Hopeless Case

Here it is, not even twenty-four hours after I landed in New York, and what do I have sitting on the bed in my hotel room? A BOTTLE OF SERGE LUTENS IN A BERGDORF GOODMAN BAG. And it isn't even the one I thought I was going to buy, Un Bois Vanille. It's Chypre Rouge.

I mean, goddamn. Didn't I say I loved Un Bois Vanille madly and didn't really adore the middle of Chypre Rouge? I did say those things. But I smelled them both in the store (along with a lot of other things that didn't really enter into the equation), and I had the Vanille in one hand and the Rouge in the other, and I didn't know what to do. I suppose I could have bought both of them, but, well, that's insane, isn't it? I mean, I HAVEN'T EVEN BEEN HERE TWENTY-FOUR HOURS YET and the chances of my buying something else are all too good, because, as should be pretty obvious by now, I don't have a lick of self-control. And the Vanille was expensive enough ($120), but the Rouge was worse ($140), and that's more than I have ever spent on a single scent in my entire life.

My reasoning, if we can call it that, and we can't, because I was pretty much beyond reason at that point, was that I would get more wear out of the Vanille, but I would appreciate the Rouge more because it is so strange and fascinating and rare. There are lots and lots of vanilla scents out there--I should know, because I think I own most of them--but there is only one Chypre Rouge.

So I bought it. I'm happy with my choice. It could have been worse: I was awfully close to buying a bottle of Coromandel (at $200).