I can’t even imagine what it would be like if the fashion world followed the same rules as other industries, including fragrance. Imagine if no one BUT Chanel could make a little black dress? If Dior was still the only designer in the world allowed to send tailored New Looks down the runway?

After straight days of turning my wardrobe and makeup drawers upside down, the final Halloween costume inspiration finally struck me mid-afternoon Saturday as I debated options between the lines of good and evil, femininity and masculinity (or rather of costumed sensuality vs. the form of more horror-inspired costumes). It was this line of thought about extremes, and stumbling across an asymmetrical blazer I’d somehow forgotten about, that turned all of my earlier preparations on their heads. I suddenly sparked with the greatest costume idea ever: I would simply work with both extremes, and go as half-man, half-woman.

I’m back to darker ideas. There are many advantages to choosing a black-themed outfit instead of white—- not just for the shade’s slimming qualities but it’s just much more fun to be bad when you get the chance, isn’t it?

This season’s sheer and boudoir-inspired trends mean magic for costuming. The ability to inject a little sensuality and sexuality into Halloween costumes is a longstanding trend with women (and girls much too young to be participating in these types of fashions), but if done tactfully, can be liberating and immensely fun—- all part of the exhilaration of “donning a different mask” on All Hallow’s Eve.

Perhaps it’s the lazy Sunday morning air, but my first solid thought on a Halloween costume is along the lines of the classics: a witch. Maybe not as exciting as what you’d expect of me but you know, my mother hasn’t worn a drop of anything but Chanel No. 5 since ’63, so there’s a little bit of that tendency toward the tried-and-true in me.

Last night I thought I’d look to the stars for Halloween costume inspiration with a glass of wine, and came across some get-up gems that had me on the floor laughing. I had to share.

You should know that my love of perfume is not a new affair. Throughout my life, I ALWAYS saved EVERY penny I could for fragrances (ok and shoes). So diligently in fact that my mother, and later my roommates, (and today the Beau) would lecture me on my gravitation toward the day I would have no roof over my head or food in my belly, but still enough in the closet to fill my own department store.
(I know they MEAN this to be a bad thing, but…)

I have worked hard for every pair of strappy sandals in there though, regardless: which is why I’m outraged at the news of the recent scandals in the perfume world that just take advantage of the detailed elegance that goes into the art of perfuming. Not only did thieves in Miami recently steal $100,000 worth of fine Chanel perfumes, as I’m sure you’ve heard, but a man was also just arrested in Spain, selling thousands of bottles of fake perfumes disguised as real designer olfactory masterpieces.

I remember watching television airings of Cleopatra as a child, my mother knitting on the couch, lamenting the perfection of Elizabeth Taylor’s eyebrows while I sat on the floor with my knees under me, enthralled instead by the way her headdress jewels danced around her face.

Last week the ever graceful Liz Taylor underwent heart surgery, twittering (honestly, I’m still not used to this as a news forum) to the world late Thursday that she was back at home again already, healthy and recovering. And it shocked me, how much time had passed between her glowing role in the 1963 film to the recent pictures of the frail but still glamorous actress on the covers of supermarket tabloids.

The Beau and I spent Sunday evening in bed, nearly comatose from the effects of an indulgent dinner of creamy pastas and two bottles of champagne.

I brushed my black Alexander McQueen drape cardigan to the side and felt myself, in the same routine of steps I’d followed on an almost religious monthly basis since my 30th birthday.