I won’t be doing a Luxury News post this week as I’m presently in New York City, but I met up today with Katie Puckrik this morning (of Katie Puckrik Smells) and we set out for the Frederic Malle boutique on Madison Ave — one of the few stand-alone Malle boutiques in the world, and the only stand-alone boutique in the United States (Malle fragrances were exclusively sold in Barneys in the U.S. before the Manhattan boutique opened).
Of course, Madison Avenue is the street of retail temptation, so we were sidetracked several times along the way: coffee at the fifth floor cafe at Bergdorf Goodman (yes, I know, BG is on fifth avenue, but we were *on our way* to Madison when we stopped for coffee), then the Devi Kroell, Valentino and Solange Azagury-Partridge boutiques (the Azagury-Partridge shop smelled like Stoned). Katie was recognized by the Azagury-Partridge sales assistant from her hosting days for the UK television show ‘The Word’.
“I had no idea you were so famous,” said I. “There’s a great deal you don’t know about me,” said she.
But we finally made it to Frederic Malle (which was a good twenty-plus blocks from my hotel) and entered the hallowed space, where we were both recognized by the sales assistant, Eliza — who was just about the most cordial and helpful salesperson I’ve ever had the good fortune to encounter.
We tried out their smelling chambers:
Katie tests the En Passant
And sniffed at their candles:
Katie *hearts* the Un Gardénia La Nuit
*Note: my favorite candle was Coffee Society, described to me as “the scent of a room after all the dinner party guests have left for the evening.”
I purchased the rubber Incense mat (a red, thin rectangle of rubber imbued with Saint des Saints, a home fragrance developed through headspace technology to capture the olfactory ambience of a Hindu temple) and the machine diffuser because I thought they were great new uses of technology for home scenting, and I’ll be featuring them on the site once I return home.
*Note 2: the scent I purchased to use with the machine diffuser is Rubrum Lily, a dry green floral with a spicy bite.
Tonight is dinner with Katie, Della Chuang and Avery Gilbert. I’m sure it’ll be entertaining.
UPDATE:
The department stores I’ve visited (Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue) are bustling with shoppers, though the only department that was truly buzzing at both locations was Beauty & Skincare. But the “scared to death” shopper seems to have softened a bit, and Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue were thronged with tourists.
I didn’t see a lot of shopping bags, though. Lots and lots of tourists, lots of consumers entering and exiting stores, but are they buying anything beyond the small ticket items? The handbags on display at Saks looked impressive, but no one was picking them up to look more closely at them, or try them on; and while the newly remodeled women’s luxury fashion departments looked nice with a liberal dosage of blonde wood across the floors, walls and ceilings, they felt kind of Scandinavian-contemporary generic.
