KNOWS PERFUME: A GEM IN WEST SEATTLE

I’m back home again after a week of not posting due to being busy with conference activities, the chronic difficulty of getting on the internet, and just plain inertia. Now that I’m getting back into a normal routine, I have to decide whether to post some more of the travelogue-type things that I started writing about on the road, or switch to something directly perfume related. Perfume wins, hands down.

Before I left I had made an appointment to go show my line of fragrances to Christen Cottam, who has recently opened up a wonderful shop in West Seattle called “Knows Perfume”. West Seattle is like a self-contained little beach town, and Knows Perfume is right on the main drag, California Avenue. The entrance is simple, but attractive. The shop is easy to find, and there’s plenty of street parking, at least on a weekday. The inside looks inviting, with a couch, lots of artwork, tall stools at the counter, and plenty of floor space, with items nicely displayed on shelves and tabletops.

Christen herself is friendly, enthusiastic, knowledgeable, and clearly loves what she’s doing. The lines that she sells are all ones that would be considered niche or indy, ranging from L’Artisan, Montale, and Bois 1920 to Strange Invisible Perfumes, Tallulah Jane, Smell Bent, and Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. These are the perfumes that you won’t find in the drugstore, department store, or duty-free shop. In addition to the merchandise, Christen keeps her own personal collection of perfumes at the shop for sampling, decanting, and trading. With hard-to-find perfumes to suit every taste and a level of communication and service that’s almost unheard-of these days, I predict that Knows Perfume will be a huge success.

Before opening the shop, Christen studied biology, taught high-school science, worked for a biotech company, and was a roller derby skater. Quite a life! She has obviously been interested in perfume for many years, and the shop is the culmination of that interest. She says that she considers herself more of a “curator” of perfumes than a vendor, and this attitude shows in every aspect of the shop and in her interactions with the people who come in.

We spent a long time talking about perfume and, as I was about to leave, I asked her what she would recommend to a jaded perfumista who has a closet full of samples and bottles at home (to say nothing of a fully loaded perfume organ). She first said that she would just turn them loose in the shop to sniff around, but then she started pulling some things out for me to try. I ended up coming home with generous samples of six different scents from Strange Invisible Perfumes, Costume National Homme, and Montale Attar. I just tried the SIP Musc Botanique and absolutely love it. Thank you, Christen!

OPENING NIGHT

This week has been stressful, to say the least. Not only is it the last week of the academic year, but the play that I’m directing (A Gulag Mouse by Arthur Jolly) opens tonight in Seattle. The week leading up to opening is stressful enough when it proceeds without incident, but we lost an actress during the middle of rehearsals and replaced her with another one who was doing a fabulous job getting up to speed. On Wednesday she called me saying that she was in the hospital having major surgery! As director, I was familiar enough with the play, but watching and doing are two very different things. I did a blitz-through on the lines, blocking, and fight choreography, put together a substitute costume, and hope that I can stumble my way through the run.

As I try to de-stress after dress rehearsal last night while I dis-tress my now slightly torn costume with oil and bleach and a run through the washing machine before taking it out to the driveway, I can take a few minutes to reflect on scents and the theatre. Theatres themselves often do not smell very good because they’re old and dusty and filled with set pieces, props and costumes in various stages of decomposition. Overlaid on that there may be new (or recycled) wood and paint from the sets. Dressing rooms smell like make-up, hairspray, and whatever food or drink is being consumed. Sometimes sweaty bodies and clothes are added to the mix if the performance involves much physical activity.

I generally take these odors for granted until the show is over for the night and I leave the theatre, going from the noisy, bright, warm, emotionally charged atmosphere of the stage into the silent, dark void of the late-night streets with pieces of trash blowing in the cold salt wind and a light mist hitting my face. No matter how many times I make this transition it’s always a moving experience. It feels almost like birth, going from the close embrace of a warm womb out into the cold, indifferent world. Or maybe it’s more like death, going from the sensation-rich hustle and bustle of life into black nothingness. Maybe they’re one and the same. Two sides of the same coin. The top and bottom, right and left of the circle.