Or maybe you don’t. But it will be one of the first things I notice about you. Especially if you’re wearing a scent. I am obsessed with smell. Well fragrance, but I’m also really interested in how smell impacts our emotions, stirs memories, and makes us nostalgic. I love that a well-crafted, bottled scent can transport us, get us talking about our childhood, and make us remember details about our favorite great aunt on some far-off coast we never even visited.
I tend to meander a lot in my writing. But here I stay the course and focus on perfume recommendations and reviews. I also interview people I admire, pair perfumes with our favorite childhood icons, and get nostalgic. Oh and I share a lot of photos of my nails. I’ll also get personal because it’s kind of inevitable with me.
Most of what I post is free. But if you become a paying subscriber you’ll receive a survey asking about your fragrance preferences and I’ll send you back three recommendations based on that. Sometimes this can take me a little bit but I promise I’ll email you eventually! I’ll have more benefits for paid subscribers coming soon. You can subscribe here.
So why am I calling this the Dry Down Diaries? I’m in love with the language used for fragrances. One of my favorite phrases is the dry down. The dry down of a fragrance is the final phase of its evolution on the skin and it happens hours after you have first put it on. During the dry down stage, the fragrance has fully developed, the top and heart notes have faded, and what’s left behind is the true scent, the ultimate character and personality of it lingering there on the skin. It’s the last impression, the thing you leave behind in a room or on someone’s shirt after you hug them goodbye, it’s what people remember.
About Me.
I have no expertise here other than being a lifelong consumer of beauty products, perfumes, jewelry, and clothes. I work at Substack as the Head of Lifestyle on the Writer Partnerships team which means I work with writers (mainly in the lifestyle category) and bring new voices to the platform. I’ve spent my career working with writers and creative people, helping them market themselves, grow their businesses, and get them publicity. I did this at publishing houses, start-ups, and through my own consultancy. You can read more about that work here if you’re interested. I like writing and getting dressed in the morning and one of my favorite things is talking about fragrances with people who like to nerd out on them as much as I do. I feel naked when I leave the house without a scent on. I have so much more to learn about the world of fragrance and I’m excited to continue to explore that world with all of you!
