what's your signature scent?

I started wearing Lancome's Poeme in around 1997 because my friend Helen wore it one day in music history class, and she was so pretty and stylish and I kind of wanted to be just like her.  She was a big fan of Juliette Binoche, who I'm pretty sure was in Poeme's original ads.  Helen eventually moved on to something else, but I'm still wearing it.  It's not a subtle perfume, but it's warm and inviting and smells comforting to me.  I just try and use it really sparingly so it's not overpowering.  The scent lingers on my clothes for days, if not longer.  It's a little heavy when it's warm out, but I don't usually wear perfume in the summer anyway, cause it's not usually something that crosses my mind when I'm living out of a tent.  Although, there are definitely some beauty rituals that I never abandon, even in the wilderness.  (More on that in another post.) 

I love perfume.  It makes me feel like I'm trying on a new persona.  And I've always had such a strong association between scent and memory.  Everyone has that, right?  Like, every time I smell a certain shampoo, it takes me back to exactly where I was in life when I was using it.  Oooh, or the smell of citronella candles and the butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling of summer camp romance. 
So, because I love perfume, even though I have kind of a signature scent, I'm always sniffing out something new.  After Christmas, my neighborhood Walgreens had all their drugstore-celebrity-fragrance gift sets marked down 50%, so I bought a couple...!  I actually really like Halle Berry Pure Orchid.  It doesn't last on my skin, though.  An hour or two after I put it on, I can't smell it anymore.

 I love the samples they give out at Ulta.  One time I went in there I asked if they had any fragrance samples, and the girl behind the counter said, "sure," and pulled out a giant box of different teensy bottles of perfume.  It was like trick-or-treating, but way better!  I snagged like five.  Last time I went in there, I got a sample of Vera Wang's Preppy Princess, which, despite having an embarrassingly stupid name, smells delicious.
I also really like Coach Poppy.  It's really hard to justify buying more perfume, though.  Sigh.

 
I'll leave you with one final thought.  I read recently about a new fragrance from Demeter called Lobster.  They describe it as smelling like " a combination of the sea, sweet meat, and a hint of drawn butter."
Glamour magazine said it didn't so much smell like lobster meat, but more like the sweet, salty scent of the ocean.  That actually sounds wonderful to me.