LeftCoastNose Manifesto

The LeftCoastNose was created to chronicle my journey through the vast and multi-faceted world of perfume. I keep this blog to record my experiences along the way.

There is an ocean of scent out there, and it can be overwhelming and expensive to explore it. Other people’s writings have been terrific guideposts for me, steering me to things I might never have encountered otherwise, and enriching me with their impressions and opinions. I hope to be a constructive voice in the on-going conversation about scent.

I promise to always give my honest, straightforward opinion about what I smell.

However, I believe that in our culture, connotations of beauty, luxury, sexuality, and excellence-- all fine reasons to be interested in perfume-- are heavily freighted with casual, breezy, but utterly ugly notions of race, class, age, gender, and sexual orientation. (Oh yes, you read me right—I’m that chick.) I don’t believe that these connotations are poisonous enough to make perfume not worth wearing (I’m not the Birkenstocks-and-hairy-legs chick, although I went through that phase), but, as you read, you will notice me calling this out from time to time.

I believe the beauty and luxury industries, just like any other facet of modern life, needs to be tweaked, queered, questioned, called out, made fun of, and whatever else it takes to break down the destructive disparities our culture perpetuates due to accidents of birth and accumulations of privilege. Perfume, in the grand scheme of things, may be frivolous, but the effect of how we talk about it isn’t.

Ok. Enough lecture. Let’s get our smell on!!