I Wear the Expensive Perfume on Work-From-Home Days

I have never been particularly good at being precious about things.

A house is there to be lived in. Shoes are there to be worn. Candles are there to be burned. The nice glasses can survive a Wednesday evening.

And perfume is there to make you smell nice.

It sounds terribly obvious when you write it down.

Still, I think many of us grew up with some version of the opposite idea. Don't overdo it. Keep the expensive thing nice. Save it for a special occasion. Don't be too extravagant. Don't draw too much attention to yourself.

There is always some imaginary future occasion apparently more deserving of the good stuff than the perfectly ordinary day happening right now.

I don't really believe in that.

If I have deliberately chosen to spend €170 on a perfume because I love beautiful fragrance, it seems particularly strange to then spend most of my time not wearing it because the day hasn't earned it.

I bought the perfume.

I don't want to own it.

I want to live with it.

There is another idea about luxury that I don't particularly believe in: that everything has to match.

Expensive perfume apparently belongs with a beautiful outfit, a good restaurant and somewhere glamorous to be.

But real life doesn't look like an advert.

Sometimes real life is Santal Austral and Miffy slippers.

And I think I might actually prefer it that way.

There is something lovely about doing something entirely for yourself when nobody else would know whether you had done it or not.

Nobody on a Teams call can smell my perfume.

There isn't an audience for it.

I can wear a cheap perfume, an expensive perfume or no perfume at all and the spreadsheet will remain spectacularly unimpressed.

But I can smell it.

And apparently that is enough.

A beautiful fragrance changes a tiny part of the experience of being at home. You move your arm, catch it again and think, oh, that smells good.

Nothing significant has happened.

The day hasn't become more productive. My inbox hasn't emptied itself. Dinner hasn't magically appeared in the kitchen.

It's just nicer.

And I think we underestimate the value of things that are simply nicer.

The funny thing is that I don't think price has much to do with any of this.

I still use a Purol stick that costs only a few euros. I have used it for what feels like most of my life. Plenty of newer, prettier and considerably more expensive beauty products have passed through my bathroom in the meantime.

Purol survived all of them.

At the other end of the scale, I recently bought Chanel Les Beiges Sheer Healthy Glow Highlighting Fluid because I imagined a beautiful, subtle glow.

The first time I used too much and looked approximately like a disco ball.

When I tried to use it over my base, I managed to disturb the make-up underneath.

It isn't necessarily a bad product. It just isn't for me.

I wouldn't buy it again.

Chanel on the bottle doesn't change that.

And €3 on the Purol doesn't make me like it any less.

That, perhaps, is the distinction I care about more than whether something is cheap or expensive:

Does it earn a place in my actual life?

I own a pair of Christian Louboutin stilettos that cost an objectively ridiculous amount of money.

They are black patent leather, very high, completely impractical and beautiful.

Before Covid, I used to run around in stilettos all day. Somewhere along the way I stopped doing that nearly as often. These days the Louboutins spend considerably more time waiting than walking.

If I calculated their cost per wear, I suspect the result would make a personal-finance expert gently take my bank card away.

I still adore them.

Because on the occasions when I put them on, I feel incredibly sexy.

That counts too.

Not everything has to justify its existence by being practical.

Nor does everything expensive automatically become special.

Value is messier than that.

Sometimes it is a €170 perfume I wear constantly.

Sometimes it is a €3 stick I have bought for years.

Sometimes it is a ridiculous pair of shoes I hardly ever wear but would buy again anyway.

There is perhaps no better evidence of this philosophy than my suitcases.

I own two sets from SUITSUIT.

One is pink for spring and summer.

The other is brown with gold details for autumn and winter.

Yes.

I have seasonal luggage.

No, nobody needs seasonal luggage.

There is also a dark green version I keep looking at and thinking, shall I?

So far I have resisted, partly because a third set would be difficult to defend and partly because I suspect Bas might have a small heart attack when another pair of suitcases enters the house.

But every autumn, when I take out the brown ones, they make me happy.

That's it.

That's the argument.

They make going somewhere feel a little more exciting before we have even left the house.

I don't think every pleasure needs a more sophisticated explanation.

My latest accidental obsession appears to be niche fragrance.

Santal Austral was not the end of it.

I have just ordered Valaya Exclusif by Parfums de Marly, which is even more expensive. I have also bought Bas a discovery set from Skins so we can find his first niche fragrance.

My reasoning was essentially: if I'm going down, he's coming with me.

This may yet become an expensive hobby.

But I am fascinated by fragrance in a way I wasn't before: the difference between them, how they change, what suits a season, the pleasure of choosing what I want to smell like that day.

And I don't want to wait for enough dinner reservations to enjoy that.

Because this is the bit I keep coming back to:

we spend an enormous amount of our lives on ordinary days.

Working. Making coffee. Doing laundry. Driving somewhere. Cooking dinner. Sitting on the sofa. Going to the supermarket.

If all the nicest things are saved for holidays, parties, guests and Saturday nights, we are saving them for a remarkably small percentage of our lives.

I would rather let some of them spill into a Tuesday.

Not because every day needs to be elevated, curated or made aesthetically perfect.

Sometimes a Tuesday can just be a Tuesday.

But it can also be a Tuesday on which you smell absolutely fabulous.

Even in Miffy slippers.