If you want to pick up men, it helps to smell like food.

Being a lover of all that is shiny and new (whee!), a compulsive shopper and a chronic impulse buyer, it's not often that I repurchase beauty products. There is always something newer and more exciting to get my hands on. However, there are a few things I go back to over and over, even if I occasionally put them aside to play with something different. One of those things is Body Shop Brazil Nut Body Butter.



I have been buying this ever since it's been available in Australia - 15 years? Something like that. It smells like really good quality vanilla ice cream, and in the olden days, when I was out and about on the prowl, I was constantly being sniffed by men and told that I smelled great (looking back, that sounds a bit creepy). It's divine, and the scent lasts quite a while considering it's a body cream. On a more practical note, it's a really nourishing, moisturising cream that is great for using on dry patches like elbows and knees, or to smoothen (is that a word? It is now) your shins after shaving. It takes ages to sink in though, so you have to stand around naked for a while before you can get dressed. The Body Shop should use that as a selling point - "Guys? Want to get your girlfriend naked more often? Body butter!"

I spent the 90s walking around smelling like delicious food. There was a perfume oil available from Klein's Perfumery (my favourite shop ever) called Fairy Floss. It smelled like - well, fairy floss. Actually, it was more of a generic lolly smell, but it was sweet and lovely and lots of people complimented me on it. (Is it weird that one of my favourite things in life is being told I smell nice?)

They also had the Demeter range of one-note fragrances, and my particular favourite of those was Sticky Toffee Pudding. I bought some of these from Adore a few months ago, while on a misty nostalgia trip about my lost youth, and I was disappointed in them. BETTER IN YOUR MEMORIES. I bought Brownie, Vanilla Cake Batter and Fairy Floss. They all had a bit of a chemical smell that I don't remember them having years ago (though I was a constant haze of wine and cocktails back then, so it might just be my foggy memory), and the Brownie one in particular smelled awful on me. I gave it to a friend - hopefully it was nicer for her. The Vanilla Cake Batter didn't smell like either vanilla or cake batter, and the Fairy Floss wasn't a patch on the little vial of oil I'd had from Klein's. Luckily, I am no longer in the market to be sniffed by random men.



These days I generally stick to proper "grown up" fragrances. My all time favourite (also bought from Klein's, who sadly no longer stock it) is Fleur Oriental by Miller Harris. It's a heady oriental scent that probably knocks people out if I sit next to them on the bus, but I SMELL PRETTY SO I DON'T CARE. And I'm super excited now, because I just discovered while Googling for a link to this fragrance that they are going to be available to buy in Australia again!

Everything's coming up Milhouse!

Ooh, here's a bit of interesting trivia for you relating to picking up men and smells and whatnot. I read somewhere a couple of years ago that there was a poll done to find which scent men found most attractive on a woman, and the winner by a landslide was Ysatis by Givenchy. So now you know.