Sniffing Around Saks With Hunter Harris
Searching for a "signature scent" with the funniest person on Substack.
“I have a lot of trauma around fragrances because I accidentally broke one of my mom's perfume bottles when I was a kid, and I got in so much trouble,” she tells me. She hasn’t gone near one since.
It’s a Thursday afternoon in early June, and we’re standing at the edge of Saks Fifth Avenue’s enormous beauty department. I’m here to help Hunter, who is wearing Shop Rat-approved Adidas track pants, face her fears and finally find a scent she can call her own—one she can wear all day, every day, and that announces when she walks into a room that Hunter Harris has arrived.
We take a deep inhale together and dive in. Thankfully, we know two important things up front:
Hunter does not like floral scents; they make her feel like she has allergies.
Hunter loves her boyfriend’s signature scent by Chanel, which I’ve REDACTED so that no other man may steal it. “It's maybe the first thing I noticed about him,” she says, swooning at the thought. “He smelled so sexy. I've never been drawn to a scent as strongly as I am to this cologne.” He's not allowed to wear anything else—not that Hunter is someone who makes rules for their boyfriend. “But if I don't smell the REDACTED on him, we have a problem,” she says. “I buy it for him every birthday, every Christmas… I keep it in stock. It's like Challengers in a bottle. It's what I imagine Paul Newman smelled like. That's how powerful it is.”
Bearing all this in mind, we start at the Byredo counter because Hunter is attracted to the brand’s short, squat, seemingly unbreakable bottles. A man named Angel, which also happens to be the name of a scent by Mugler that “ran through” Hunter’s Oklahoma middle school “like wildfire,” guides us like a sassy fortune teller-slash-sommelier.
"For this one, you have to see the vision,” he says, spritzing a paper tester with a scent called Rouge Chaotique. “You’re young… You're having fun with your friends... You're at brunch... Everything is paid for… Life is great… You don't have any worries… And you're sexy." We nod.
“I’m picking up what you’re putting down,” says Hunter. She’s getting base notes of papyrus and patchouli… Heart notes of plum, praline, and oakwood… And top notes of bergamot, lemon, saffron, and cassis. So, not no. But she keeps sniffing.
"This one smells like who I want to be in five years," she says of De Los Santos, which has notes of tequila but also… Church?
"Who do you want to be now?” Angel asks.
"I don't know,” Hunter replies. “That's what we're trying to figure out."
Rouge Chaotique is existentially and odoriferously close, but we’ve only just started our journey, so we thank Angel for his assistance, inhale some coffee beans to reset our nasal passageways, and keep looking.
Next, we stop by Chanel to remind Hunter of the scent she loves most. We ask if they make a similar perfume for women, but the offering is just not the same. Instead, I direct Hunter toward Le Labo, which reminds me of my own encounter with a Nice-Smelling Sexy Man. This person gave me a nuzzly neck hug like, seven years ago, and I still remember it to this day. Afterward, I spent weeks tracking down what he was wearing, and it turned out to be Thé Noir 29, which is meant to smell like black tea. With top notes of bergamot, fig, and bay leaves, and warm base notes of cedar and musk, it’s up Hunter’s alley, too.
I would be remiss not to also steer Hunter towards Hermès. I’ve never actually tried the brand’s scents before, but can only assume they’re as impeccable as everything else it makes. She’s into the Elixir des Merveilles, which is made of chocolate-covered orange peels and tree bark. So she likes warm, woodsy scents. Noted! “The other perfumes smelled adult in a way that's a bit too self-satisfied, and this one doesn't,” she says. In other words, it’s not trying too hard, which is very Hermès.
Next, we breeze by Louis Vuitton, but the people working there are deeply unhelpful, so we finally land at Celine, which I think makes the best perfumes in the biz. “Oh my God,” Hunter exclaims as she inhales a generous spritz of Parade. I haven’t seen her have such a strong reaction all afternoon—a coup de foudre, as the French say, or a clap of thunder. Could this be the one? The signature scent?!? It’s got notes of bergamot (check), neroli (check), musk (check), and oak moss (check). So, all of Hunter’s new favorite smells. She’s literally speechless—sniffing and sniffing again. “I think this is her,” she says. “This is my REDACTED Chanel.”
It’s a lot of money to drop on a whiff alone ($280), so the woman working at Celine gives Hunter a scent card in a chic little envelope to take with her so she can think about it. I explain to Hunter that Celine designer Hedi Slimane is one of a handful of people rumored to be taking over Chanel, so, in a way, she’s perhaps one step ahead…
“Walking around a department store without buying anything feels like getting away with a crime,” she says as we walk out of Saks. We’ve just missed a downpour, and the air has that steamy wet sidewalk smell that every New Yorker fondly associates with summer. Hunter may be empty-handed, but she’s learned a lot about what she likes and doesn’t like, which is important.
Smells have a way of lingering in your nose and your brain, though. If you’re drawn to them, you start to seek them out and obsess over them… You NEED them... A little over a week after our adventure, I got a text from Hunter saying that she did it: She got the perfume.
“Parade is my new favorite accessory,” she tells me later. “I didn't know I could feel this strongly about a scent: it's sharp and flirtatious and coy and sarcastic. I love spritzing myself before I leave the house.”
Now that we’ve solved her decades-long scent conundrum, she just has one other pressing question for Shop Rat: “What, exactly, is Vogue World???”
Oof. That I can’t help her with.
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