary reformulated versions are more interesting and intricate than 99% of what you'll find at Sephora or even a niche shop like Luckyscent. I'd much rather smell of something that would have been familiar to Proust (that would be Jicky, a spiced lavender-vanilla considered to be the first "modern" perfume and one that has been in continuous production since it was released in 1889) than Santal 33 or whatever Maison Francis Kurkdjian everyone else is wearing.
Apr 6, 2024
Top Recs from @carolinecalloway
Ever heard of it?! You need it more than you think you do! Start with spools of 1.5 inch “double-faced” satin (I’ve linked my favorite Amazon brand) in the specific colors of: black, crimson, turquoise, goldenrod/marigold, and sort of a icy, slate-gray, periwinkle blue. A deep, wine-red burgundy in .5 inch velvet and an Easter-y, baby pink (or blue or yellow or lilac!) in .25 inch satin will also come in surprisingly handy. Use for beautifying hairstyles, presents, and bouquets of all kinds. Giving someone a single flower is made a thousand times fancier just by tying a bow on it.
Apr 8, 2021
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I’m saving about $2,000 a year on buying my press-on nails from Etsy instead of getting them professionally done anymore. Let that number sink in. And I’m having so much more fun this way, too! Some women have knitting. Others scrapbook. The hobby that enriches my silly little life with arts and crafts is gluing the most beautifully painted bits of plastic onto my fingertips. I’d suggest you buy two sets in the same sizes so that if one nail falls off, you can replace it. Two sets of the same design will create a manicure that lasts just under a month—I shit you fucking not. And here’s the kicker! After you decide to take them off you can still use them again someday. To sand off the dried glue from previously worn nail sets, you’ll need this $10 electric nail file from Amazon. I also like to organize my nail sets in this clear, $8 bead organizer, also from Amazon, so get that, too. To find great nail sets just type into the search bar on Etsy “press on nails…” and then whatever else you’re looking for. “Press on nails y2k.” “Press on nails French tip.” “Press on nails floral…” Etc.
Jun 22, 2023
Go type ‘mobiles’ into the search bar on Etsy. The results dazzle. And this kind of art takes up zero floor or wall space in an apartment! Matte, metallic, felted, wood, stained glass, sea glass, origami, Calder riffs… Mobiles have it all and Etsy has all the mobiles—good ones start as low as $35. Technically their correct term is “kinetic sculptures,” but I call my own collection my house’s “hanging gardens.”
Apr 8, 2021