Muse in Wooden Shoes

Moving!

2010-02-02T07:14:00.000-05:00

That's IT, I've HAD it with the whole "I can't comment on your blog" issue.

We're packin' up and movin' out.

Please follow me to my new Wordpress blog site. It'll look different, sure. But it'll be your friendly Muse nattering on....

Image is Moving Van Arrives by psmphotography at flickr.

Housecleaning, Feb. 1, 2010

2010-02-01T12:38:00.001-05:00

Several items here:

1. I'm having a lot of trouble commenting on various blogspot blogs recently. I can sometimes manage it if I use my laptop, but my main 'puter doesn't even pop up a comments box for me. I suspect that it may be the spam-and-porn blocker installed on the main 'puter, but I'm not taking that down - I have kids. OTOH, there are some blogs I never have trouble with. I don't know what the diff is. Also, I've recently done some esoteric adjustments that supposedly should prevent people from having trouble commenting here, but I don't know if they worked. If you've tried to comment since Jan. 29 and weren't able to for some reason, please drop me a note at malsnano86 at gmail dot com.

2. I am completely snowed under with samples at the moment. Completely. While this is actually a very delicious crisp pickle, a pickle it is. I'm not going to be able to do any more swaps for awhile until I strap my head on very tightly. Sigh. If I've already emailed you about swaps, I'll finish those because I've already budgeted time for them. But I can't add any new ones for... oh, gosh... at least several weeks.

3. As I may have mentioned once or thrice before, I didn't actually... um... finish my NaNoWriMo novel this past November, and have set aside the month of February to complete it. It's mostly written, but there are several holes to patch, and I'm still having difficulties with the timeline. (The timeline thing is my fault, mostly. If the relevant bits of story take place over 25-30 years or so, how do you incorporate past and present? Flashbacks are cheesy. There's the diary option, which might be pressed into service, given that my protagonist is an English-lit professor who presumably might be a journaler. Then there's just the possibility of telling the story straight out, with gaps when nothing really happens, but that's disjointed. This stinks.) In any case, I'll be drastically reducing my posting frequency here at the blog to twice a week. Don't worry, I will be back.

Image is Housecleaning by moline at flickr.

Tuberose Series 10: Beyond Love

2010-01-31T18:20:00.002-05:00

All right, already. I am chewing diligently on my earlier words about By Kilian being unworthy of my attention due to their exclusive attitude and fancy-pants packaging, with ridiculous pricing to match. I Wuz Wrong, at least about this one. On the other hand, it would never have touched my skin if I hadn't found a slightly-used travel refill at a deep, deep discount.

Perfume Review: By Kilian Beyond Love (prohibited)
Date released: 2008
Perfumer: Calice Becker
Sample provenance: 7.5 ml bottle, bought second hand in 2009.

Once again, here's the review from PTG, by Luca Turin (and boy, is he ever the Calice Becker fanboy, isn't he?):

**** Tuberose tuberose... Not only is the smell of tuberose flowers wonderful, it isn't even, properly speaking, floral in the clean, vegetal sense of floral fragrances. Tuberoses smell of butter, rubber, leather, blood, and heaven knows what else. Using fresh flowers as a reference, much as Roudnitska did with muguet for Diorissimo, Calice Becker has composed a straight-up tuberose using the best absolute from India, with touches of other notes (magnolia, iris) to narrow the gap between the extract and the fresh flower. The result is the best tuberose soliflore on earth.

Oh-kay, if he says so. I'm sad to say that I have never smelled fresh tuberoses. They're a little upmarket for the rural area I live in, and I'm unwilling to spend big bucks at the florist. I did check around. The clerks at four of the five shops within fifteen miles of my house didn't even know what tuberose was. The woman at the fifth shop – my favorite, naturally, a little hole-in-the-wall place on a side street, with a parking lot barely big enough for three cars – knew what they were, knew where to get them, said they were gorgeous, but warned me that there would be a minimum of $75 for special order flowers they didn't normally carry, and did I want the shop to get them? Were these for a wedding or special occasion? I explained that I was just checking around, and thanked them. (Sometimes you have to love living in a small town. Sometimes it's a pain – and sometimes it's both at the same time.)

In any case, I do have a small bottle of tuberose essential oil on hand. I diluted it in grapeseed oil to the proper concentration (the shop said 2-4% in carrier oil was safe for skin, so I made it a 4% solution) and tried it on one wrist. You know what? It smells great. Seriously. Of course, you have all the oil issues – low sillage, sticky skin – but it truly smells lovely, if a bit simple. I liked it better than I liked Kai, as a matter of fact, which was another fragrance I called simple. Then, too, you have to love tuberose, which I do. The little 1-dram (4ml) bottle I bought cost something like $3, which probably means that you can buy it cheaper in larger quantities, and that it isn't terribly expensive even in small bottles, and that even the cheap version is nice. How cheap must synthetic tuberose be, if perfume houses use that instead of the essential oil? Cheapskates.

The By Kilian website lists these notes for Beyond Love (prohibited), under the label "To discover the perfumer's formula" – and what that “prohibited” thing is all about, I don't know, although I assume it's more marketing hoopla about forbidden flowers and carnal love and whatnot:

Fruity Note
     Coconut accord                 10g
Floral Notes
     Egyptian jasmine absolute   20g
     Tuberose concrete            250g
     Tuberose absolute            300g
     Green tuberose accord       50g
     Tuberose petals accord    480g
Amber Notes:
     Amber gris accord            10g
     Tonkin musk reconstituted 80g

Oh-kay again. I notice they don't bother to say what's actually in the stuff, although they make a big deal of listing the grams of each accord. (I do understand that there's a difference between concrete and absolute, because they're obtained by different methods of extraction. But puh-lease. Coconut accord contains something other than coconut? Green tuberose accord and tuberose petals accord are somehow different? This is supposed to make me want to buy the stuff?)

I'll stop ragging on the By Kilian website now, I promise. Because, really, Beyond Love is very beautiful. I admit that it is miles more gorgeous than the simple tuberose essential oil (thank goodness, or I'd start wringing my hands over the State of Perfumery). I'm going to make assumptions that Beyond Love contains at least some coconut, some jasmine, some musk and synthetic ambergris, plus a honkin' ton of real tuberose essence – and because LT says so, maybe some magnolia and iris too.

The first five minutes of Beyond Love are like a speeded-up, seen-at-a distance film of Tubereuse Criminelle: you get a hit of camphor-menthol, and a smaller one of rubber, and about half a second of undercooked chicken, and then it's all gone and it's tuberose, tuberose, tuberose. Less green and florist-fresh than Carnal Flower, less buttery-creamy than Fracas*, it smells both tropical-jungle green and seductively, headily floral. The coconut is very faint, adding a dreamy, milky quality without being too sweet or reminding me of suntan lotion. And I don't smell any basenotes at all – just tuberose. Which shouldn't surprise me, since tuberose does tend to take everything else hostage in composition. My guess is that the ambergris-musk base simply extends the length of time I continue to smell the tuberose, without adding much to the perceptible scent.

It has been several months since I wore *Fracas (review pending), so I'm going to get it out and test it in a Celebrity Death Match, but based on my memory of it, I'd say that I prefer Beyond Love as being a tad more wearable on any occasions not requiring full-length bias-cut satin gowns, opera gloves, and diamante. Not that I'd wear Beyond Love to work – it's too dressy-feminine for that - but I would definitely wear a discreet dab of it on social occasions. Yes, even to the theater, but just a tiny dab on one wrist. So far, Carnal Flower is half a mile in front of everything else, with Beyond Love and Fracas close together in second and third position. But the race for My Favorite Tuberose Scent isn't over.

Side note: I've worn BL solo three times, and twice now have had it on next to something vanilla and been impressed with the results. First time, it was the far drydown (14 hours after application) of Havana Vanille, when it's all deep, rich vanilla liqueur. Second time, it was the drydown of BL (7 hours after application, with just a hint of tuberose left) with a spritz of Shalimar Light Blue Juice (which is more strongly simple vanilla than the original version, IMO). Both times I couldn't keep my nose away from my wrist: Tuberose+Vanilla = Awesome.

The Bottom Line :
Quality       Definitely A. Beautiful, fresh-smelling, natural, and seamless.
Grab-scale score    8, maybe 8.5. (Still trailing Carnal Flower.)
Short description    Jungle tuberose.
Cost      $$$$   I'll be honest, if I hadn't found it used-n-cheap (my favorite!) I'd have been seriously annoyed by the pricing, and I doubt whether I'd like it as much. Unfair? Probably, but I gotta live with myself, you know.
Earns compliments:   Yes. Bookworm liked it, The CEO liked it, my girlfriends liked it. Gaze said “meh,” although usually he likes the same things I like, so that was the one demurral.
Scent presence   Moderately strong. Moderate to big sillage (be careful with the dosage, lest you asphyxiate people on the elevator). Lasts 6-8 hours. Like I said, I wouldn't wear it to work.
Review Report: NST, PST, Perfume Posse

Top image is from the By Kilian website. Lower image is Tuberose by dbfarrell2003 at flickr.

Winter Picks 2010

2010-01-29T14:25:00.001-05:00

So everybody else is doing their Top 10 Winter lists... I'm just presenting a few scents that I reach for in cold weather.

Teo Cabanel Alahine - I continue to insist that this is happiness in a bottle.

I always have a Dark Rose on hand, like Caron Parfum Sacre or Amouage Lyric Woman. Dark Roses like these seem particularly lovely in cold weather. Both of these have a beautiful translucent rose, some cool, deep incense, and the warmth of woods.

Chanel Bois des Iles - warm, woody, elegant. Acceptable substitute: SSS Champagne de Bois is a remarkably similar fragrance, and it's reasonably priced, which is a blessing in these times when that 200ml bottle of Les Exclusifs runs $210, and the parfum is both difficult to obtain and horrendously expensive. It may not have all the cachet of the Chanel (oh, that Chanel iris!), but Champagne de Bois is beautiful, and my second favorite in the Sonoma Scent Studio Line.

Parfums de Nicolai Vanille Tonka - totally unserious, totally joy-making. Wearing it is like drinking Heritage Dr. Pepper (made with, gasp, sugar! the utter decadence of it!) - always a treat. This one makes me giddy: aromatic lime and tangerine, spicy-floral carnation, a rummy vanilla, the smoky tang of frankincense. This was my very first decant purchase, and I just love it all to pieces.

There are days when I need the promise of spring, and that's when I want to wear a lovely Chilly Floral, like Diorissimo or Lancome Climat or (yeah, like I own this!) Frederic Malle Carnal Flower. I love the cool florist-freshness I get out of them - I can almost feel the silky petals against my face. Please note: I'd actually love to own some Carnal Flower. Send me all your spare stash...

Other stuff I'm enjoying: Floral orientals like Amaranthine and Ubar and LeLong pour Femme, spicefests like Organza Indecence and Mauboussin, and the occasional dab of Shalimar. Oh, yes, and tuberose... (at this stage, my tuberose choices would be Beyond Love or Carnal Flower - but I haven't tried everything yet.)

Image is Barn in Winter by James Jordan at flickr.

Dear Scent Diary, Jan. 20 - 26

2010-01-28T07:06:00.003-05:00

I should have posted this yesterday, but I was sad.

Wednesday, Jan. 20: SOTD: Havana Vanille. SOTE: By Kilian Beyond Love. (How come nobody's made a tuberose-vanilla? Two great smells that smell great together... I can see the ad campaign now: one woman carrying some really potent vanilla extract on a tray and coming around one corner, another woman carrying a bouquet of tuberoses coming around the same corner and crashing into the first woman... Wait, I guess that's been done. Reviews pending for both of these.)

