My Top 7 Fall Fragrances [to wear with a favorite leather jacket]

For our Top Fall Fragrances lists this year, my esteemed blogging partners and I agreed on a total of 7 fragrances. It's finally Fall, my favorite season of the year, I love to make lists, and as a bonus, Summer's over with!

I would say that each of the fragrances I have listed hold an important place in my Fall scent wardrobe-- so important that I carry small decants of them around with me in my go-to Badgley Mischka bag [yes, black leather with a heavy silver chain]. Most of my favorite perfumes smell the best in cool, crisp weather, clinging to my skin like the coolest and most indispensable accessory. That brings me to my growing obsession with the intersection of perfume and fashion, and my very favorite piece of clothing of all time-- one that is for me, very emblematic of the season.

My Muu Baa black leather biker jacket with tarnished gunmetal pyramid studs that I snagged at ASOS a couple years ago is one of only a very few of my possessions [besides perfume] that truly intoxicates me. Its perfection is almost frightening, its style is enduring, and the psychological and physical armor it forms around me is practically impenetrable.

I have a couple dozen perfumes that are wonderful to wear with leather, but this Fall, I will be wearing the following 7 without fail:

Comme des Garcons Eau de Parfum is a facetious little plasticky, exploding monkey-ish thing that stole my heart immediately and feels very much like home on my skin, especially with The Jacket.

Byredo M/Mink-- hardcore, slightly caustic synthetic woody overdose, but not the overused and tragically cheap kind. No, it has a totally unique and captivating passive-aggressive murkiness about it that insists on walking a few paces ahead of me. It's all-drydown, all the time.

Ramon Monegal Impossible Iris is a sparkling rendition of orris with a peppery top, the lusciousness of raspberry to smooth it out and most importantly, the perfect amount of high-quality cedar. It's an incredibly versatile and beautiful fragrance that I'm certain will stand the test of time.

Thierry Mugler Taste of Fragrance: Alien is the only real gourmand fragrance in the bunch. Actual leather plus lots of sugar is insta-cloying to me, but Alien from the Le Gout series really works. It's an artfully smooth and slightly tart cherry-vanilla marzipan with the growl of a slick, animalic puff of musk lurking below. My kind of gourmand-- and much more attractive than the original.

Maria Candida Gentile Exultat: this is one of my favorite perfumes of the year-- a very dry, woody incense with generous (but fleeting) lift at the top courtesy of bitter orange and lime. The heart of violet burns beautifully into the final stage of powdery woods. If I had an unlimited supply of this fragrance, I'd go through a bottle every month, easily.  I only wish it were available in a higher concentration, but it is exquisite.

Phaedon Noir Marine-- a strong, legitimate player in the ever-elusive (make that practically extinct) fragrance category of Gorgeous Marine. It's a salty, silky scent with the seductive marine qualities  suspended within a web of unexpected depth provided by peppermint, tobacco and a couple of aromatic herbs. It reminds me of a discontinued favorite- Black Sea by Martine Micallef. Now I don't have to mourn its loss any longer.

Gorilla Perfumes at LUSH The Smell of Weather Turning is an invigorating, green-ish, twiggy, irresistibly camphorous and snappy earth scent that is probably the most obvious pick in the bunch, but it deserves its spot. I've fallen hard for several LUSH perfumes this past year, and I'm convinced that their consistently good offerings give you the absolute best bang for your buck. Highly wearable and equally imaginative.

Have any of you built a fragrance wardrobe around a single piece of clothing or an accessory? Please do chime in if you have. When you love fragrance and fashion so much you could just burst, something like this is bound to happen.

For more Top Fall Fragrance lists, visit my friends at these fabulous blogs:
Persolaise
Olfactoria's Travels
Fragrant Moments