After the lockdown of 2020, my friend and I decided to take a little trip to LA to go shopping. We both live in Albuquerque, NM, which, as you can imagine, doesn’t have any of the luxury stores the bigger cities do. Our first stop was Rodeo Drive. We found a parking space (quick note, LA parking is not free anywhere—some parking lots and garages offer to validate parking, others do not). We started walking toward the designer shops and noticed that pandemic safety guidelines were still in place and that the lines to get in were way too long, so we decided to go to Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills instead.
Since we were in LA, I wanted to find the most popular of Off-White’s handbags, the black bag with the black and white striped flap and signature yellow caution tape strap that I’d been eyeing online. We made the mistake of walking into the store through the shoe department and ended up browsing for longer than I wanted to, but I fell in love with countless pairs of shoes. The in-store selection of Christian Louboutin’s was amazing, they are by far my favorite brand of shoes. They’re the perfect amount of rock and roll and class. I hadn’t ever looked at Alexander McQueen’s shoe selection before, but after this trip I became a fan—they’re very rock and roll and grungy. Of course, they also carry some styles of YSL, Gucci, Prada, Amina Muaddi, Jimmy Choo, and Manolo Blahnik, which all carry at least one pair of shoes I would purchase. As tempted as I was, after trying on a few pairs, I told myself, “No, we’re here for the bag.”
I finally found the section for Off-White, only to find that the bag was not in stock. They offered to order it for me, but I wanted to see it in person before ordering it, so I decided to look around and see if anything else caught my eye.
I stepped into the fragrance department, and this lovely older woman greeted me by saying, “You want to smell like Rihanna?” I was like, “Of course.” She introduced herself as ShoeShoe while literally pointing at her shoes one at a time. Next, she pulled out a booklet with headshots of all the celebrities that wore this brand and said that she had personally sold all of them their fragrances. She then sprayed perfume from the bottle she was holding on my wrist, and I was transported into this bliss of smells. I was like, “Oh my God! What is this?” It smelt so good. I said—sign me up, ring me up, throw it in the bag.
In my naive mind, I thought there was no way the fragrance could cost more than $200, given that every other perfume I had purchased before had been no more than $100. I was prepared to spend $100 more on this fragrance. Not once did I ask, “How much is this?” nor did she voluntarily offer the information, so I will place 1/3 of the blame on her.
I gave ShoeShoe my credit card and looked around while she rang me up. While I browsed, I noticed none of the bottles had a price tag, but again I reassured myself, “There is no way.” She rang me up, and then I instantly started getting notifications from my credit card company asking if I had authorized a $680-dollar purchase in LA. My jaw dropped to the floor, but my pride will NEVER let me admit I’m wrong or say no thank you, or I can’t afford that, so I took the bag from her and cried in credit card debt.
I will say that although this fragrance is on the pricey side, it is worth every single dollar. I am not entirely sure that this is what Rihanna or any other celebrities in that little booklet smell like, but now that I’ve paid it off, I’m glad I smell luxurious, expensive, and exotic. I am also thankful Ms. ShoeShoe introduced me to Clive Christian. So, with this story in tow, I will kick off my fragrance review series, starting with the fragrance that started me on the spiral of aromas—none other than Rock Rose by Clive Christian.
Maggio Studio 