GUMPS | SCENTS MEMORY

FALL FRAGRANCE FUN! ~ A Day With S.F. Sniff

Saturday October 19^th was the semi-annual meeting of the fragrant Facebook group known as SF Sniff. The day started off for me at 8:30 am at Café de la Presse where I met Hilary Randall for breakfast. Lovely Laura my new favorite waitperson at Café de la Presse (and in all of San Francisco in general) took great care of us. Café de la Presse is my morning hang out on weekends when I am downtown. With its authentic Parisian ambiance and the incredible magazine stand in its center it is like a slice of Paris with American waitpersons. They are so attentive bright and cheery at the Café and serve in double time the best breakfast in town. (The almond croissants are killer!)

I walked Hilary to work at Barney’s (we would see her later on) and then headed over to Fresh on Grant Avenue to meet up with the SF Sniff gang.

Our itinerary for the day was Fresh, Gump’s, Hermes, Diptyque, the Chanel Boutique then a break for lunch (a scrumptious ironic twist back to Café de la Press). After lunch we hit Neiman’s, and finished off with a real party at Barney’s where we ran into Mario Gomez and his partner and Mik of Mik Moi and his soon to be (this coming Monday) husband Jasper. We wound down the day at the fabulous food court at San Francisco Center. To my surprise everyone pulled out bags of samples and unwanted perfumes and there was a huge swap! Our feet may have been barking like dogs but our hearts were full of friendship, joy and the mutual love of great perfumes.

I got to meet some old fragrance acquaintances from SF Sniff and some new ones too including Sebastian Jara from Man Loves Cologne dot com. I have to thank our great leader of SF Sniff Tama Blough for organizing the event and being ever graceful and charming throughout our olfactory adventure. And we could not have had all that fun with out the glowing, welcoming participation of everyone at the stores we hit, including Hilary, Christina, Chase, and Sue at Barney’s as well as Irene, Rami, Suzetta and Fati at Neiman’s. And the wonderful folks at Diptyque were a highlight And of course a very special shout out and tip of the hat to the entire team at Fresh who gave us not only tea and cookies but a spectacular beginning to our fragrant journey across the perfume palaces of San Francisco.

What follows is a photo essay of the epic ten and one half hour day.