Thursday, Jan. 21: SOTD: Amouage Ubar, early version on left wrist and rerelease on right wrist. The early version is more woody floral, the newer more oriental floral. Robin at NST prefers the original, and she's welcome to – it's really pleasant – but I have a definite preference for the floriental. One dab from my sample vial of Ubar has lasted for hours.

Friday, Jan. 22: SOTD: PdN Vanille Tonka. Happy happy joy joy happy happy joy joy!!

Saturday, Jan. 23: SOTD: Lancome Climat, La Collection. Gorrrrgeous. Gorgeous all day, as a matter of fact. (Review of this one coming soon.)

Sunday, Jan. 24: SOTD: Parfum Sacre, because I needed something comforting today.

Monday, Jan. 25: SOTD: Tom Ford Black Orchid Voile de Fleur. SOTE: Thierry Mugler Alien edp. I know everyone else in the Western Hemisphere has smelled this, but I hadn't yet. I'm surprised at how much I actually like it, jasmine not generally being a favorite of mine... of course, it's jasmine sambac, not jasmine grandiflorum, so it's tropical rather than French-y Lingerie de Putain. I can't decide if it's too sweet or not – I'll think, Yeah, too sweet, and stop paying attention, and then the next thing I smell is woody, and it swings back and forth.

Tuesday, Jan. 26: When I woke up, the end bits of Alien were still on my wrists, and they smelled woodily great. SOTMorning: Caron Aimez-Moi. Violet-anise-vanilla, wonderful. (Every so often it smells like old books, yay!) SOTAfternoon: vintage Piguet Baghari edc. Starts with aldehydes – and say what you like, I'm old-fashioned and I think aldehydes smell like real perfume, so there! – and then goes all spicy and dry... and after that, it gets pretty skanky for awhile. I think I scared the grocery clerk, despite adhering to my 3-foot sillage rule. It settles out of the skank after half an hour or so, but I finally washed it off so I could do some more testing. SOTE: L'Artisan Tubereuse.

(Four perfumes in a day... I feel a little, um, promiscuous. I had a college friend who seemed to change girlfriends as often as he changed his socks. His sock-changing routine was fairly normal, but the girlfriend-changing one was a bit extreme. I thought of him today. - Hi, Diz, and thanks for the laughs!)

Image is Perfume Bottles by Cassie's at flickr.

The Fear

2010-01-27T16:48:00.002-05:00

It's probably a bad idea to blog while emotional. But until the Blog Cops show up and pull me over, I guess I'll write, because this is for me.

As late as this past Sunday, nobody knew where 20-year-old Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington was, three months after she disappeared from the Metallica concert she'd been thrilled about for weeks. I took one kid with me to Wendy's after church before we zipped into Target for a pair of jeans for him (poor kid, he was down to three pairs without knee holes), and as I opened the door I noticed yet another of the FIND MORGAN posters that have covered the area.

When the story hit our local paper in October of last year, about how her parents had set up a reward fund, and how Metallica had donated to it, and how her family and friends were determined to get her home, I remember looking at The CEO and saying to him, sadly, "They're not going to find her." And he looked back at me and said what I hadn't: "Not alive."

As of yesterday, we know where Morgan is, and some part of me wishes I still didn't know, so I could pretend that maybe she would still come home under her own power and not in a box.

I really, really wish I hadn't read all those Patricia Cornwell novels. Every so often, my brain skitters off into wondering what Morgan's last hours were like, and I don't know whether that's due to empathy, or to horrified rubbernecking, or whether I'm just examining The Fear again. Probably all three.

If you're female, you probably know The Fear more intimately than you'd care to acknowledge. These days, it's less for my forty-year-old self than for my daughter, but there it is: that tickle at the back of your neck that says, "Somebody is looking at me and thinking of destruction, because I am female." The Fear keeps us from walking down dark streets alone and leaving our doors unlocked; sometimes The Fear keeps us from wearing that really hot dress or speaking to strangers. Because You Never Know. For most of us, The Fear will stay ghostly.

For some of us, it won't. I'd like to change that. I don't know how. All I can do is raise my boys to respect women, and my girl to respect herself, and vice versa.

Morgan's family loved her very much, and she loved her family. What's kept me going today is the memory of a choral piece I sang in college, a setting of a couple of verses from Song of Solomon:

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm
For love is strong as death -
Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it,
For love is strong as death.

Here's a link to a recording of it on youtube: "Set me as a seal upon thine heart," by Sir William Walton, recorded by the Choir of St. John's College, Cambridge. I'm American enough that I find it a little creepy for choirboys to be singing this one, although that doesn't usually bother me. I think it calls for the passionate sound of women's voices rather than the purity of boys' voices. And this performance is a little slow and bloodless, too - I always felt it was a tempestuous piece. But the only other recording I could find had serious pitch problems, so St. John's it is.

Hold your loved ones close. Pray for the missing. Pray for the ones that miss them. Hold The Fear at bay.

For love is strong as death.

Perfume Review: Bal a Versailles, or Hurrying Time

2010-01-25T20:40:00.002-05:00

Perfume Review: Jean Desprez Bal a Versailles
Date released: 1962
Perfumer: none listed
Sample provenance: parfum bottle won summer 2009 in drawing from parfum1, parfum de toilette mini bought from eBay 2009 (labeled vintage, but who knows for sure?)

The CEO dislikes Bal intensely in its early stages, and I understand why. It smells, mostly, of heavy floral perfume, and reminds him of the elderly ladies at church during his 70's childhood. Bal is the epitome of what I think of as “French cathouse.”

You know, French cathouse - like when teenage you goes out with some friends, wearing your tastiest clothes and a generous swipe of Cheri's plum eye pencil, not to mention Carlynn's coral lip gloss and Kelley's Sand & Sable, and your father stops you at the door and gives you The Look. “Young lady,” he says, “you're not going out of this house like that. You look like a clown, and you smell like a French cathouse. Get back in this house, go into the bathroom, and wash that stuff off!” You roll your eyes, but you comply, dabbing off the lip gloss and the eye makeup with tissues and muttering under your breath, “He just doesn't understand... there's nothing wrong with it... I don't know what his problem is.” You swipe at your neck and wrists with cotton balls soaked in rubbing alcohol. You sniff back a tear or two, then re-powder your nose to cover the pinkness, and march out to the front door again. You pass inspection. You receive the reminder of curfew without rolling your eyes, and you escape. Twenty minutes later, you're again bedecked with the bounty of Cheri, Carlynn, and Kelley, making a mental note to hide the evidence before you go home from the skating rink.

Yeah, that “French cathouse.” The smell that is almost toooooo much. It's a heavy, rich smell that opens Bal a Versailles, and it is somehow, quintessentially, French.

I recently read a review of Teo Cabanel Alahine by Brian at I Smell Therefore I Am, in which he compared Alahine to Bal a Versailles. I didn't get it then; I don't get it now. Alahine is pure happiness to me, while BaV is the kind of scent you wear when you don't want to go home alone, shall we say. They're completely different in feel, as well in actual scent.

However, I would call both of them symphonic – very richly compounded, very layered and complex, greater than the sum of their parts. Maybe that's what Brian was getting at. (I should ask him. And while I'm at it, I'll put in a plug for ISTIA. Great writing by two people who love perfume, go check it out.)

March at Perfume Posse calls Bal, in parfum, “candied incense,” and I don't get that either. **But her take on the edp (similar to my pdt concentration) is “floral sex,” and that is spot-on. Spot. On. Big florals, with something honeyed and rich, followed by warm skin that is not quite sweaty... I'd say Bal in parfum is “floral sex, with candles burning.” Maybe my “candles burning” is March's “incense.” And candied? Well, I just said “something honeyed.” Maybe I'm closer to her description than I thought. (** It's in the comments of a recent post which wasn't actually about Bal, and if I can find the darn thing, I'll post the link.)

If I were to compare Bal a Versailles to any other perfume, I'd say Balenciaga Rumba. Rumba is similarly dense with complex florals and honeyed fruit, and contains a beautiful note of burnt dust that I for one find very pleasant. It's not exactly the candle wax of Bal, but in both scents there is that hint of heat and consumption – the dust burns, the candles melt, and underneath it all is the smell of warm skin and hurrying time, with a faint reminder that death waits for no man and decay will someday take this warm flesh.

Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
(from To His Coy Mistress, by Andrew Marvell)

That breath of mortality is something you won't find in many modern fragrances. It makes me want to seize the moment, because I suddenly remember that my moments are not infinite. It's genius, it's philosophy in a bottle. It's why I forgive Bal her French cathouse florals, and wear it again and again.

Notes for Bal a Versailles – an “everything but the kitchen sink” recipe if there ever was one:
Top: Rosemary, cassia, lemon, bergamot, mandarin, neroli, orange blossom, jasmine, rose, Bulgarian Rose.
Heart: Lilac, ylang-ylang, muguet, sandalwood, patchouli, orris, vetiver.
Base: Tolu balsam, amber, musk, civet, benzoin, resins, vanilla, cedar.

Notes for Balenciaga Rumba, just so you can compare:
Top: Orange blossom, plum, raspberry, peach, basil, bergamot
Heart: Honey, magnolia, carnation, tuberose, gardenia, jasmine, orchid, marigold, heliotrope, muguet.
Base: Leather, sandalwood, plum, amber, tonka bean, patchouli, musk, vanilla, oakmoss, cedar, styrax.

Both images from fragrantica.com.

Tuberose Series 9: Michelle

2010-01-24T16:23:00.002-05:00

This was a lucky eBay find for me. I'd had it on my Watch List for about a week, and then a review at Perfume Shrine (see below) made me decide to snag it. I think the words “ginormous heart of tuberose and rose” were influential, and my thanks to Helg for the review and the push.

Perfume Review: Balenciaga Michelle, vintage parfum
Date released: 1979 - now discontinued. (*Note: I can't find out when it was discontinued, but my guess is that it was several years ago.)
Perfumer: Francoise Caron
Sample provenance: Small spray bottle of parfum in sealed box, bought from eBay seller in 2009.

The first time I talked about Michelle here was early in the fall of 2009, when I'd had this epiphany about really radiant perfume. I'm still not a big fan of that – I feel positively rude when people can smell me from farther away than a yard – so I restrict my usage of Michelle to times when I can wear a scent just for me. In any case, I no longer automatically cross a scent off my list if it's loud, I just wear less. (Duh. For example, one tiny dab of Ubar was enough to keep me smelling great all day. I wouldn't spray that one.)

My bottle of Michelle is, as a matter of fact, a spray bottle of parfum (see top photo), which strikes me as being one of the most decadent ways to wear perfume, ever. Spraaay... parfum?? Wow. Luxury squared.

When I reviewed Michelle earlier, my experience wearing it was that it was essentially a tuberose scent decorated with carnation, and with a lovely oakmoss-rich base. But when I have worn it since then, the rose has had a far greater presence, partnering with the tuberose and carnation in a circle dance, Three Graces powerfully linked.

Michelle does still start out with a bug-spray accord that lasts about five to ten minutes - and it still reminds me of the decomposed aldehydes-and-bergamot openings of various vintage fragrances. Ergo, it doesn't bother me. I can spare ten minutes. After that, we're on to the Big Dance, rose and tuberose and carnation tearing up the floor while the ylang and jasmine look on, standing near the punch bowl.

Eventually the florals (except the tuberose) fade, and the base reveals itself to be a rich, lush composition of moss, vanilla and sandalwood, covered with a light veil of tuberose. I have a hard time calling it woody, chypre, or oriental - it's just rich. And beautiful. The only modern fragrance that reminds me of this drydown is (the rereleased) Amouage Ubar.

