300(ish) Words on TokyoMilk Perfume
Quick and easy elegance is about $24.00. It’s the price of a few sparkly F21/Shein/random Instagram brand purchases, a basic manicure, or a bottle of TokyoMilk perfume. “Every boutique I’ve ever worked at have these!” a college friend once told me with a laugh, holding a compact, purse-sized bottle with a matte brown label and courier font. “Honey & The Moon” is one of TokyoMilk’s scent names. I think it might not be sold online, but it has sweet honey, sugared violet, jasmine, and sandalwood. These perfumes were the first affordable thing that smelled cool and mysterious to me, different than heavier mall scents.
If you’ve been in a local boutique over the last ten years — or Anthro, I suppose — you’ve seen Margot Elena’s lines TokyoMilk and Lollia. The former brand is a little warmer, more old library in personality, and the latter has secret garden vibes. Today, I am missing that TokyoMilk energy, that too-sunny, caffeinated Saturday afternoon with a friend or my sister wandering around a gift shop before a movie or after lunch.
Searching “tokyomilk boutique” on Twitter reveals that this is the local boutique’s perfume brand of choice. Results turn up years of romantic lil’ paradise boutiques in countless American downtowns, Instagramming how they’ve arranged their TokyoMilk collection. I don’t visit boutiques in New York (where I live now) very much because I usually can’t gauge what their vibe is going to be, but if I knew which ones had TokyoMilk maybe I’d visit more. Dead Sexy was the scent I bought in my early 20s, which was exactly what I was going for. Notes of deep vanilla, exotic wood, white orchid, and ebony worn with spandex American Apparel skirts, patent oxfords, and knotted button-ups. Now I realize this sentimentalizing gives these perfumes an air of being something passé now, and that’s far from the case. Perfumes that smell relatively subtle and enchanting are mostly too expensive, and this collection is still one of the best.
TokyoMilk smells like aspirations, a Friday night, a bathroom before work in the morning, and LCD Soundsystem. I’m thinking of all the small boutiques on downtown streets that have their elegant arrangements with made-up mannequin heads, rusted angel wings, and journals close by. I hope they’re hanging in there, and as I’m feeling crunchy, like I should be going forward and backward, it seems like it’s time to buy some more TokyoMilk. One such boutique, JZ Rose, that stocks the fragrances announced their retirement quite literally today. In June, this boutique in a small Washington state town posted about their “elegant balanced fragrances.” Today, they posted this announcement against a floral background: “JZ Rose has closed for Retirement. We thank you for your business throughout the years and wish you an abundant and magical future.”
Photos from @juxtaposeannex on Instagram and JZ Rose.
