I've had a really busy week with the start of SXSW and the beginning of wedding season. I meant to post about my Pie Day fragrance (3/14) . For Pie Day, I wore two different scents: 1). During the day, I wore Givenchy Pi. I picked up the decant from @George Hernandez who was kind enough to share it with me after Pi day last year. It's great classic scent with warm, woody, sweet amber notes. It's one of the oldest releases in my collection, and there's a reason that it's still a very popular fragrance. Once my decant runs out, I will probably replace it with a bottle. 2). I had a wedding in the afternoon, but then went out with the couple to photograph them downtown at one of the local hotels (don't worry, it wasn't that kind of shoot - I get paid extra for those). I took the break to apply Imaginary Authors A Little Secret. It's a darker gourmand cherry scent that has a very realistic cherry pie note. In the past, I've layered it with coffee scents to give it that perfect desert at a diner feel that I think IA was going for. This year, I added a little spray of Whiff of Waffle Cone to the mix to give it a cherry pie ala mode feel. It went over really well and may be my new favorite layer combo. But it only works for a few special occasions. I hope everyone else had a great Pie day as well!

Buckle up brethren, this one could get spicy. Be respectful but do not feel like you need to hold back. https://youtu.be/L12y8gYANCQ?si=usjLr5CgbmdEkZaX I recently watched this video talking about stepping away from the world of fragrance dupes, and it hit on something I think a lot of us eventually run into if we stay in the hobby long enough. Early on, I actually bought quite a few of them myself. At the time it made sense, I wanted to quickly experience a lot of different scent profiles and build a frame of reference for my nose. Instead of dropping serious money on niche bottles right away, picking up cheaper fragrances allowed me to explore different styles: ambroxan-heavy modern masculines, blues, gourmands, musks, orientals, etc. In that phase, they served a purpose. But over time I’ve become much more skeptical of the hype around them. One thing that has really started to bother me is the influencer habit of assigning percentage equivalence to the original fragrance. You’ll hear things like “90% of the original” or “95% the same.” In reality, fragrance doesn’t really work like that. A dupe might capture the general direction of a scent profile, but it rarely captures the full balance, texture, and refinement of the original. Once you’ve smelled enough fragrances, and you actually spend multiple wearings with the originals, those differences start to become pretty obvious. And frankly, they’re often not nearly as good as they’re hyped up to be. You may find a few here and there that you truly enjoy or prefer, but overall, it’s just not there. Another issue that creeps up over time is simple collection fatigue. When your collection is small, grabbing a few inexpensive bottles feels harmless. But once you get past roughly 25–30 bottles, those dupes start to feel like clutter more than anything else. They take up space, rarely get worn, and you realize there’s no realistic way you’re ever going to go through all that juice anyway.