Notes for Balenciaga Michelle (from Perfume Shrine):
Top: Aldehydes, gardenia, green notes, coconut, peach
Heart: Carnation, tuberose, iris, orchid, jasmine, ylang-ylang, rose
Base: Sandalwood, oakmoss, musk, benzoin, vanilla, vetiver

The Bottom Line :
Quality:     A-   Bear in mind my bottle is vintage and the top notes are slightly off.
Grab-scale score    8
Short description    Tuberose-rose-carnation powerhouse
Cost     $   (only available at ebay and a very few online discounters)
Earns compliments: From The CEO, yes. From my kids, no. I did wear it to work once, and no one commented, either positively or negatively. Of course, that day I mostly spent hiding at my desk among the brake rotors, so it's hard to make assumptions based on that experience.
Scent presence   Very strong. One small spritz (parfum) lasts 8-10 hours. Big sillage.
Review Report: Perfume Shrine

Top image is Michelle by Balenciaga, sold by fiera1966 at ebay; my bottle looks just like this. Bottom image is Three Graces, from artist's website: http://tomaszrut.com/pages/rut-editions.html. Wish I could afford it myself.

Tuberose Series 8: Tubéreuse Criminelle

2010-01-22T23:24:00.003-05:00

Famous, or perhaps infamous, for its difficult opening, TC has nevertheless a devoted fan club among perfumistas: Beauty armed with a Really Big Knife.

Perfume Review: Serge Lutens Tubéreuse Criminelle
Date released: 1999
Perfumer: Christopher Sheldrake
Sample provenance: purchased from TPC in 2009

After all the reviews I'd read, I was expecting the difficult opening. It did not disappoint in its terrifying awfulness. So how awful was it? Pretty darn bad: Vicks' Vapo-Rub plus raw chicken (why, yes, I had recently cleaned out the fridge, how did you know?) plus chlorine. Or maybe kerosene. Eek.

However, I have been known to suffer through some difficult openings before now, particularly with vintage scents. For example, my vintage Victoria parfum (the first Victoria's Secret perfume, released back when the outfit had at least a vestige of class) smells almost as horrid for half an hour – think swimming pool plus maple syrup – and then settles into a very lovely fresh-floral chypre. I've now smelled Victoria from three different bottles, and they all have damaged topnotes, which has got to be one reason it was discontinued. The other reasons probably have to do with hot pink thongs and the proliferation of sugary-fruity smells, but I digress.

Here's Tania Sanchez' review of TC in PTG:
**** Menthol Tuberose. If Ethel Merman were a floral, this would be it – loud, proud. Tuberose absolute usually contains, especially at the start, disturbing aspects of rubber and rotting meat. While most fragrances disguise or eliminate these potentially unpleasant effects, this one amplifies them: an icy blast of camphor, a salty, bloody smell, and a white floral bouquet so indolic you think it must be a mistake, getting stronger by the minute. Terrific.

And let me encourage you again to go pick up a copy of Perfumes: The Guide, or the new edition, Perfumes from A to Z. Even if you disagree with every review (you won't), it's a fun read, and a bargain at less than $15. It's even fun to argue out loud with the authors when they're wrong, despite the fact that people around you will think you've lost your marbles.

(Ahem. End digression number two.) Anyway, TC is this Freddy Krueger of a smell for about ten minutes, maybe fifteen, and then it develops a very, very sweet candied-floral note reminding me of Chanel No. 22 for a few minutes before the tuberose takes over. From here on out, it's pretty much a lovely tuberose, with tiny occasional whiffs of orange blossom and cool hyacinth, until the drydown. And there's another problem: four tests, an exhausted sample, and I have yet to actually smell the drydown. The scent development, on my skin, goes like this: a) horror movie b) tuberose floral c) GONE. The base contains styrax (benzoin), musk and vanilla, so you'd think I'd get at least a whiff of them, but nope. Nothin'. I never smell any of the spices, either, and I love spice notes. Wonder if I'm anosmic to the musk? I don't know. Usually vanilla sticks around for ever on my skin, but not here.

In one of the review links I've provided below – it's the first one, by Marina at Perfume-Smellin'-Things – the experiences of the commenters range from “all tuberose, no nasty green” to “the nasty green never went away” to “all sweetness on me.” Seems that YMMV (your mileage may vary) is especially applicable to TC, so please be aware that this fragrance may interact with your skin in unexpected ways!

Notes for TC:
Eucalyptus, camphor, jasmine, orange blossom, tuberose, hyacinth, nutmeg, clove, styrax, musk, vanilla.

I admit defeat. I get it, okay – this is Velma Kelly as Killer Babe Tuberose, all voluptuous in her green dress, packing heat and refusing to let you get too close. But all I want to know is, why? What's the purpose of the evil opening? Thorns on a rose? Or is it more like the cowboy who always bought his boots two sizes too small, because it felt so good when he took them off?

I suppose I just don't find Tubéreuse Criminelle all that compelling, given that there are so many alternative tuberose scents. Yes, it's a beautiful tuberose fragrance. But if I wanted the experience of a difficult opening, since that is occasionally fun, I'd pick up something really vintage. And if I wanted a straight-up tuberose, I'd wear Fracas or Beyond Love. TC is well-made, it's interesting, you could do a lot worse. It just strikes me as being difficult simply for the sake of being difficult, and that annoys me. (I don't drink my coffee black, either, make of that what you will.)

The Bottom Line:
Quality           B    Clearly good-quality materials. Thematic. I can't smell the drydown, otherwise I'd have given it an A.
Grab-scale score   3
Short description   Malicious stiletto-wielding tuberose.
Cost   $$$
Earns compliments: I don't know. My family, at least, is pretty traumatized.
Scent presence Slightly less than average (2 spritzes last 3-4 hours), moderate sillage.
Review Report: Marina at PST, Robin at NST, Donna at PST, Tom at PST, Bois de Jasmin, Pere de Pierre, Chicken Freak's Obsessions.

Image of TC from fragrantica. Center image is Tuberose Buds by Dev-Happy at flickr. Image of Catherine Zeta-Jones as Velma Kelly in the film version of Chicago from imdb.com.

More Dumb Random Thoughts, Mostly Because I'm Having a Snarky Week

2010-01-21T13:18:00.002-05:00

...and also because I'm avoiding doing laundry.

So what is UP with all these skunks lying dead on road surfaces around here over the last week? Hmmmm? Skunk invasion that failed? Big skunk party some of them didn't make it to? There's one in the left lane of Rt. 100 near the airport, one in the right lane of Lee Highway not far from the bridge, and one on the road that goes by the high school. Then there's the one on Broad Street near the bank, and the one I encountered this morning on Bagging Plant Road, on the way to work. FIVE dead skunks, separated by at least a mile, mile and a half - and you know that if these five didn't make it, there are fifty in the surrounding area. Eek.

And Perfume Posse is offline so frequently over these last months. Is it their blog host? Is it their astonishing web traffic? Grrrrr. I need my Posse fix. Hey, now they're online... off, on, off, on...

I've been so busy testing tuberose scents - and all the faaaaabulous swappie samples I've received lately, thanks to all of you wonderful Perfume Hussies - that I haven't had time to wear the scents I already know I really love. Okay, okay, I did wear Diorissimo on Monday... Vanille Tonka, come to Mama, I've missed you. And don't worry, Tabac Aurea, you're next. Smooches!

And speaking of those tuberose reviews, I'm not gonna finish in January. You knew already that I wouldn't, didn't you? I have AT LEAST 22 scents left to review, with the possibility of nine more (if I can get my hands on them, curse Histoires de Parfums and their new tuberose series!). New Plan: I review these over the next three months... or maybe five months... or maybe I make 2010 the Official Muses' Year of the Tuberose. Yep, I like that. Year of the Tuberose it is.

Oh, hey, and apparently Sasha Cohen is back. Girl is still fierce - if I'd gotten to choose what I'd look like, I'd have said, like that, all gamine and dangerous at the same time.

You know what? Turns out I like a hint of civet in my frags: Climat, Ubar, Parfum Sacre, vtg L'Origan, Diorissimo, Sortilege. (Exception Joy. But then I've always maintained that it's the indolic jasmine that bothers me in Joy, not the civet. Why is it that indolic tuberose, or orange blossom, doesn't bother me but indolic jasmine is Total Ho Underwear? I have no idea.)

Is there anything better than a spiral-sliced Smithfield ham? Sure, there are several things As Good, and lots of things that are Almost As Good, but better? I don't think so. Okay, maybe filet mignon. But ham is fabulous. Ham cooking liquid is very weird, though. It's a nice color, and if you strain out all the little brown bits and ham bits and fatty bits, and get the grease out of it, it would make nice gravy. Trouble is, the best way to get the grease out of it is just to refrigerate it and then scoop off the layer of hardened grease after the whole thing is cold. And then what you have is, essentially, Ham Jell-O. Ewwwwww. I guess technically it's gelee, which could become the very fancy-pants aspic, if I were insane enough, and bored enough, to suspend things like poached eggs in it, a la The French Chef. But still, Ham Jell-O. Who in blazes thought that would be a good thing to eat?

So Bookworm actually let me spray her this week with a couple of samples she considered innocuous: one evening it was Kenzo Flower, which we both like, and the next Kenzo Amour, which I like a lot on her, not so much on me, and which she finds “boring.” Progress is being made. Weird that Amour is very creamy on her but floury on me. I know a lot of people really like that rice steam note, but I don't find it interesting beyond the five seconds it takes to isolate and identify the note, sniff it twice for realism, and say, “Yep, there's that rice steam thing.” By the time I've done all that (all five seconds of it), I'm ready to move on. Next!

Dear Scent Diary, Jan. 13 – Jan. 19

2010-01-20T14:32:00.004-05:00

Wednesday, Jan. 13: Weather chilly and overcast. SOTD: Velvet Tuberose (reviewed Jan. 18). SOTE: Tubereuse Criminelle.

Thursday, Jan. 14: The CEO came home this morning from Seattle, and promptly left for the Agribusiness Association dinner in Richmond. Wonder what kind of mileage he put on his chassis this past week? Weather chilly (low 40's) but clear. SOTD: Balenciaga Michelle (revised review pending). Bookworm, combating exam stress, snagged a spritz of Mariella Burani after considering and rejecting vintage Lauren as being “soapy and green” and therefore not the comforting thing she was looking for. SOTE: Voile de Fleur. Boy, that's nice stuff.

Friday, Jan. 15: Still chilly. SOTD: Velvet Tuberose. SOTE: Kai eau de parfum.

Saturday, Jan. 16: Scentless morning, busy day. Opened a few late Christmas presents – I finally have my wished-for copy of Diana Gabaldon's An Echo in the Bone, thanks to my favorite brother. SOTE: Tubereuse Criminelle.

Sunday, Jan. 17: Weather chilly and damp. SOTD: Mariella Burani.

Monday, Jan. 18: Weather warmer, in the low 50's today, and clear. SOTD: Amouage Ubar. SOTE: Diorissimo. It slightly made up for the very crappy day we had (see RIP John Deere 4040).

Tuesday, Jan. 19: Weather relatively warm (upper 40's and overcast). SOTD: DSH Perfumes Essense Oil Mysore Sandalwood, followed by another wearing of Tubereuse Criminelle. I don't get this stuff yet. I will have to postpone my review again.

Photo is "My winter favorites" by F_A at fragrantica.com

R.I.P. John Deere 4040, and Other Important Stuff

2010-01-19T15:44:00.001-05:00

The 4040 is dead. It caught on fire yesterday afternoon - probably due to something electrical - and although we were able to put the fire out, the tractor is sitting a blackened, immobile hulk out in the middle of a field. (Many thanks to the New River Valley Regional Airport, and the Dublin and Newbern Volunteer Fire Departments. You guys are the best.)

The tractor will probably continue to sit there, useless, for some time. The ground is very wet because of all the rain and snow we've had, and there's no way to tow it at this point without creating a mud quagmire. (Ever see My Cousin Vinny? That kind of mud.)

