Welcome to The Dry Down Diaries

I promise you'll smell better after reading it.

Josh took this photo of me - remember this brief trend?!

I am obsessed with smell. It’s my superpower. My strongest sense. I can smell a person before they walk in a room. I can tell who has been somewhere by the silage they leave behind. My boyfriend calls me a bloodhound, constantly amazed by the scents I pick up that never make it to his nose.

I am also obsessed with the language, the history, the chemistry of fragrance; silage, absolute, bottom note, top note, base note, accord and dry down—the last phase of a fragrance’s lifecycle. Yes fragrances have lifecycles and the dry down is when the top and heart notes have dissipated leaving only the base note and whatever special scent was created mixing with your particular skin chemistry.

I’m calling this the Dry Down Diaries because I like getting to the heart of the matter. I’m way too honest, I overshare, and like any good Italian I pour my emotions out in my writing to a level that should embarrass me. My creative writing lives here if you want to read some of that mess.

This space will be all about what scents I am loving, the makeup I obsess over, the jewelry I wear and covet, and the clothes I should really stop buying. I’ll write essays on growing out my bangs and how a piece of clothing makes me feel. I’ll give you links and round-ups and try to answer your perfume questions. I’ll also share photos of my manicures because I always have good nail art and because

Sophia Efthimiatou

told me I should make this about my nails too.

Farrah @Substack

told me I should make this about more than just perfume. So you have those smart women to thank for already making this project more interesting than my original idea.

I’m going easy at first and promising three posts a month. The first month everything will be free and then I’ll offer up something once a month for my paid subscribers. I don’t know what that is yet but we’ll figure it out together. You can subscribe here.

I have no expertise here other than being a lifelong consumer of beauty products, perfumes, jewelry, and clothes. 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 have so much more to learn about the world of scent and I’m excited to explore that and other fun stuff with you here. Let me know in the comments if there’s anything in particular you want me to write about here. And thanks for reading!