11
Helpful Review
"The Color Purple" and Me - From Great Aversion to Inner Values
Good day, dear readers!
I’ll start right away with a question: what is the (correct) plural form of Parfuma and Parfumo?
Can I call you Parfumi? Parfumas and Parfumos? Is the word even German, Italian, or possibly even Russian?
Already at the introduction, I seem to be struggling today. Just wait until I take a closer look at the bottle.
You can find the perfume description starting from the paragraph after next.
The Color Purple.
Anyone who has read something from me before knows of my aversion to this color. I will never tire of proclaiming it loudly.
“Purple,” to me, is a multitude of lavender, whose scent I find unpleasant and far too strong from meters away.
Purple is also often disparaged as the “color of dissatisfied women,” and I still remember too well the unison reaction when I, for the one and only time in my life, was forced to appear in purple attire at a wedding, at the bride's request, wearing a pompous dress with a bow that measured about half my height.
“Purple is what comes out when you subtract from blue and red what characterizes those colors. It is unsatisfactory in terms of its creation,” my physics teacher once whispered, perhaps the wisest words of his teaching career and possibly also an approach to explaining the meaning transfer of this color into a sexual context.
Purple was also the favorite color of an older “cousin” of mine, whose clothes I had to wear as a child. What happens when you dress a five-year-younger child in clothes that are several sizes too big? Hopefully, there aren’t too many photos of that, as I quickly asserted myself and continued to raid my brothers' wardrobe, where you would never have found a trace of purple. Since my brothers are pretty much the coolest people in this universe, it’s clear what conclusion can be drawn from that.
However, “The Color Purple” hit me with absolute overkill in another way: in the form of a film by Steven Spielberg, which I had to watch in its original English at the age of six (since it hadn’t been dubbed into Russian, at least not at that time).
With a probability of nearly 100%, this was a masterpiece, the excellence of which I cannot acknowledge or even judge, as I will not watch it again as an adult.
“Purple” is for me the color of the fabric from which nightmares are made.
So this bottle has been staring at me from afar, in its bizarre “I’m a broken UFO trying to be Donna Karan” shape.
Ugly, incredibly ugly, and unwieldy to boot.
That what is contained in such an ugly vessel can very well be beautiful and charming has been proven time and again, alongside the extraterrestrial jasmine bomb from Mugler Polli-Huhn^.
So I won’t be deterred and bravely take the first spray (initially on paper, because you really shouldn’t assume inner values and a heart of gold from Paco Rabanne).
Flick, flick. Uh là là. What is that?
A bit of spice and soap are in the air. Since the store is nearly empty, it can only be from me.
So I spray once on my wrist. It smells fruity, and I have an association with a wooden toy that smells like blackberry, which you can rub and then your fingers smell like blackberry (and are a bit stained). We used to have something like that, for example, for toy stores, I believe (I don’t know the term, hopefully, it existed in Germany too).
I can’t define the spice, but it’s not chili to my nose. It’s more like several spices mixed together, as the impressions reaching my nose vary.
During a walk, this pleasantly soapy scent surrounds me (which I would have suspected came from aldehydes, the pyramid is wrong), becomes more floral, creamy, and makes me think of Nivea. Maybe it’s osmanthus, as I have absolutely no idea what osmanthus smells like. But it seems like it’s a perfect dance partner to waltz with jasmine across the floor (I prefer to watch, with my two left feet).
A few hours later, the sweetness has faded, the scent is still floral, slightly creamy, but above all feminine.
I haven’t smelled anything quite like this before; if “Ultraviolet” is meant to imply that it exists outside the usual spectrum: okay.
It didn’t blow me away, but my nose felt flattered, and my ego felt a little uplifted, and the art of extravagant exaggeration seems to be something the designers have mastered a bit better than I have.
I would never buy “Ultraviolet” just because of the bottle, and it doesn’t seem to be a scent made for me.
But it is beautiful, a choice you could always make when you can’t decide - and you would always be right.
I can’t imagine an inappropriate occasion for this companion here - and I would be very happy to observe it on a man someday.
That’s probably something for which the parfumistas and parfumistos invented the term “everyday scent.”
Because “Ultraviolet,” as spaced out as it may sound and look, works anytime.
And the moral of the story?
Don’t despise ugly vessels!
-----------------
^ Dear Polli-Huhn, if you’re reading this: you know that I only find purple sweet on purple chickens and I appreciate your expertise and charming nature above all else.