The CEO is understandably bummed. The thing's insured, but not for anything near its replacement cost. Also, that tractor is one that's typically used every day to feed hay to cows in the winter; one of the other tractors will have to be modified with a hay carrier. This means: a lot of extra work, a lot of cash out of pocket, and a lot of worry.

Heavy sigh.

The good news is that no one was hurt. Which brings me to the Other Important Stuff: please, if you haven't already done so, consider donating to organizations offering relief to Haiti. We only lost a piece of equipment, not our home or our hospital, church, school, police department, food, clean water, neighbors, or family members.

Here are a few reputable organizations who've been doing good work in Haiti for decades, if not longer, and who could use a little help right now:

Partners in Health (over twenty years of service to Haiti - highly recommended by givewell.net)

Medical Benevolence Foundation (affiliated with Presbyterian Church, USA)

World Vision (a Christian humanitarian organization)

UNICEF, the American Red Cross, and Doctors Without Borders you've probably heard of as well. All are well-regarded for their everyday charitable work and for fiscally responsible behavior. I have personally donated at one time or another over the years to all of these organizations and am satisfied that none of them are scams.

Image is 1982 John Deere 4040 tractor at fastline.com. It's not our tractor - ours is a lot older, and a lot dirtier. I just couldn't get out to the field to take a picture of ours. Plus, it would probably depress me.

Tuberose Series 7: Bath and Body Works Velvet Tuberose

2010-01-18T22:24:00.003-05:00

Chiefly remembered by me as the unlikely gateway drug to my new addiction, as in, “Boy, this stuff is great! I'd forgotten how much I used to like perfume... Now that we're not pinching every dime, wonder what else is out there?” Finding out What Else Is Out There led me to Now Smell This, and I was hooked.

Perfume Review: Bath and Body Works Velvet Tuberose
Release date: 2007
Perfumer: Who Nose?
Sample provenance: my 50ml bottle, purchased in August 2008 from BBW store (it cost me all of $13.75 on sale, and if your tastes are decidedly upscale, you might decide you've read all you need to know). I think the packaging has changed for this scent, although the new tester bottle I smelled a few weeks ago smelled like my own bottle, which looks like the one pictured above.

Okay, okay, okay... by now, you've probably figured out that I'm a cheapskate perfumista, if there can be such a thing. I really struggle with the price schedule of certain houses I'd otherwise like to try (Amouage, MDCI, By Kilian) and simply cross other houses completely off my list because they seem like poor value to me (too many to enumerate). I have never paid full retail price for a bottle of anything. Online discounters are my friends. And of course I'm a suckah for eBay.

It wasn't always this way. Used to be, I'd scrape together babysitting money, or pizza money when I was in college, and troll the drugstore aisles for sent-bons. I discovered Bath and Body Works at about the time I started dating The CEO, and was devoted to their old Freesia body products. (NB: I miss Freesia, by the way. Sheer Freesia is what they're selling now, and it's not at all the same; it's missing something – I think a muguet note.)

True Story Digression: The CEO used to call up the company where I worked, using the pseudonym “Scott Preston, of Preston Enterprises in Charlotte, NC,” and ask to speak to Miss Muse in Accounting, an amusing little subterfuge that probably fooled no one.

In any case, in August of 2008, I made my way to the B&BW at the mall to pick up some Lavender Vanilla lotion from the Aromatherapy line for my sister's birthday. While I was there, I wandered around desultorily sniffing things, and came across VT. Before I knew it, I had bought a bottle. I wore it almost exclusively for several months... and aprés Velvet Tuberose, le déluge.

It is a rather sheer tuberose. I know, I know, “sheer tuberose” is something of an oxymoron. But still. If you're expecting some big creamy huge floral thing, you'll be disappointed in its light weight.

Notes for VT:
T: Magnolia, apricot, citrus, ylang
H: freesia, cyclamen, tuberose, gardenia, fig leaf, jasmine, orchid
B: sandalwood, amber, spice, musk, cashmere woods

The scent opens with just a few minutes' worth of tangy fruits and creamy but nondescript florals – and don't worry about that apricot note, it's barely there. Very quickly, you're down into the heart of the thing, which blends some fresh florals (freesia, cyclamen, and orchid) with a traditional white floral mix. I'm pleased to say I've never noticed that fig leaf, as fig leaf is pretty much a dealbreaker for me, ugh. After a few hours of tuberose-floral blend, VT dries down to a cheap-but-pleasant base of Cashmeran and musk. Amber and spice? No. Sandalwood? Not really, but you can't expect much from under $15, can you? Turns out, though, I actually like Cashmeran.

In fact, I like VT better than tuberose-centric mainstream scents like Michael Kors, Juicy Couture, and Christina Aguilera Inspire, all of which cost considerably more than VT. It's another one of those office-friendly tuberose scents: quiet, pleasant, pretty without overpowering the noses of all in the general vicinity. It stays fairly close to my skin, and can be detected within hug range. I still like to put on a spray or two just before bed, and sometimes wear it to work, when I don't want to have to think about what scent I'm wearing.

The Bottom Line :
Quality        C Clearly cheap materials, but nicely blended
Grab-scale score:     6.5
Short description:    Tuberose Floral.
Cost:      $
Earns compliments:     Yes, in surprising numbers.
Scent presence:       Slightly better than average (2 spritzes last 5 hours), mild sillage. Will not get you lynched at the office.

Review Report:   Bois de Jasmin (brief mention)

Top image is Velvet Tuberose... by Robert Hughes at flickr. Lower image is White tuberose by buttersweet at flickr.

Tuberose Series 6: Kai eau de parfum

2010-01-17T20:06:00.004-05:00

Several celebrities are reported to wear Kai: Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Garner, Pamela Anderson, Tyra Banks, Kelly Ripa, Usher, Cate Blanchett, Alyssa Milano, Mary J. Blige, Kate Bosworth.* It's also a forum favorite. It was originally released as an oil, and is intended to smell like a Hawaiian vacation.

Perfume Review: Kai edp
Date released: 1999 (?) in oil and 2006 in edp
Perfumer: Gaye Straza Rappoport
Sample provenance: edp sample from luckyscent, 2010

Kai is probably more a gardenia-focused scent than a tuberose-focused one; nevertheless, it's definitely chock-full of tuberose. The listed notes are simply, “Gardenia, exotic white florals,” and that's pretty much what you get. The scent does start out with a stemmy greenness under the gardenia, and the first fifteen minutes is just delightful, recalling a greenhouse where the gardenias are in bloom. After that, I smell a lot of tuberose and a grassy jasmine, and the whole thing is pretty and simple and luxurious for two hours – and then it's just gone. I got four wearings out of my sample vial, and each time I got two, maybe two and a half, hours of scent. (I did layer it over some unscented shea butter twice, and the fourth time tried it on skin that had not been bathed for more than twenty-four hours, to see if that would make a difference. It didn't.) Either there's no base to this scent at all - and I see no typical basenotes are listed – or it's a light musk that I cannot smell.

To be honest with you, Kai smells to me very much like the perfumer simply added some sambac jasmine and tuberose essential oils together, perhaps tossing in a few green notes, diluted with denatured alcohol and some fixative, and called it a day. Mind you, it's very pretty, and I might be tempted to wear it in the summer, for a sundress scent, but it's sort of the olfactory equivalent of a milkshake: milk, ice cream, blend. That's it, you're done, and it's delicious but it didn't take any skill to make. Also, it's gone in a flash.

I did not try the oil, but maybe I should have. On the other hand, I have a feeling it would remind me of a concoction I smelled at a “natural perfumery” stall at our local permanent flea market, said concoction being made strictly of tuberose and jasmine sambac essential oils, in a carrier oil, and costing $12 for half an ounce.

The CEO and I stopped briefly, for five days, in Hawaii on our way back home from Australia and New Zealand a few years ago. (Oh, come on. Wouldn't you rather fly back via Hawaii than LA? That was a no-brainer.) And it did smell wonderful, with tropical flowers and ocean breezes and coconut oil, and a freshness in the air, especially on the Big Island of Hawaii where we visited Volcanoes National Park - go if you possibly can, it's amazing and largely undeveloped. Kai does not smell like that Hawaii vacation, however - the scents I've tested that made me think of Hawaii are Ormonde Jayne Frangipani and Maoli Colonia Dulce.

The Bottom Line :
Quality   B Smells like natural florals but is very simply structured.
Grab-scale score   6
Short description     Tuberose Floral.
Cost    $$
Earns compliments:    Yes.
Scent presence:    Nice three-foot sillage, but very poor staying power in edp.
Review Report:   Now Smell This, For the Love of Perfume, Basenotes, Fragrantica

* Celebrity info from luckyscent.
Top image: Kai eau de parfum at ebay by andyfrog. Middle image: Jasminum sambac by mondomuse at flickr. Bottom image: Tuberose by Swami Stream at flickr.

Upcoming reviews

2010-01-15T09:50:00.003-05:00

No, I'm not dead. The CEO is back from his trip, and things are topsy-turvy until we settle again.

Reviews coming in the next few days:

Balenciaga Michelle (a revised review)
Bath & Body Works Velvet Tuberose
L'Artisan Tubereuse
Bal a Versailles/Balenciaga Rumba double feature

and sometime next week, Tubereuse Criminelle.

Image is Regent Theater by gtotiger68 at flickr.

Edit: Okay, so I didn't get all those posted... sorry. (You know I don't get paid for this.) Anyway, I WILL get to these in the coming week.

Housecleaning

2010-01-13T09:18:00.001-05:00

Interesting post and discussion over at Perfume Posse today. I guess I'd better put my money where my mouth is and state where I obtained each fragrance I'm reviewing. If I'm telling March that the info would be helpful, I can't skip it myself.

Dear Scent Diary, Jan. 6 – Jan. 12

2010-01-13T09:03:00.001-05:00

Wednesday, Jan. 6: Cheered by the success of having decanted my mini dabber bottle of Bvlgari Black into a spray atomizer, I did the same for Fendi Theorema. I hoped spraying would reveal facets of delight heretofore not realized by me. Sadly, it did not. Theorema is wonderful until the drydown, and then it just sits on my skin and bores me. I'm discovering a kinship between Theorema's drydown and the experience of Barbara Bui Le Parfum; that would explain why March at Perfume Posse loves them both. I found BB dull, and I only like part of Theorema. That does it, I'm done with Theorema. There's way too much other stuff out there for me to keep trying scents that don't move me. I spent the evening in vintage No. 5 parfum.

Thursday, Jan. 7: Whee, a scrubber! Sample swap freebie that sounded nice – Comptoir Sud Pacifique Hemisphere Sud pour femme. Orange, pepper, pink pepper, peony, jasmine, rose, patchouli, vanilla, sandalwood, musk; your average modern floriental. It was really lovely for about twenty minutes, and then disgustingly chemical. I got a headache. So I made it go away... and moved straight on to the Tuberose selection of the day: vintage Chloe edt. (reviewed Jan. 8)

Friday, Jan. 8: Chloe again, parfum this time. It's not fun wearing this, I feel like an eighth grader. This was a pretty mature choice for a middle-schooler, but I didn't pick it out for myself. I don't remember being unhappy with it, though.

Saturday, Jan. 9: It's freeeeeezing. Yet another day of 15-degree-weather. The CEO left on his trip to Seattle, but not before depositing a calf that was either sick or weakened by the continuing cold on a tarp in the laundry room and instructing me in how to take care of it. If you are thinking, “Aw, a calf, how cute, how much trouble could that be?” I'll explain that said calf is about three months old and weighs a good two-three hundred pounds, if not more. (Actually, she is cute: brown face, black body, white diamond on her forehead, and the most ridiculously long eyelashes. But she's trouble. You ever have calf poop on your laundry room floor?) And then I was ludicrously optimistic (stupid) and put on some Giorgio (reviewed, sort of, Jan.10). Dear God.

