The Art of Wearing Perfume Ironically: Vera Wang EDP

Today, on a whim, I put on Vera Wang - that's the perfume, obviously, not the bridal gown. It is apricot in colour, and the bottle is a sort of rounded tetrahedron shape - or an angular bell! - and it's the one that isn't wearing a crown or covered in graffiti. I have no idea how I came to apply Vera Wang today from the little mini of it I bought on Ebay last year. It doesn't go with my outfit (tatty brown cords and a pilled cardigan for cleaning out the car). Nor am I a particularly feminine person, even when I make an effort - I should point out that the rather ladylike hat in my avatar picture is not mine, and its owner not even a friend of mine. I do not move in hat wearing circles, or no more than tangentially.

For anyone unfamiliar with Vera Wang, the notes are as follows:

top notes

Mandarin Flower, Calla Lily

heart notes

Bulgarian Rose, Gardenia

base notes

White Stephanotis, Sheer Musks

According to Osmoz the inspiration for Vera Wang's first fragrance was ‘the intense romance and passion felt between a man and a woman on their wedding day and beyond’. My decision to wear this scent is getting sillier and sillier by the minute.

I guess the answer is that I wanted to smell something unashamedly pretty today, something overtly perfumey and lush. The weather is cold and wet, and I wasn't in the mood for something dark or dank or wistful or attenuated: no Etro Messe de Minuit or Eau d'Italie Sienne L'Hiver, no FM Angeliques sous la Pluie or other "pathetic fallacy"-type scent. Nor did I fancy something "intellectual" and "difficult" like one of the Amouages or Mitsouko, or something with a pain barrier like SIP Magazine Street or PG L'Ombre Fauve - or even EL Private Collection, when I am not in a rampantly green frame of mind.

No, I wanted something that smelt of sweet flowers and lots of them. On a warmer day than this. I realise that it has been a most incongruous choice, given my defiantly unmarried state and today's scuzzy outfit. The height of irony, no less.

Though I did happen to be at a wedding when I pinched that woman's hat...