Earlier today, on a certain message board, someone posted about a new perfume called Petite Mort (NB. Mort, not Morte). All sorts of reactions ensued and a lot of laughter at the concept, and someone seemed to think that the name was incongruous and perhaps even silly.
It isn’t at all: ‘la petite mort’ is a metaphor for orgasm and it fits the intentions of the perfume’s creator perfectly (you may or may not approve of what he's done, but that’s another matter). I was waiting for someone to say that, but no one did. The perfumer's website only hints at the actual meaning of the phrase.
So... if you are not familiar with foreign expressions/images/metaphors, etc. refrain from laughing at them because all you will be showing is your ignorance.
2.02.11
I know Serge Lutens Miel de Bois is supposed to have been removed from the Export range to become an Exclusive, but Beauty Base, here in London, sells it in Export bottles. And those bottles are not old stock: they bear the new-style labels (the name of the perfume is below that of Serge Lutens and in upper and lower case – not in capitals as before). So...
19.12.10
Recently I’ve been seeing quite a number of posts on MUA about eBay and how dangerous it is to buy perfume there and how it is the seller’s responsibility to make sure an item reaches the buyer, etc.
1) Just because there are some crooks out there doesn’t mean everyone selling perfume is one and cannot be trusted. Please do not tar everyone with the same brush.
2) Once a package has left the seller, he or she has no control over it and how fast it reaches the buyer or even whether it does at all. In such a context, people always mention tracking, but it is not possible to track a parcel outside the borders of the country of origin. Sellers can use international signed-for (recorded) delivery (or whatever the equivalent is to this UK service) to try to make sure the buyer signs for the item and cannot lie about not receiving it, but it is extremely expensive and, since the package cannot be tracked after it leaves the country and there is no way of getting a copy of the signature, it is, in fact, completely useless and a waste of money. Most sellers will be accommodating and offer a refund or some kind of compensation, but that is all they can do: they are not responsible for the vagaries of the world’s postal services. And buyers should certainly not open a dispute without discussing the problem with their sellers. Already eBay is heavily biased against sellers, who cannot leave neutral or negative feedback to buyers, however annoying or unreasonable they may have been: it would be really unfair if they were not given at least a chance to solve a problem, especially when the problem is not of their making.