Sunday, Jan. 10: I have a mild stomach bug. The weather's still freezing, CEO's still gone, Sara the calf is still poopin' on the laundry room floor. Poor thing either can't or won't stand up. Vet says, “Give her 1 cc of MuSe and 2 cc's of Vitamin AD&E, and if she's not up by tomorrow I'll come by.” I call the CEO to find out where these supplies are, yada yada... turns out I can give the MuSe (Selenium, a mineral supplement) subcutaneously, but the AD&E has to go into the hip muscle. I've never given an injection before. Eek. I have to enlist Bookworm to hold the medicine bottles while I pull out the correct amount into the syringes, but the injections themselves go smoothly. Whew. Testing DSH Tubereuse (reviewed Jan. 12) for the fourth time since last spring.

Monday, Jan. 11: My birthday. Sara's better – she's standing up, which means it's time for her to go out to the little barn lot with the shed in it, with Davy the orphan calf and Beth the abandoned twin calf, whom (whom? Can you use “whom” with animals?) the kids have been bottle feeding since the fall. Wearing Attrapé-Coeur, lovely floral-amber thing.

Tuesday, Jan. 12: Good luck to my brother-in-law Bob, who's heading off to Basic training for re-enlisters. SOTD: Bath & Body Works Velvet Tuberose (review pending). SOTE: DSH Tubereuse again.

Tuberose Series 5: DSH Perfumes Tubéreuse

2010-01-12T18:08:00.008-05:00

Tubéreuse is one of the three top-selling scents at indie house DSH Perfumes, which is making a name for itself among American perfume fans for well-blended, quality classical (part-synthetic) scents as well as excellent naturals-only perfumes. Nose Dawn Spencer Hurwitz's website is a lot like the candy shop in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory*, stuffed to bursting with goodies of every description. I could happily get lost there.

Perfume Review: DSH Perfumes Tubéreuse
Date released: (I've sent an email to Ms. Hurwitz to ascertain)
Perfumer: Dawn Spencer Hurwitz
Sample provenance: directly from DSH, 2009
The listing for Tubéreuse, in the Parfums des Beaux Arts section at the DSH website, reads like this:
"Tubéreuse (Tuberose)
Its milky white and fleshy flowers bear the secret of attraction. In India, this flower is called “Mistress of the Night:” The most sensuous and intoxicating of perfumes.
Top notes: Citron Accord, Mimosa
Middle notes: Tuberosa, Tuberose Absolute
Base notes: French Beeswax, Heliotrope, Himalayan Cedar, Tamil Nadu Sandalwood"

I first came across this perfume last spring, during my first awed wander through the website. I tested it at about the time I was also testing some of the lusher Annick Goutals (Passion, Songes, Gardenia Passion), and certainly it's on a par, quality-wise, with the Goutal scents. It also seems to share a certain simplicity, or perhaps you'd call it transparency, with those classic AG feminines: it smells definitively of tropical flowers, with a few other notes serving as framework.

The opening is my least favorite part of the development, with a citrusy note that seems both bitter and a bit powdery. Powdery citrus? How can that be?, you're wondering. I don't know myself - I assume that the mimosa (cassie) is the powdery bit, and the citron, or cedrat, is the bitter bit. What it reminds me of is the dreaded Tang Dust Accord.** I don't get this every time - so far I'm two-for-five - but I do find it somewhat unpleasant for the fifteen minutes it lasts.

However, the Tang effect might be due to neither citron nor mimosa, but natural indoles in the tuberose itself. Somewhere*** in PTG, Tania Sanchez refers to a "back of the throat rasp" with regards to indole. Certainly this thing is composed of natural tuberose, a buttery-sweet-tropical thing that lolls, heavy-lidded and languid, on skin. I'm still doing some research on the difference between tuberose essential oil and tuberose absolue (I suspect that they are extracted by different methods, and that absolue is more concentrated), but both are included in the formula.  Tuberose is really the heart of the scent, with citron and sandalwood the supportive BFFs that keep it from falling over backwards in a swoon.

Four to five hours after application, the tuberose has quieted and there is a softly woody drydown, with a hint of not-too-sweet coconut. I like coconut; this is far less beachy than, say, Bronze Goddess.  But if you hate coconut, you will probably want to avoid this scent. To me, the coconut seems in keeping with the tropical, lazy character of the tuberose, and I enjoy it.

While I was considering the fragrance - why, for example, citron rather than bergamot, or orange? - I came across the following information, and suddenly everything became quite clear: this is a hymn to India.

Citron: "In South Indian cuisine, especially Tamil cuisine, citron is widely used in pickles and preserves. In Tamil, the unripe fruit is referred to as 'narthangai', which is usually salted and dried to make a preserve." (from Wikipedia)
Tamil Nadu sandalwood: the same species as Mysore sandalwood. "Santalum album, or Indian sandalwood, is currently a threatened species and consequently very expensive. It is indigenous to South India... Sandalwood from Mysore region of Karnataka, Southern India is widely considered to be of the highest quality available. New plantations have been set up with international aid in Tamilnadu in order to avail of the economic benefits of sandalwood." (from Wikipedia)
Coconut: "The Coconut Palm (Cocos nucifera Linn.) is supposed to be one of the five legendary Devavrikshas and is eulogised as Kalpavriksha - the all giving tree - in Indian classics. All parts of the palm are used in someway or another in the daily life of the people of the west coast; the traditional coconut growing area. Its fruit is called Lakshmi Phai and is used in social and religious functions in India irrespective of whether palm is locally grown or not." (from http://www.bgci.org/education/1685/)

The tuberose blossom, as I found when writing my "Series Opener" post, holds a significant cultural place in India as well, being used in weddings and other religious ceremonies, as well as in personal adornment. I've never been to India; now I want to go.

DSH Tubéreuse is really lovely and cohesive, an affectionate study of the flower. Like ELPCTG, it's not a scent you wear in a business environment. But where TG was girly, Tubéreuse is languid and sensual - it's every bit the carnal flower that Malle's Carnal Flower is not. I recommend it.

* The 1971 movie with Gene Wilder, of course. The candy shop is the place where Charlie buys the candy bar that holds the last Golden Ticket, after the shopkeeper sings, "The Candy Man." I found the 2005 version, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," with Johnny Depp, weirdly wonderful too. (Depp seems to be channeling Michael Jackson doing Carol Channing; he's such a bizarre delight.)
** "Tang Dust Accord" refers to any component of a scent which makes the back of my throat hurt. Background: The CEO adores Tang (the Kraft drink mix). He actually prefers Tang to real orange juice (it's probably because of the sugar content), and I think he's nuts, but hey, people who live together make compromises. But here's the thing - I hate making Tang. Just hate it. No matter how I do it, whether I put the mix in first or a little water in, whether I snap the cover of the pitcher on top or not, a little mushroom cloud of Tang dust always rises up and hits me in the back of the throat. Honestly, I can feel it in my sinuses. Gah. Even if he makes the Tang, or one of the kids does, I can walk through the kitchen ten minutes later and get hit with the Tang dust cloud effect. It hurts. I hate it. I especially hate encountering it in perfume, as I have in Lancome Magnifique, Guerlain Insolence (edp), Giorgio, and occasionally in DSH Tubéreuse. Luckily, with Tubéreuse the effect doesn't last long.
*** If I find the page, I'll update with a direct quote. Edit: Found it! In the review of Diptyque Olene, TS gives a short chemistry lesson on indole and skatole, two chemicals found in both white flowers such as jasmine, ylang, etc., and in animal waste. Then she explains why chemical recreations of natural white florals don't smell right: "If you measure the amount of indole in, say, jasmine oil and make up a synthetic mix with the same amount of the pure stuff, it will smell of mothballs [indole] whereas the natural one doesn't. Why? Nobody knows. But that is the main reason why white-flower reconstitutions seldom have the back-of-the-throat rasp of the real thing."

The Bottom Line :

Quality     A   Smells almost entirely natural; entire composition is thematic.
Grab-scale score    7, maybe 8 (Depends on whether I get TDA or not)
Short description    Tropical tuberose.
Cost   $$   1 oz. bottle of edp is $65, but you can buy a dram (4ml) of edp for $10. Parfum is also available.
Earns compliments: Yes, but not from people who dislike tuberose.
Scent presence:  Average (two generous dabs of edp last four to five hours). Moderate sillage. Not an office scent, in my opinion.
Review Report:   None. Although this scent has its fans at fragrantica, it's not listed in the database.

Top image is from DSH Perfumes. Center image is Rajnigandha - Tuberose (Explore) by H G M at flickr.

What, again? I did this, like, a YEAR ago...

2010-01-11T09:10:00.004-05:00

Scent of the day: Guerlain Attrape-Coeur (many thanks to dear Daisy!)

Review of DSH Tubereuse to be posted later in the day.

The CEO gave me this very cool book by Alton Brown, my favorite Food Network Dude. The kids gave me hugs.

Sara the calf is better. We've taken her out to the little barn lot to hang with Davy and Beth.

It's supposed to hit 40 degrees today.

I'm wearing my new, very soft, tomato-red sweater.

I'm making cheesecake this afternoon. Tilapia for dinner, mmm.

I've made it this far - might as well go a little longer, right? Kidding. I'm having fun these days.

My favorite cut flowers: yellow roses, deep burgundy roses, pale pink peonies, gardenias, tiny starlike daffodils, bells of Ireland, blue delphiniums, and lily of the valley. I'm forgetting something, I know. Oh, yes - carnations. Love them. Of the florist-available, only the white ones have a scent, and it's wonderful - spicy and floral and green all at once.

Image is Happy Birthday! by JannaPham at flickr.

Tuberose Series Bonus: Giorgio by Giorgio Beverly Hills

2010-01-09T21:23:00.039-05:00

I should NOT have tested this. This is not going to be a serious, formal review because I just can't stand to do it. Also, with this review, you're going to get pointless digressions and some disturbing emotional reactions. You have been warned.

Perfume Review: Giorgio Beverly Hills
Date Released: 1981
Perfumer: Bob Aliano
Sample provenance: miniature bottle bought retail 2010

I wasn't going to bother with this. I blame Luca Turin yet again, for reviewing it in the downloadable updates to the original Perfumes: The Guide. I should have known better from that stupid Insolence experience, but nooooooooo. Also I was blinded by nostalgia and a fuzzy memory of what Giorgio actually smells like (which is, actually, not Turin's fault). He does make the excellent point that "many people harbor a sneaking fondness for the bad old days" of the excessive eighties, pointing out that outrageous and surprising perfumes like Angel are still succeeding, in these times of post-post-decadence. Here are portions of his review (go read it in its entirety if you can, it's an interesting and informed take):
**** Giorgio. Fruity tuberose... The secret of Giorgio was the discovery of an accord that could stand up to a monstrously powerful tuberose while extending it in interesting directions. Two heroically strong aromachemicals were drafted: one being... reminiscent of pineapple, and the second a... base made between... a fresh-almondy-marine material and... the Concord grape smell... The result was a cute, twelve-foot-tall singing canary, at first impossible to ignore, and at length too big to love. But if any composition embodies what makes... classical perfumery great, it is Giorgio.

Okay, first off I'm going to say yet again that it is definitely not fair to give four stars to something that doesn't smell good. I do not give a flying flip whether it "advances the art of perfumery," got me? I only want to wear scents that smell good. Secretions Magnifiques four stars, anyone? Didn't think so. Now, I'll wade through some difficult opening notes to get to something beautiful, or at least to something interesting. And granted, people's opinions on What Smells Good tend to, duh, differ. I love tuberose and hate balsamic resins. I think vetiver is boring. I like rose and aldehydes. You may think I'm nuts. But for a reviewer that keeps dissing tuberose he calls "synthetic," it was downright immoral of LT to praise this *&#^%^@(*@ mess.

