C Magazine at the Perfumed Garden

This was an evening, friends.  To read more:  C Magazine at Woodward's Garden Scent Dinner...

Scent Dinner with Alyssa Harad Featuring the Scents of Local Perfumers, Thursday, March 29, 6:00pm, Woodward's Garden

My scent intelligence has been cracked wide open through Twitter in the last year.  All sorts of smell-besotteds linger there, perhaps because the presence of scent blogs has exploded recently, and blogging so organically ties into Tweeting (like so much else). 

One of my first scent tweeter finds was Alyssa Harad, and it turns out that was über-fortuitous.  Trained as an academic (with a Ph.D. in Literature), Alyssa is a kind of self-taught connoisseur who became so obsessed with scent she wrote a book about her journey into its world, coming out this July: Coming to My Senses: A Story of Perfume, Pleasure, and an Unlikely Bride.  And it is intoxicating.  Here are a few moments:

I became passionately interested in the useless beauty of perfume. 

It depends on the heat of your body to give it life, and on your memories and fantasies to give it depth.

(W)ithout language, without a name and a context, even the most familiar smells can be fugitive, teasing things. 

(P)erfume became a way to consider questions of art and difficulty, to conjure up the dreams and yearnings of another era, or to remember and clarify...

And to sit and talk with Alyssa about perfume, as I have several times, is to be in the presence of someone articulate, riveted, & steeped in its gorgeous language.  So imagine having her guide you through a scent course meal, featuring the scents of five local perfumers, including our own amazing Mandy Aftel,  

At Woodward’s Garden...