Posts tagged Katie Puckrick

An Unwashed Nook By Any Other Name…

Sara has been shopping for a new perfume lately, and true to form, she’s going about it in the completely adorable and totally immersive way she does most things. For a couple of weeks now she’s been sitting on the couch at nights, ordering perfume samples online and reading blogs dedicated to reviewing perfumes. Specifically she’s been spending a lot of time reading katiepuckriksmells.com.

By all appearances, Katie is a funny, likable lady who has carved out a niche for herself doing the seemingly impossible: writing meaningful, detailed reviews about how perfumes smell.

It was hard for me to take very seriously at first, when I would eavesdrop on Sara as she watched videos on Puckrik’s Youtube channel; all the detail she was drawing out from a spritz of toilet water seemed… overwrought. Like the guys who tastes a dozen different notes in a glass of wine. Really? Nutty? Floral? Are you sure it doesn’t just taste like wine?

Ultimately, though, it would be silly of me to assume that something doesn’t exist just because I haven’t taken the time to try and detect it.

What really won me over, though, was Sara asking me to read one of Puckrik’s reviews and then letting me smell said perfume on her. Here’s how the review starts:

One of the rewards of writing about perfume is that I learn stuff. Useful stuff. In my last post, for instance, I was answering a query from a fellow who wanted to “create the façade of an active sex life” to make his ex jealous. He needed to know if there was such a thing as a “sex scented perfume”.

I obligingly created a list of coital scents, including trampy tropicals (Vivienne Westwood Boudoir, LesNez Manoumalia) and ripe creamies (Etat Libre d’Orange Putain de Palaces, Guerlain Attrape-Coeur).

I also solicited input from sensory psychologist Dr. Avery Gilbert, and he told me about something called “competitive mating scenario”. It boils down to Jilted John spraying around the perfume of his ex’s best friend to make the ex jealous.

That’s just the introduction. She goes on, when describing one of the perfume’s notes, to use the phrase, “unwashed nook.” You really have to read it to get the full effect. And then you have to smell the perfume. And then you have to admit that there really is a lot going on in some bottles of perfume for those who have a nose to smell it.

And then you have to be thankful for a wife who puts this much thought into buying sexy perfume.