Disclaimer: I went to high school in the 80's, all right? And while I was wearing polite applications of Chloe from my dabber bottle, big spray bottles of Giorgio were all the rage. Black rubber bracelets, banana hairclips, leggings and big tunics, Swatches and enormous abstract-art earrings in pink and aqua... and Giorgio. Which I kind of liked then - I had a friend who seemed to have all the disposable income a girl could want, and she wore it in discreet quantities. At the time I thought she smelled fine.

There comes a time in your sober years when you appreciate your parents' chintzy refusal to buy your teenage self trendy stuff. I never had a yellow-and-aqua paint-splatter swimsuit to wear to the pool. I never had a pair of Candies sandals, or even those fat-soled flipflops everybody wore. And sure, I suffered when the cheerleaders went down the hall in a gang, snickering about my not-even-close-to-designer jeans and reeking of Giorgio, but now I feel better about the whole thing. I recently showed my high school yearbook to my children, and they laughed at my hair but admitted that my clothes were "not as weird as what those girls are wearing, eww." Take that, Two Christies! Take that, Charlene and Amanda! Your trendy clothes were weird! Also, your Giorgio smelled baaaad.

I freely admit I couldn't afford it back then anyway. And never mind all the science-chat about anthrancilates and whatnot, descriptions of Big Bird and grape popsicles, what Giorgio smells like to me now is money, humiliation, chlorine, and bad taste.

If I was going to attempt to wear Giorgio, this was the day to do it: The CEO just left on a trip to the Farm Bureau National Convention, Bookworm's gone for the day to an indoor track meet, and the boys are supposedly cleaning up their rooms but they keep sneaking down to the laundry room to visit Sara the ailing calf. Here's a transcript of our conversations about Giorgio:

Me: I'm trying this out. What do you think?
Taz (who never sniffs me if he can help it): Eww. It makes my throat hurt.
Gaze (trying to be diplomatic, but failing): I don't like that one. It smells like... really bad Halloween candy. The hard kind in weird flavors, like you get from the people who don't like kids but they don't want people to think they don't like kids. So they give you stuff, but it's nasty.
Me (secretly pleased): Really?
Gaze: And the pool. It smells like the pool. You know, on really crowded days, when they put too much chlorine in there?
Me: Ha ha ha ha ha!
Taz: Mom, I think Sara's better, she's eating that hay now.
Me: Ha ha ha ha ha!
Taz: Hey, Mom... Mom, why are you laughing?
Gaze: I don't know. She's acting weird. Maybe that perfume is making her sick.
Me: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha... (maniacal giggling)
Taz: Mom, will you stop laughing and make us dinner now? Mom? Mom! Stop laughing. This is important. Please go wash your hands, I don't want my hot dogs to smell like that.

It would probably be pretentious of me to repeat that old saying about the mills of God grinding slowly, so I won't. But I will say that the taste of vindication is sweet.

I have a nasty headache now that I didn't have when I put on this dab of Giorgio edt. Thank the Lord, I can go take a shower now. Maybe now I can cease the maniacal laughter. Sample of Giorgio Beverly ILLS is going out with the trash as soon as possible.

And I'm sorry, I really am. I should have known better. But, see, this is why I love perfume. Two drops of yellow gunk (which have consequently contaminated the air around me for seven hours) suddenly returned me to the horrors of being fifteen. What else could do that so quickly? What else could go straight for the jugular like that? Nothing else taps so elegantly, so directly, so brutally, into the emotional center as perfume.

Top image from fragrantica. Lower image from paper_antiquary on ebay.

Tuberose Series 4: Carnal Flower

2010-01-08T23:03:00.003-05:00

Carnal Flower gets a lot of positive attention from perfume fans, and deservedly so.

Perfume Review: Frederic Malle Carnal Flower.
Date released: 2005
Perfumer: Dominique Ropion
Sample provenance: sample from The Perfumed Court, 2009
Created with M. Malle's aunt, the actress Candice Bergen, as inspiration, Carnal Flower is something of a contradiction in terms. Like Ms. Bergen, whose onscreen persona in the movie Carnal Knowledge is both warmly maternal and icily aloof, Carnal Flower is both cold and warm. Other than that reference, I find the name "Carnal Flower" rather inappropriate - this perfume does not smell in the least like a boudoir to me.

The scent begins with a chilly, almost mentholated note, along with camphor and a tiny spritz of something vaguely juicy. There's enough of the floral quality of the tuberose peeking through here for the opening to smell very like the refrigerated, moist air of a florist case. The menthol-camphor hint picks up on the odd notes of what Tania Sanchez calls “Chinese muscle rub” in tuberose flowers, but here it's lovely. Gradually the tuberose blossoms out, becoming warmer, but it remains almost translucent, with a fresh greenish light shining through it. There's a lot of grassy-green jasmine here that keeps the tuberose from being too buttery and fleshy. I don't smell much of anything else here, but the scent is anything but thin. This accord of sunny tuberose and green jasmine sticks around a long time, but eventually the jasmine fades so that the basenotes begin to come up under the tuberose. The base, though faint, smells like beach-warmed skin at the end of the day. It is neither too sweet nor too warm, and once the base comes up there's very little left of the experience.

Notes for Carnal Flower:
Top: green notes, camphor, citrus
Heart: melon, tuberose, jasmine, orange blossom, ylang
Base: coconut, musk

I do not smell melon, or at least I don't smell what I think of as perfumery melon, a la DelRae Emotionelle or Parfum de Therese, neither of which I like. If there really is melon here, it's more like a crisp, barely-ripe honeydew, all sweet green. And the coconut is merely a hint in Carnal Flower; you will not be thinking of piña coladas.

Lasting power is less potent for this scent than for many other tuberose scents on me. I was getting three hours' worth with hefty dabs, and it took pouring my sample vial into a small spray atomizer to change that experience. If sprayed according to my usual formula, I get four hours, which is a little light for an edp. On the other hand, longevity is often the downfall of all-natural perfumes, and there seems to be a large percentage of natural ingredients in CF. Also, it's a very beautiful four hours.

Carnal Flower is an exercise in green and white, cold and hot: the green is the cool of herbs and leaves and grass and chilly air, and the white is the creamy sweetness of tuberose and jasmine and skin and summer light. The two sides don't play tug-of-war, but rather curl around each other like yin and yang, two integrated halves of a whole.

Sometimes I associate a particular scent with a piece of music – for example, Apres l'Ondee is always Debussy's “La Mer”, while Attrape-Coeur is “Nessun Dorma” – and such is the case with Carnal Flower. What I'm hearing while wearing it is Brahms' beautiful “How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place,” from his German Requiem: a clean white light, a longing sweetness. I may find a more beautiful tuberose, but I may not. At the moment, this is the most lushly ethereal thing I've ever smelled.

The Bottom Line :
Quality    A Smells natural; seems coherent with good flow.
Grab-scale score    9   If not higher – I'm leaving myself a little wiggle room!
Short description    Ethereal green tuberose.
Cost       $$$
Earns compliments: Yes. Even Bookworm, who tends to dislike tuberose, calls this one "pretty."
Scent presence      Slightly less than average (2 spritzes last 4 hours), moderate sillage. Will not get you lynched at the office.
Review Report: Now Smell This, Bois de Jasmin, Perfume-Smellin’ Things (by Marina), Perfume-Smellin’ Things (by Donna), Aromascope.

Top image: Carnal Flower from fragrantica. Middle image: Mexican tuberose by jelens at flickr. Bottom image: Tuberose The Pearl by nipplerings72 at flickr.

Tuberose Series Part 3: Chloe

2010-01-08T22:46:00.006-05:00

Karl Lagerfeld Chloe, vintage
(Please note that the currently-in-production scent called Chloe by Chloe is a completely different scent. Date released: 1975
Perfumer: IFF (Like that's helpful. Sorry, that's all I can find.)
Sample provenance: 1) a sample of vintage edt from friend's bottle, 2) mini bottle parfum via ebay

Here's our first Blast From the Past. Born when disco was hot, Chloe was quite popular for a few decades. There was a flanker, Chloe Narcisse, released in the early 1990’s, that smelled neither like original Chloe nor like narcissus, but was a fresh floral that seemed to me rather like having my back molars drilled. The original Chloe went out of production sometime before 2008, when Chloe Parfums revamped the fragrance in its entirety, from bottle to scent to esthetic. It is no longer a white floral, but a thin, hissy rose that smells as beige as the satin ribbon adorning the (admittedly pretty) bottle. I have yet to try Chloe edp Intense, which is described as a rose oriental - a category I have some fondness for - but it's on my List. As usual, please forgive the lack of diacritical marks.

Luca Turin called the first Chloe a “big natural tuberose.” I had not smelled it for some time until digging up a sample in a swap and finding a little bottle for about $3 on ebay, but it was instantly recognizable.

Some review caveats:
1) We're talking vintage here. Carefully kept or not, all vintage perfume is still vintage. It has, de facto, changed somewhat from the original scent. Some fragrances seem to suffer more from age or light/air exposure than others do; some may remain wearable and some may not. Some may be wearable once the degraded top notes wear off, which can take anywhere from five minutes to an hour or more. This particular scent, in both samples, seems to have survived the ravages of time fairly well. It is close to the color it should be; its top notes are fainter but have not turned unpleasant; it smells very similar to the one in my memory.

2) I wore Chloe for several years, beginning when I was about twelve and continuing through my first year of college. I liked it very much but did not love it; it was a gift. Also, it was perfume, and I wasn't going to turn that down, whether I loved it or not. (It would have been considered wasteful of me to buy something else while my bottle was still good.) Ergo, I have a whole set of memories associated with Chloe. I'll try to keep them out of the review. Also, one of The CEO's old girlfriends used to wear it as well, so she'd pretty much ruined Chloe for me anyway as a personal scent. I'll be passing this bottle on.

Well, Dr. Turin is right about Chloe being a big natural tuberose... and he was sort of wrong, in being a little too succinct in pointing out the confusion engendered by the “same name, different perfume” issue. Original Lagerfeld Chloe does contain a huge slug of tuberose, but I would not refer to it as “a tuberose”. (Sorry for the bait-and-switch there; I did say this would be a “tuberose and tuberose-dominated scents” series.)

I wanted to see how much my nose has developed, so I tested Chloe without looking up the notes. Here's a transcription of my scribblings: “not tube soliflore, I didn't remember it being that anyway... there is a honkin' ton of orange blossom in this... and something lactonic – peach? But it's not saying Mitsouko to me, so not lactonic peach. Some other lactone, it's buttery-creamy... so maybe ylang... Jasmine too. Probably some other florals as well, this is a kitchen-sink floral thingy. Freesia? Lilac? Dunno, but it's a fresh floral note in there with the indoles – maybe some muguet... Base reminds me of Ivoire, you see that with a lot of those 70's florals being neither strictly chypre nor strictly oriental but very rich: sandalwood, moss, musk, vanilla. Could be other stuff in the base too...”

So then I checked with fragrantica to get the list of notes, and I'd give myself a C+ on diagnostics. I missed a bunch of things!