I’ll start right away with a question: what is the (correct) plural form of Parfuma and Parfumo?
Can I call you Parfumi? Parfumas and Parfumos? Is the word even German, Italian, or possibly even Russian?
Already at the introduction, I seem to be struggling today. Just wait until I take a closer look at the bottle.
You can find the perfume description starting from the paragraph after next.
The Color Purple.
Anyone who has read something from me before knows of my aversion to this color. I will never tire of proclaiming it loudly.
“Purple,” to me, is a multitude of lavender, whose scent I find unpleasant and far too strong from meters away.
Purple is also often disparaged as the “color of dissatisfied women,” and I still remember too well the unison reaction when I, for the one and only time in my life, was forced to appear in purple attire at a wedding, at the bride's request, wearing a pompous dress with a bow that measured about half my height.
“Purple is what comes out when you subtract from blue and red what characterizes those colors. It is unsatisfactory in terms of its creation,” my physics teacher once whispered, perhaps the wisest words of his teaching career and possibly also an approach to explaining the meaning transfer of this color into a sexual context.
Purple was also the favorite color of an older “cousin” of mine, whose clothes I had to wear as a child. What happens when you dress a five-year-younger child in clothes that are several sizes too big? Hopefully, there aren’t too many photos of that, as I quickly asserted myself and continued to raid my brothers' wardrobe, where you would never have found a trace of purple. Since my brothers are pretty much the coolest people in this universe, it’s clear what conclusion can be drawn from that.
However, “The Color Purple” hit me with absolute overkill in another way: in the form of a film by Steven Spielberg, which I had to watch in its original English at the age of six (since it hadn’t been dubbed into Russian, at least not at that time).
With a probability of nearly 100%, this was a masterpiece, the excellence of which I cannot acknowledge or even judge, as I will not watch it again as an adult.
“Purple” is for me the color of the fabric from which nightmares are made.
So this bottle has been staring at me from afar, in its bizarre “I’m a broken UFO trying to be Donna Karan” shape.
Ugly, incredibly ugly, and unwieldy to boot.
That what is contained in such an ugly vessel can very well be beautiful and charming has been proven time and again, alongside the extraterrestrial jasmine bomb from Mugler Polli-Huhn^.
So I won’t be deterred and bravely take the first spray (initially on paper, because you really shouldn’t assume inner values and a heart of gold from Paco Rabanne).
Flick, flick. Uh là là. What is that?
A bit of spice and soap are in the air. Since the store is nearly empty, it can only be from me.
So I spray once on my wrist. It smells fruity, and I have an association with a wooden toy that smells like blackberry, which you can rub and then your fingers smell like blackberry (and are a bit stained). We used to have something like that, for example, for toy stores, I believe (I don’t know the term, hopefully, it existed in Germany too).
I can’t define the spice, but it’s not chili to my nose. It’s more like several spices mixed together, as the impressions reaching my nose vary.
During a walk, this pleasantly soapy scent surrounds me (which I would have suspected came from aldehydes, the pyramid is wrong), becomes more floral, creamy, and makes me think of Nivea. Maybe it’s osmanthus, as I have absolutely no idea what osmanthus smells like. But it seems like it’s a perfect dance partner to waltz with jasmine across the floor (I prefer to watch, with my two left feet).
A few hours later, the sweetness has faded, the scent is still floral, slightly creamy, but above all feminine.
I haven’t smelled anything quite like this before; if “Ultraviolet” is meant to imply that it exists outside the usual spectrum: okay.
It didn’t blow me away, but my nose felt flattered, and my ego felt a little uplifted, and the art of extravagant exaggeration seems to be something the designers have mastered a bit better than I have.
I would never buy “Ultraviolet” just because of the bottle, and it doesn’t seem to be a scent made for me.
But it is beautiful, a choice you could always make when you can’t decide - and you would always be right.
I can’t imagine an inappropriate occasion for this companion here - and I would be very happy to observe it on a man someday.
That’s probably something for which the parfumistas and parfumistos invented the term “everyday scent.”
Because “Ultraviolet,” as spaced out as it may sound and look, works anytime.
And the moral of the story?
Don’t despise ugly vessels!
-----------------
^ Dear Polli-Huhn, if you’re reading this: you know that I only find purple sweet on purple chickens and I appreciate your expertise and charming nature above all else.
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5 Comments
But your comment is spot on!