Diary of a fragrance diplomat

Em Seely-Katz on the good, bad and smelly parts of working at the oldest niche perfume house in Portland, Oregon.

Though my true talents lie in writing about perfume, last year’s economy found me dragging myself, grim-faced, from cafe to bookstore to grocery chain to office building, followed everywhere by the echoey intonation “sorry, it’s the off season.” I finally landed as a “Fragrance Technician” at the oldest niche perfume house in Portland, Oregon.

Unlike past nightmarish gigs, this new job is predicated upon trust and mutual respect—I feel like a human being even when in a customer-heavy, hours-long grind. Best of all, I get to be a small part of the community, a friendly face that is always available at the appointed dates and times to address olfactory woes (though sometimes the woes veer into existential—perfume is a surprisingly ready potentiator of gossip, angst, and eros). Every day, I balance the desperation of living a life as a person with very little money and very much debt (and the dread and drudgery that creates in any work environment) with the fact that I like my job and feel lucky to have it. Here’s a diary of a week in my life.

The Perfume House, Wednesday, March 19 — 11:30 AM

My first customer today is a mustachioed guy with a lilting voice and a nervous giggle. He tells me he is looking for a fragrance for a date that night—I ask if it’s a first date or a partner and he stutters “somewhere in between.” Throughout the course of our chat, informed by the fact that every time I present him with an aldehydic EDP he compares it to an alcoholic beverage, I learn that he is a bartender in town, so I start presenting him with boozier scents in earnest. 

He is impressed by my secret deal with tenders at a local pub who make me drinks based on perfume samples I sneak across the bar. I feel gratified that he appreciates one of my favorite scents in the store, Ume Amaretto Oath by J-Scent, a warm, syrupy but not-too-sweet paean to pickled stone fruit—I’m doomed, courtesy of a pretentious Brooklyn bartender, to know that umeboshi isn’t technically pickled plum, it’s “closer to an apricot.”

We end up choosing Hanamizake, an EDP from the same label with the strong presence of both cherry blossom and Ginjo-ka-style sake, perfect for the impending spring. He tips me $6, I think the entire contents of his wallet, and thanks me for our hour-long tête-à-tête. I wish him luck on his date and pocket the money—I didn’t know I could take tips before this, but my manager gives it the okay, though he clues me into the fact that the guy was flirting with me that whole time despite my protestations that “He has a date tonight!” 

My tip-induced high is soon obliterated when a teenage boy demands (yes, demands) I spray him a blotter of Oud Maracuja. There are almost 2,000 fragrances in the shop, including the infamous Secretions Magnifique (which one person too many has insisted smells exactly like cilantro for me not to believe a significant percentage of the world experiences the best herb in existence as smelling like a mixture of blood and rotten semen), and I will not make a stink (ha) about spraying a single one of them save for FUCKING Oud Maracuja. I hate that radioactive, juicy fruit-flavored gasoline. 

Whether it’s myself or a colleague who has to detonate the unassuming glass bottle, the stench fills up the room wall-to-wall, biting at the inner corners of my eyes like passionfruit napalm. I am anti-Maison Crivelli even though I know its Rose Saltifolia is elegant and its Papyrus Moleculaire is a perfect Santal 33 dupe just because the house dared to release such a monstrosity into the ozone. 

I sigh, give the kid what he wants, and then mist the entire shop with the legendary work of minty freshness, You or Someone Like You by Etat Libre d’Orange—regardless of how I feel about that label’s questionable politics, at least it created the minty antidote to Crivelli’s act of bioterrorism.  

The Perfume House, Thursday, March 20 — 1:00 PM

An elderly couple bursts into the shop, yammering about how hard it is to find parking and how their old favorite bakery has crumbled in the hands of incompetent new owners. I brace myself for ire when I inform them that we don’t have the ancient Boucheron they swear is an incomparable olfactory experience. They grouse and growl when I ask if I can try to help find them something contemporary they might like. I pull Opus Kore by Vilhelm after a lucky stroke of inspiration considering the daphnes that started blooming in the city last week (Portlanders apparently LOVE their daphnes)—I’ve never smelled one myself, but I hear they’re citrus-like and bright, so the lemon opening and raspberry leaf heart of Opus Kore seemed like a reasonable bid. 

The woman gingerly applies it, like I’ve spiked the perfume with flesh-eating bacteria, but three seconds later is huffing her wrists with wonder, repeating “how did you DO this? I NEVER find perfumes I like” as I smugly nod. I cement my status as Perfume Genius by introducing the man to 4711, ostensibly the original cologne from Cologne, Germany. He pulls his shirt down, exposing a chest of puffy white hair, and asks me to douse him. The couple leaves the shop smiling and muttering “today was all ‘no’s before, but at least this one was a good ‘no.’” My manager rolls his eyes at my Cheshire Cat smile. I know I’m not getting a raise (yet).