Notes for Chloe:
Top: aldehydes, honeysuckle, orange blossom, ylang, hyacinth, lilac, coconut, bergamot, peach
Heart: jasmine, rose, narcissus, tuberose, carnation, orris root
Base: oakmoss, sandalwood, amber, musk, cedar, benzoin

I give myself credit for the orange blossom, ylang, lilac, and peach, as well as the jasmine and two-thirds of the base. I noticed the lactone but misidentified it (coconut, how did I miss that? Actually I still don't smell it even when resniffing and looking for it, my brain just says, Lactone!). Also, I failed to pinpoint most of the florals. How did I not get narcissus, as much as I love that note? I said vanilla instead of benzoin (which does have a vanilla-ish creaminess), and missed the cedar entirely. I would swear that the aldehydes have been damaged in both samples, so that they're not very perceptible. Then again, someone sensitive to them might be able to pick up the note.

Armed with list of notes, I smelled it again. Again, unless I concentrate very hard, I smell mostly tuberose+orange blossom, with some lactones and one of those rich 70's bases. It is dense and rather perfumey. The florals are well-blended, and so is the base. This is a rich formula, to be sure, and it flows smoothly from one stage to another. Sillage is a lot quieter than you'd think it would be for a composition that probably saw its share of Studio 54, and even softer in the parfum. This fits with my experience wearing it for years – I'd have hated a sillage beast, but Chloe is relatively polite.

You know what Chloe really smells like? Vintage Arpege with more tuberose, and more light coming in through the windows. But it's certainly not light by modern standards: it was getting very, very poor reviews from horrified younger Fragrantica members who tested it because they love the new Chloe. Even among its older fans, Chloe is regarded as being dated and perfumey. That would include me: there's no way I'd wear this now, even if I didn't have a history with it.

The Bottom Line :
Quality            B   Clearly there are natural materials in the vintage, and it's smooth.
Grab-scale score    3
Short description     Tuberose-heavy lactonic floral; very dated.
Cost             $
Earns compliments:   Only from The CEO, and I expect that's because he has pleasant memories associated with it.
Scent presence:        Average (2 healthy dabs last 4-5 hours), mild to moderate sillage.
Review Report:        Member reviews at fragrantica. Member reviews at basenotes. (Sorry, the report is skimpy. Nobody wears this now.)

Top image is Chloe perfume from fragrantica.com. Middle image is Tuberose 2 by cbcastro at flickr. Bottom image is Orange blossom by VillaRhapsody by flickr.

Housecleaning

2010-01-06T22:57:00.000-05:00

After receiving emails from potential commenters that they couldn't get the comment form to work, I changed the format. Please try it and let me know how it works (by email if the comments don't work!). I myself am having trouble with several Google Blogger comments forms, so it may be a Google glitch.

Pitbullfriend and Mittens - if you're still around, you're still eligible to pick a mini bottle from my Orphans box. The updated list is at MUA and fragrantica under mals86, or you can email me to get the list.

Dear Scent Diary, Dec. 30 – Jan. 5

2010-01-06T15:37:00.001-05:00

Wednesday, Dec. 30: Bvlgari Black. Weather hand-chappingly cold. Black is nice. I'd never call this a Holy Grail, it probably wouldn't make my faves list, but it's very nice. I do love that dusty new-rubber smell. I finally got the bright idea of decanting my mini into a 5ml spray bottle, and now I'm not having any trouble with staying power. Duh.

Thursday, Dec. 31, New Year's Eve: Tom Ford Black Orchid Voile de Fleur. Weather icky: 2 inches of snow, followed by drizzly rain. For something I sneer at frequently, for its awkward name, and for its unwillingness to simply be “pretty white flowers,” I sure wear VdF a lot, and stay happy wearing it. (Reviewed Jan. 4.)

Friday, Jan. 1, New Year's Day 2010: Jolie Madame in vintage parfum. I am embarrassed, or maybe not so, to admit that I have three tiny (3ml) bottles of vintage JM parfum, all slightly different with varying amounts of leather and florals, but all distinctively Jolie Madame. The weather is clear but bitterly cold; we're cocooning today and watching bowl games in front of the fire. I have set some goals for myself, and Jolie Madame seemed perfect for that, to remind myself that I am both strong and beautiful. Tested ELPC Tuberose Gardenia in the evening.

Saturday, Jan. 2: For various reasons, my proposed test of Tubereuse Criminelle did not take place. It was extra-bitterly cold today, zero degrees with the wind chill; in the afternoon I put on a drop of Rumba. I like the hot dust note that attempts to convince me I'm not cold. When I was tucking him in, Gaze the Noticer asked what perfume I was wearing. “I like that one,” he said. “It smells warm.”

Sunday, Jan. 3: Bitterly cold, sunny, windy. ELPC Tuberose Gardenia. Pretty and unpretentious; one spritz will do when you plan to be in a gathering of people. This is one of the very, very few Lauders whose base doesn't nauseate me. (Reviewed Jan. 5.)

Monday, Jan. 4: Bitter-as-a-rejected-first-wife-cold. This is the first weekday of the month after New Year's Day, ergo, it's Statement Day. I spend the first weekday of every month printing, folding, and stuffing three hundred statements of account. It's not a fun day. Testing anything with an eye to writing a review is simply not possible. I wore Alahine.

Tuesday, Jan. 5: Cold, but less so than the previous few days. Tested Carnal Flower again. I wish I'd sprung for the spray sample, but it's good. Review pending.

Image is parfums by Gruut at flickr.

Tuberose Series Part 2: Estee Lauder Private Collection Tuberose Gardenia

2010-01-05T17:21:00.002-05:00

This one gets a lot of love, for being warm and cheerful without running people out of the room (Fracas, anyone?), and for being a mainstream release that doesn't suck up to the trendy taste for ditzy fruity-florals.

Perfume Review: Estee Lauder Private Collection Tuberose Gardenia eau de parfum
Date released: 2007
Perfumer: Harry Frémont (Firmenich)
Sample provenance: manufacturer's sample, probably from 2007, from swap

Since the Private Collection disappointment, the Beyond Paradise debacle and the vintage Knowing parfum tragedy, I've been wary of testing Estee Lauder scents. You may have been reading this blog long enough to know that I have difficulty with some note or ingredient common to the base of many Lauder fragrances. I still don't know what it is; I'm not sure it would do me all that much good to pin it down. To sum up, I've found a number of Lauders really lovely for the first two hours, and then gotten sucker-punched by whatever-it-is in the base, so that I'm suddenly and extremely nauseated by this nameless, cloying Wrongness that I can't even describe. It's not sugary, vomitous, overtly chemical, sweaty, or overpoweringly loud, but it turns my stomach over.

So I approached ELPCTG with some trepidation. I sprayed it on a stray scrap of cotton from a sewing project, and when it got to six hours without causing me to carry the scrap out to the trashcan on the porch while cursing, I decided to try it on skin.

Notes for ELPCTG -
Top: Neroli, lilac, rosewood
Heart: Lily, tuberose, orange blossom, jasmine, gardenia
Base: Carnation, bourbon vanilla

Despite the alleged presence of a number of floral notes, PCTG is pretty much true to its name. It opens with creamy, luxuriant gardenia which lasts maybe forty-five minutes to an hour, rolling along with the tuberose, eventually fading to leave only the tuberose and a hint of lily. The white florals are soft and lovely, with a buttery, smooth texture. Heady for the first ten minutes, it does soften rather quickly to a scent polite enough to wear to church, as its sillage stays rather close to the body. I did wear it to church, and my daughter could smell the perfume from right next to me. My son, sitting on her other side, could not smell it. Four hours after my two-spritz application, there was no sillage at all, and I could only smell what was left (mostly tuberose, with a tiny hint of vanilla) by hoovering my inner arm.

A workplace test was less successful. I felt silly wearing it with black twill trousers and a pink sweater. Never mind that my sweater was fuzzy – I felt like Esther Williams, totally out of place at my desk.

There doesn't seem to be much of a base here, and perhaps the simplicity of the base is what makes this fragrance wearable for me. Either the common Lauder base is not part of the formula, or the tuberose is enough to - like love - cover a multitude of sins.

Luca Turin is really smitten with gardenias, and this scent gets high marks in PTG. Here's a portion of his review:
**** Real gardenia... gardenia is a reconstruction, and few fragrances actually achieve the flower smell that I rate as the most irresistible and impossibly pretty on earth. This beautiful creation... is one of them. The tuberose note in PCTG is very quiet, while the rest of the fragrance is an utterly lovely gardenia accord on a refined, radiant white-flowers background...

PCTG is indeed very lovely. It has a devoted following among perfume fans, and it's a well-made, attractive scent. However, it does make me feel as though I should be wearing it with white gloves and, possibly, a pastel strapless gown. It feels like a fifties fragrance to me, very Donna Reed, and I doubt I'd wear it frequently. (And this from someone who's happy wearing true vintage girlish fragrances like Sortilege and Je Reviens!) I seem to be the only tuberose fan who wasn't smitten with this one. I admit that it could be the Curse of Lauder to my nose, although I did give it three good tests with an open mind.

The Bottom Line :
Quality B+
Grab-scale score 5
Short description Gardenia tuberose; pretty but feels dated.
Cost $$
Earns compliments: Yes
Scent presence Average (2 spritzes last 5-6 hours), mild sillage.
Review Report: Aromascope, Now Smell This, Bois de Jasmin, Perfume-Smellin' Things, Beauty Addict, Perfume Shrine.

(See Tuberose Series 1 for any clarification on the Bottom Line criteria.)

Top image is the eau de parfum bottle, from esteelauder.com. The parfum bottle is far more gorgeous, with semi-precious stones. However, I didn't review the parfum.
Lower image is pua tuberose from victorey at flickr.

Tuberose Series Part 1: Tom Ford Black Orchid Voile de Fleur

2010-01-04T16:01:00.002-05:00

First up, a Stealth Tuberose – betcha didn't know it was one! Unless you've worn it, of course, upon which the tuberose is like the face of an old friend, at an event where you never expected to see her.

Tom Ford Black Orchid Voile de Fleur eau de toilette
Date released: 2007
Perfumer: David Apel
Sample provenance: my 1-oz bottle, bought on ebay from individual seller, not perfume distributor
If you smelled the original Black Orchid edp, and you're thinking that Voile de Fleur is simply the edt version, you're mistaken. The listed notes for each only overlap a little, and the proportions are different, so that each fragrance has a different focus. BO is, well, weird – a plum-cucumber-dirt-cocoa thing, with a touch of Dior Poison and another of Youth Dew. It's intriguing but not wearable, in my opinion. A check of the reviews on basenotes.net and fragrantica.com reveals that there are very few people that liked both BO and VdF; most commenters loved one and not the other. (Some people hated both.)

Voile de Fleur shares the plum and the white flowers, and the woody base, of BO, but it has a whole different take on the matter: it's pretty.

Here's Tania Sanchez' review from PTG:
**** Fracas gardenia. A smiling, bonny tuberose halfway between Fracas and Private Collection Tuberose Gardenia, fresh and lovely with a sleepy languor, simply beautiful in all its parts.

I think she's right on the number of stars – and right on its being primarily tuberose, a lovely natural one blended with ylang and lily – but a little optimistic on the description of the feel. I never get “sleepy languor.” I get “edgy white florals.” In fact, at times I feel a little worried that VdF is going to whip off her stiletto pump and nail me in the eye. For what? Just because.

(Digression: Ever see "Single White Female", with Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh as the crazy copycat roomie? Scared me for weeks. Admittedly I have low tolerance for Scary Movies, but I like to think that's because I have sufficient imagination to feel the effects keenly. Or I could just be a chicken, there's that possibility.)

Here are the notes for VdF:
Black truffle, ylang-ylang, bergamot, blackcurrant, honeysuckle, gardenia, lily, plum, black pepper, lotuswood, succulent fruit, hot milk, cinnamon, vanilla tears, patchouli, sandalwood, balsam.

