Ode to High Heels and Perfume Review: Paloma Picasso Mon Parfum

I’ve been feeling disappointed with myself lately…When I was younger, I used to be…well, my own version of Laura Bennett’s fabulously glamorous. I strived to always be perfectly put together. Casually elegant was as casual as I was prepared to go. I wouldn’t think of leaving the house without makeup, not even if I was just popping out across the street to buy some milk, and I always wore heels. Always. To school, to work, shopping at a supermarket, going to the post office…Going out in summer wearing flip-flops, when not heading to the beach, would have been unthinkable for me. I still will not leave the house without wearing at least some powder and mascara, but in the shoe area it has been a long slide downhill into the slobby land of comfort. This morning I woke up and told myself, No More! Get thee disentangled from the dangerously soft embrace of Comfort. Remember the way you were. Wear heels. So I went to the grocery store in my killer boots, the ones with the sharpest toe and the highest heel. It was great. I felt... complete. Oh the power of high heels! In my rebellion against the mundane, the comfortable and the casual, I wore the scent that I felt was most suited to go with stilettos and with the whole newly discovered glamour-girl self – Paloma Picasso. Created in 1984, this, along with L’Arte di Gucci, is to me the golden standard of a dark, vampy floral chypre. Paloma Picasso, the daughter of Pablo Picasso and Françoise Gilot, is an artist/designer whose many accomplishments include interior and fur coat collections, jewelry creations for Tiffany & Co. and fragrances for men and women. Her eponymous fragrance, also known as Mon Parfum, is, in Paloma Picasso’s own words, "a perfume for women, not girls." Mon Parfum starts with a blend of piquant coriander and velvety rosewood. The two complement each other perfectly and, right from the start, demonstrate the appealing disparity of the scent, the contrast between the bold, spicy, dry and earthy and the very feminine, warm and richly floral that would be evident at all subsequent stages of its development. The generous, opulent heart, with its dark-red roses, the sweet ylang-ylang and the creamy tuberose, is the headiest, warmest, most obviously and proudly feminine phase of the perfume. Even there, however, thanks to the bright geranium note, the dry spiciness is still apparent. The flowers subside, although never entirely disappear, and we enter the luxurious base, where patchouli, musk and civet add the incredible, animalic depth to the dark florals, and where vetiver has a rich, almost leathery quality. If I had to describe Paloma Picasso Mon Parfum in one word, the word would be Chic. If you ever have a chance to get your hands on this scent in parfum, please do. Pure perfume is rich and soft. Having said that, EDT and EDP, which are much easier to find, are wonderful too. Of the two, I prefer EDT, since I find that in this concentration the dry/spicy/earthy/green aspect is more pronounced than in a headier, denser, more honeyed and floral EDP. Both are sold at Scentiments.com, $35.00-$46.00. The shoe image, Stuart Weitzman's Goliath, is from Nordstrom.com.