Occupational Hazard: Falling in Love with Interviewee's Taste

10:23 AM, March 1 2010

By Jennifer Scruby

Stunning 32-year-old French fashion expert Laure Heriard Dubreuil takes her look right out of the Carine Roitfeld handbook: When I went shopping with her for our March issue, she wore sky-high Alaia booties, tight gray Balenciaga jeans, the latest Chanel bag, and her favorite Balenciaga jacket ("the most important thing in my closet," she said), and literally stopped passersby in their tracks. The only fragrance Dubreuil sells at The Webster--her new high-end, high-concept, Colette-like boutique in Miami Beach--is La Sillage de la Reine, the old high-end, high-concept scent of Marie Antoinette.

It's made with fragrance notes recreated to smell exactly the way they did in the late 18th century and has a $900 price tag, which is way beyond my Hope Greenberg powers of amortization. But Dubreuil, who once trained as a fragrance nose, also fell in love with Jo Malone's Orange Blossom Cologne, just $55. (Malone's Honeysuckle & Jasmine was a close runner-up.)

"Growing up in Cognac, my mother would put orange blossom extract in warm milk for us before bedtime," she told me. Sounds heavenly, right? Well, so is the Orange Blossom fragrance. It's incredibly beautiful, sweet and light--and awfully close to a masterpiece.

So, tell us: What's your favorite fragrance note?