Palimpsest Pashminas? Patchwork Quilts? Textiles & The Tricky Business Of Collateral Scenting

I love my new house.  There are a few things wrong with it still, notably the idiosyncratic Edwardian plumbing, which delivers mostly tepid - and very occasionally scalding - hot water.  Only about once a month will you hear me use the terms "wallow" and "bath" in the same sentence.   The other main problem with Bonkers Towers II is the cold.  The price you pay for period features such as original sash windows, exposed floorboards and open fireplaces is Wuthering Heights levels of draughtiness.  Or do I mean Macbeth levels, for it is like living on a blasted heath.  "Blasted" in every sense indeed, as it is jolly annoying at times.  The draughts seem to come at you from every direction - if I believed in ghosts, I could well believe that these weird cold spots were the work of supernatural forces.   The truth of the matter is, I probably just need double glazing and fitted carpets.

To counteract the cold, I have taken to wearing scarves indoors all the time.  And of course I do mostly wear a different perfume every day.  You can see where this is going, I'm sure.  Yes, I am starting to get concerned about all the involuntary fragrance layering that is going on on my various scarves.  One of my favourites smells of an amalgam of Séville à l’aube, Guerlain Angélique Noire and Encens Mythique d'Orient - I wore these three scents on consecutive days last week.  I have put the scarf away for now, as the blended result was rather overpowering.  And in case you were wondering, I am not actually spraying perfume directly on the scarf, nor am I wearing it at the time of applying my perfume.  It just rubs off on the fabric during the course of the day.

Another favourite scarf (pictured above) smells of Serge Lutens Santal Majuscule, Damien Bash Lucifer No 3 and Etro Etra.  With that one, I consciously tried to keep a woody theme going, in the hope that the ensuing palimpsest of scents would be a more congenial one.

I  used to have the same problem with duvet covers, but that was when I used to wear perfume to bed, which I rarely do now.  At the old house I would snuggle under the bedclothes and regularly catch a whiff of the veritable patchwork quilt of scents on the portion of duvet I pulled up under my chin.  It wasn't always a pleasant experience, you see.  Maybe I should have stuck to a "signature bedtime scent", and quietened the cacophony a bit.

So I solved that one by not putting on perfume close to bedtime, but am still musing as to what is to be done about the scarves.  A policy of only wearing a particular fragrance with each scarf would do it, but it seems a trifle restrictive and likely to lead to option anxiety, as with Travalos.  Choosing perfumes to commit to a Travalo is a high stress task which I have already addressed in a post here.

I will therefore open the debate to the floor:

Do you wear scarves indoors (either for decorative or thermal reasons!)?  

For those who do, have you experienced this collateral scenting phenomenon, and if so, have you thought of ways to circumvent it?  Or does a bit of random layering not faze you?

There again, maybe you just wash your clothes more often...which I might do, if the washing machine wasn't so knackered, and half the plug sockets in the utility room out of action.  Ah, there's the third thing wrong with Bonkers Towers.  But I do love it still.  : - )