Saturday was a very fun day indeed, for it was the day that the Australian Perfume Junkies came to town! Sniffing trips are always full of enjoyment but tend to be a whole heap better when shared with fellow perfume lovers, so it was with a bucket full of joy that I met up with Vanessa of Bonkers About Perfume, Tara of Olfactoria’s Travels, Freddie of Smellythoughts, Joshua of The Smelly Vagabond, Nick of @fragrantreviews and Portia, Val and Michael of Australian Perfume Junkies.

The day consisted of a trio of treats; sniffing perfume at Bloom followed by award wining fish and chips next door at Poppies (well calamari and chips for me) before even more sniffing at Les Senteurs. My main aim of the day, other than socialising of course, was to pick up a new rose perfume, so at Bloom I headed straight for the Parfumerie Generale bottles to try the widely respecte Brulure de Rose (I’m not sure how I feel about this one) and the new Isparta (review to come soon). Neither hit the spot so I have nabbed some samples and will be revisiting them over the coming weeks. I did realise just how much I need a bottle of Djhenné though and am now 99.9% sure on the wedding scent front, so it was a very worthy trip indeed!

Lunch at Poppies was surprisingly fab, especially as I am not the biggest fan of fish and chips. It’s at this point I realised that Portia is an absolute hoot and a naughty little scamp to boot. But else would you expect from Australia’s premiere perfume-huffing drag queen? Val was also great fun too and her cookie baking skills are a force to be reckoned with, managing to create a peanut butter cookie that converted this nut-hater in 3 seconds flat! In fact, everyone was just lovely!

Finally we ended up in the familiar fragrant haunt of Les Senteurs for a final round of sniffing before bidding everyone adieu. It was at this point that I realised that the rose scent I’ve been looking for was Malle’s Portrait of a Lady and I’d just been avoiding it because one hundred and forty whole pounds is quite a lot of money to drop on 50ml of perfume. Both Nigel and Portia attempted to talk me out of buying it but nothing comes between this boy and his perfume once the wallet is drawn.

After all that it was time to say goodbye in a frenzy of hugs, lost-ticket anxiety and rainy walks back to the station. I do hope that we’ll be able to arrange a follow up soon – wouldn’t it be fun to organise a global meet? Vanessa has put up a wonderful blow-by-blow account of the day on her blog, with her usual witty observations. Do head on over there to give it a read.

Join the Discussion!

Where are your favourite places to buy perfume? Do you go perfume sniffing with fellow fume nerds? What was your latest purchase? Do you love Portrait of a Lady?

Disclaimer
Image 1 via Tara. Image 2 my own.