My desk at work is wooden, and of course, accumulates perfume samples. Sometimes, they come out of my purse and into someone’s hands, and sometimes, I spray them on paper so that I can think about them while I work. Somehow, I tend to get so much more done if there’s a scent in the air. When I’m done with the perfume, it goes into my desk, and over the years, you can smell the perfume right as you approach my desk, but the smell just intensifies the second I open my desk drawer. Sometimes, samples need to be moved out of the drawer because they smell too strong – anything with heavy doses of ambroxan gets moved far away, but mostly, it’s a happy little collection.
34 Boulevard Saint Germaine is the scent of that drawer. It’s woodsy for sure, but also powdery, and slightly floral, but mostly like a worn wooden drawer that squeaks a ton every time you open and close it. There’s the scent of floor polish here, as the floor gets waxed regularly, but the wax isn’t made for office chairs, so it’s constantly coming off. 34 Boulevard Saint Germaine is meant to evoke the scent of the original Diptyque store which didn’t just carry perfume, but also candles other home goods, but really, it could be all of our perfume drawers, our cupboards, the vessels that keep our smelly stuff.
