4.08.2008

Sillage

Sillage (see-YAZH) is French for "wake," as in the wake of a boat on the water. In perfume jargon, sillage is the trail of scent a fragrance leaves behind you, the effect of the molecules evaporating from your body into the surrounding air, pushing that air aside, creating ripples, as you sail through your business.

I like this word for how similar it is to "silly" - really, it's a gussied-up nominalization of "silly." Instead of "silliness" (or "smell," for that matter), ladies have "sillage." Also, we never sweat; we glow.

I will toast to fancy silliness any day. I will also toast to an Annick Goutal fragrance that doesn't flatline after 10 minutes (this is not the fault of your exausted olfaction, Oedipa)! Even my old Elizabeth Arden Green Tea body spray hangs around longer than that. Hell, even soap lasts longer.

Duel, scent of my soul, stay a while!
Sailors. Pfft.

4 comments:

oedipa said...

yeah, annick goutal scents have notoriously bad lasting power (NOW they tell me). songes is the only one i've tried that sticks around a while.

you should come over and smell my niches! (i fully intended that to smell dirty)

oedipa said...

whoops i mean sound dirty. HAAA!

captain birthday said...

HA!

I will smell your dirty niches any time!

captain birthday said...

ps - you want to do a perfume outing tomorrow (thursday), pending ok weather? maybe we can go to Saks and I can get a triple-mini.

otherwise, if the weather is bad, i could just come over and we could smell your niches and watch TV. I have some books I want to sell back to the Co-Op/Powell's anyway (PS, if you want any medieval texts, teaching books, or the like, I got'em in spades).