As a reward for my performance, my manager does gift me a half-empty bottle of Carthusia’s Capri Forget Me Not parfum—I believe only the EDP is still in production, and since I had first tested the sunny match of fig and mint undergirded by just a hint of buttery peach I’d fallen deeply in love, so receiving the parfum is a coup that brightens up my countenance, perhaps too much…

A few hours before closing, a man comes in and my coworker takes care of him for the better part of an hour before getting frustrated that he doesn’t seem to like any of the fragrances that actually match the specs he gave her. 

I take one for the team and start showing him MY favorite scents, specs be damned, and as he takes little sniffs, I notice he’s pretty cute so I indulge him for another 45 minutes or so, though I can see my manager is aghast at how much of my time the man is wasting with his customer-style flirting. Of course, I instantly agree with that when the guy tentatively mentions his “partner” and my repartee switches from charming to frosty. He seems to have no idea I now have no desire to provide free life-changing fragrance exposure—I’d even already introduced him to Andrea Maack. 

The Perfume House, Friday, March 21 — 3:00 PM

An adorable gaggle of 20-something women crowds around me this afternoon, cooing over J-Scent’s Ume Amaretto Oath and acting like I’d hewn the scents with my own two hands. One girl in particular, the one who asked to sniff J-Scent in the first place, is obviously a burgeoning perfume nerd and mentions that her partner would love this place. I think she’s very cute and wonder what her partner’s gender is and if their relationship is in a good place right now.  

The afternoon at the shop is so dead I actually do all of my 2024 taxes and receive approvals on both federal AND state returns before my shift is over. I made so little money last year I wasn’t particularly worried about an audit. I wonder if I can write off my discovery set purchases as research expenses for my perfume writing work? (Editor’s note: Yes! You can.) 

After work, as the rest of the world goes out (or, as is the Portland way, has sober communal dinners), I trudge back to my room. Minor freaking out ensues as I try to fill my night with socializing in the least effortful way possible and find my IP has been perma-banned from Tinder (my guess is the work of a vengeful ex-date, and to be fair, I did make up an excuse and leave literally six minutes into drinks at that bar where the tenders make me my perfume cocktails. We’d met up to trade scent samples, actually, and yet, he somehow still smelled bad.) I dolefully remake Hinge and include “mint-based fragrance” in a stream-of-consciousness list of things I care about, my default method of app-bio-making. 

The Perfume House, Saturday, March 22 — 11:30 AM

I go over to the flower shop across the street with an empty vase—the other week, I’d introduced myself as an envoy of the perfume shop, and the owner had been so amenable to my request via my manager that we organize some sort of trade, perfume for a fresh arrangement every once in a while. Last week, I’d taken her up on this, asking her assistant to build us a bouquet to her heart’s content within whatever bounds were appropriate, and it turned out gorgeous. This time, the owner herself receives the vase, saying she’ll bring it back to the store when filled. 

However, an hour later, she shows up at the perfume shop, vase empty, and reams me out for “putting pressure on her” to “give us free flowers.” I quietly explain I never would have asked if she hadn’t openly invited us to and she says she was surprised I had the “gall” to assume an invitation wasn’t just a flimsy performance (not in so many words). She says she doesn’t even like perfume and there’s no way we could make the trade worth it for her, then leaves in a huff. It makes me feel icky for the rest of the day remembering how I had said to her, excitedly, “it’s like a dream life! Bartering perfume and flowers across a street in the rain.” Luckily, my manager is completely on my side, and we ruminate over so-called “adults” and their wild lack of interpersonal skills. 

A few hours later, word comes through that my contact at Clue Perfumery does in fact want to start working with us, so we will be the only PDX shop selling Clue (to my knowledge) and I played a big role in connecting the dots to make it happen. I go home and smell my bottle of Warm Bulb and tell myself not to let someone else’s lack of communication skills make me feel ashamed. 

The Perfume House, Sunday, March 23 — 4:20 PM

Twenty minutes before we’re due to close up shop, a couple comes in and I instantly realize it’s that guy who wasted my time on Thursday and the cute girl who asked about Ume Amaretto Oath from Friday. 

Though this might be kind of immature, I essentially act like only the woman exists. As I run through the newest line we offer, Zoologist (a house that pleasantly surprised me by being less gimmicky and more experimental than I’d guessed), I so successfully block out my perception of the man, who keeps trying to engage, that I actually kind of forget he’s standing there and start to have a nice time chatting with her before I realize that I’m going to be late to start my Sun-Tues “Weekend” if I give any more time to this girl who is obviously very happy with her nothingburger man. 

As I politely kick them out, I get the odd feeling that I’ve been targeted as some kind of olfactory unicorn, a third they’ve been seeking to provide a steady drip of samples and salient morsels of fragrance knowledge to their relationship. I guess this is part of the PDX experience. 

I get home from work to a new Hinge message: “I may be connecting some dots wrong but do you work in ~fragrance~ by any chance?” I play dumb, but I know in an instant it’s the nervous laugher who christened my work week with a $6 tip. I ask him how the date went: the night itself was great, but the whole thing has since dissolved. I ask if they liked the perfume and he admits he doesn’t know. He asks me if I’d like to go out on one of my days off.  

In bed at nine thirty, I think of a really funny meme: “Men only want one thing, and it’s DISGUSTING (Oud Maracuja).” 🍑