No mention of tuberose, did you notice? And how kind of Mr. Ford to specify that the fruit note is “succulent.” The milk's hot, by the way... Oh, well, I suppose that the tuberose + truffle could be close to gardenia, so I'll buy that one. And the blackcurrant and plum warranted mentioning on their own, so I'll stop whining about Tom Ford's I'm Way Cooler Than Thou-ness now. (Bonus: this one's in wide distribution, and therefore very affordable. I'm regularly seeing 1oz bottles on eBay for about $20, and 1.7oz bottles at online discounters for $50.)

On my skin, though, VdF is mainly this: plum, white florals, cream, wood, and a mysterious dark thread (leather? balsam?) that winds its way through the scent like vaguely threatening kudzu tendrils. Some days I get more Dark Thread; some days I get more creamy floral pudding; other days it's all plum followed by white flowers and no wood at all. I never know which face will present itself. I'm not the only one to get darkness out of it, either – see the reviews at PST and Aromascope in the Review Report.

Voile de Fleur has turned out to be a sleeper hit for me. It doesn't make me swoon or eat my head; I can wear it to work, feel beautiful, and still get my tasks done. There's enough interesting stuff going on in it besides the tuberose (plum and wood), that I don't wind up feeling like a 50's pinup girl with a tropical flower in my hair while trying to calculate the early-pay discount for the truck-repair shop down the street. Perfectly suitable for work. If I apply a little more heavily after dinner, The CEO enjoys snurfling my neck, and that's pleasurable too.

The Bottom Line (see below for explanations of my eclectic judging criteria):

Quality A-
Grab-scale score 8
Short description Plum tuberose; interesting but doesn't distract.
Cost $ * Note: this one is out of production, apparently, and unavailable at retail, although you can buy it on ebay and online discounters)
Earns Compliments? Yes
Scent presence Persistent (2 spritzes last 10-12 hours), mild to moderate sillage.
Review Report: Perfume-Smellin' Things, Now Smell This, Aromascope, Blogdorf Goodman (brief)

(The Bottom Line criteria:
“Quality” refers to how well-made I think the fragrance is. Does it smell natural? (I freely admit that I don't have any background in chemistry, and at times I may be totally and completely wrong.) Does it flow from one stage to another seamlessly? Are all the stages pleasant, or just the top? Do the notes have synergy and smell good together? Scored on an A-F scale.
“Grab-scale score” simply means, Does the fragrance “grab” me – please me? I'm the only person reviewing, so mine's the only opinion that matters with this score. I don't care if Luca Turin or Patty at Perfume Posse loves it, this one's all about me, me, me. Also, frequently I'll notice that some really well-made perfume just does nothing for me emotionally, and I don't want to waste my time with stuff I don't like.
“Short description” – self-explanatory. Lifted from PTG.
“Cost” is also lifted from PTG, and in fact, I'm using the Turin-Sanchez model for the “standard US retail price for the smallest full-size bottle of the lowest concentration in standard distribution.” If it's NOT available at retail price, I'll let you know where it can be found, and for how much. I'll be honest, sometimes it'll be ebay, because I like vintage.
$ 1 - 50
$$ 51-100
$$$ 101-200
$$$$ over 201 (yeah, right, like I'm gonna review one that expensive!)
“Earns compliments?” - another self-explanatory criterion. Am I the only one who likes it?
“Scent presence” - how long does it last with my standard two spritzes (one wrist, one base of neck)? How far does it radiate? Do I smell it a lot, or do I have to snort my skin? Can other people smell me beyond my standard 3-foot radius?
“Review Report” - links to other blog reviews I found worth reading.)

The Tuberose Series Opener

2010-01-03T16:59:00.022-05:00

I'll be exploring tuberose soliflores and tuberose-dominated fragrances over the month of January. The first review should be posted on Monday, so I thought I'd start out with an overview of the scent note today. I'd like to point you to Victoria's beautifully-written and thorough article on tuberose at Bois de Jasmin here.

From Wikipedia: The scientific name of tuberose is Polianthes tuberosa, polianthes meaning gray flower and tuberosa referring to the bulbous, swollen nature of the root system. The flower is pollinated at night by moths, which explains its pale color and sweet fragrance at night. The plant seems to have originated in Mexico, where the Aztecs called it "bone flower." Eventually it made its way to other parts of the world, becoming integral to culture and mythology in several places, including India, where it is known as Rajnigandha, "night fragrance," and traditionally used in wedding garlands. In Singapore and Indonesia it's also known as "fragrant night flower." Tuberose is "Mary's flower" in Iran, and the oil used as perfume. It's also frequently used in leis in Hawaii, and popular in Mexico and parts of South America.

I just came across this photo of a groom in India, and it charmed me. I can imagine being this man's bride, and being overwhelmed by the fragrance of his garland. Just look at the thing, will you? It's almost as big around as his upper arm. And composed almost entirely of tuberose blooms. Sigh. Swoon. I did a little bit of research on what they make wedding garlands out of in India, and didn't come up with any definitive answers, although I did find a few other pictures that seemed to indicate that tuberose blooms make up the bulk of the lei-type garlands. And "bulk" is right - apparently, these garlands, which are exchanged by bride and groom as part of the wedding ceremony, are quite heavy. I'm certain that the fragrance is nearly as heavy as the garlands.

If you're like me, the idea of wearing a tuberose garland is making your toes curl in pleasure. If you're not like me, you're contemplating a fast getaway already, anticipating having your nasal passages violated by that most heady flower, the Diva Tuberose.

I love it. I do understand that many people find it too strong and headache-inducing, and I am careful to never wear a tuberose scent in an enclosed space. No, I'll generally be testing tuberose scents in the comfort of my own home... keeping them all to myself!

First post tomorrow. I can't wait.

Coming Up: Tuberose Series

2010-01-02T18:04:00.004-05:00

Tuberose scent reviews are coming soon!

Look for reviews of the following, as well as some surprise reviews, sprinkled throughout the month of January:

DSH Perfumes Tubereuse

Estee Lauder Private Collection Tuberose Gardenia

Frederic Malle Carnal Flower

Serge Lutens Tubereuse Criminelle

Robert Piguet Fracas

There will be at least one Blast from the Past review, if not two. (I also beg your indulgence for the lack of diacritical marks on the French words. Sorry - it's a pain with Blogger, and also I'd rather spend time just smelling than making sure every e is accented correctly.)

Tuberose is definitely a love-if-or-hate-it note. What about you? Do you wish you could bathe in it, or does it leave you begging for air? I suppose it's possible that there's someone who doesn't have strong feelings about it one way or the other, but those people seem rare. If you disagree, let me know. If you think I'm crazy for spending all my time with tuberose, let me know that too. (If you're excited about the upcoming, hooray! So am I.)

Image is Tuberose Field by Nicola Busana at flickr. I'd love to go for a walk there...

Commitments for 2010

2010-01-01T11:38:00.001-05:00

I've committed to embracing a healthier lifestyle (exercise? Who, me?) this year.

I've committed to finishing my novel and editing it by the end of 2010.

I've committed to an Act of Kindness (random or planned) each week this year.

I've committed to being Myself, and to appreciating those around me.

Enough insufferable smugness - the purpose of this post is really to remind myself of what I've promised to do. I'll be revisiting the matter throughout the year. (And there's another commitment. I'd better stop now, these things are multiplying like drunken bunnies.)

Here's to being a "new bloom, spreading fragrance around."

Perfumes Beloved on the Boards that I Just Don't Get, or, Huh?

2009-12-30T17:53:00.003-05:00

I've tried. Believe me, I've tried - mostly because people love these, and they're willing to say how much they love these, and why. Anything a fellow perfumista loves has got to be worthy of at least some attention - and I will admit that I generally did not find these scents boring. All of them have some personality, which is probably why they're not mainstream mall fodder. But like anything unusual, opinions are going to differ. These were the scents I tried, hoping for the nirvana that many people experience with them, but found utter FAILURE:

1) Mitsouko. La Grande Dame herself, beloved of many (most?) serious perfumistas, who mourn the latest reformulation and who haunt eBay like Dementors, looking for vintage parfum. I've tried edt. Vintage edt. I've tried edp from two different bottles. Thirteen tests. I've dabbed, I've sprayed. Now, I haven't tried the parfum, but that's because it's impossible to find. Also because I don't think it would do any good: Mitsy hates me. Sure, it's tailored and melancholy and autumnal; sure, it would make great armor (if it didn't pinch so much). But here's the thing: I don't think it smells good. Maybe it's that lactonic peach, which I haven't really liked in anything that contains it, or maybe it's the oakmoss, which I tend to find the epitome of standoffish. Aldehydes I don't mind, but Oakmoss = Unfriendly, in my lexicon. The only part of Mitsouko that I like is that warm amberish bit in the drydown, the labdanum, and that's just because it's labdanum and it smells good on its own.

2) POTL Luctor et Emergo. Salty cherry. Play-doh. The smell of preschoolers with sticky fingers. Gah. How do people get “comfort scent” out of this? It just smells like dirty work to me. (I suspect that the concept of “comfort scent” must be highly personal. My own comfort scents include Serge Lutens' La Myrrhe, which smells cold and disjointed to most people, Annick Goutal Petite Cherie, which apparently smells like wet dog and powdery rose to some noses, and the J-P Guerlain version of Shalimar Light, the blue version that is widely regarded to be inferior to the Mathilde Laurent original version.)

3) Insolence edp. Holy Screaming Meemies, Batman! I don't get “swirling bits of L'Heure Bleue,” I get a gang of shrieking parrots the size of Big Bird. Kill.Me.Now. If I'm ever kidnapped and tortured, Insolence would do the job.

4) Joy. Seriously, I don't GET it. It's pretty for five minutes, particularly in the edt, with all those fresh green notes. Then it's well-worn underdrawers, Ho panties, and slut bloomers. I don't smell jasmine and rose, as I do in Chanel No. 5 parfum. No, I have to get postcoital ladyparts. In case I have to explain here, that is not what I wish to smell like. In public. I should make it clear that I have tried edt, vintage edt, edp, and vintage parfum; sadly, all are far too X rated for me to wear. Jasmine does this to me from time to time.

5) Chanel Cuir de Russie. “Leather luxury”? “Fancy leather upholstery”? No. NO. What I got out of that was full-on, 3D realistic, cattle working pens. Dust, iodine, dusty fur, raw cowhide (I live on a cattle farm, remember?) followed by the dustiest, powderiest, siltiest dry-mouth iris ever. Made me thirsty, all three times I tried it. I'm DONE with it.

6) Frederic Malle Une Rose. Now look here, I love me some Dark Roses, from C&S Dark Rose to the Montale oud-rose combos to Rose de Nuit, with many others in between. But this is a beautiful, voluptuous, velvety rose gone insane: Lucy Westenra in Dracula (the book, obviously), licking blood from her lips, or Bellatrix Lestrange in the Harry Potter movies, beauty corrupted and twisted, poisoned and savaged, love-lies-bleeding.

7) Chergui. Yet another one I thought I'd adore. Narcissus? Spice? Hay? Tobacco? The notes are right up my alley, and like Une Rose, this one just misses. Turns out I don't want sweetish spices in my dusty-sweet hay, and unlike Une Rose, Chergui bored me. Then it annoyed me, because it could have been perfect.

8) 100% Love. Okay, I get the idea: chocolate, strawberries, and roses, Valentine's Day in a bottle. I'll admit it's very interesting to sniff, and I sprayed it several times just to smell it happen in 3D: choco-berry-rose-chouli, whee! But no way do I want this anywhere near my skin.

9) Chanel No. 22. I like many of the classic Chanels, as well as several of the Les Exclusifs, and aldehydes are rarely a problem for me. In fact, it's not the aldehydes that bother me here. It's the unrelenting sugariness. Two hours into it, my teeth start decaying. You could call No. 22 superior to No. 5 all you want, but I'd still say you were wrong.

10) Bois de Paradis. Nine tests: the citrusy opening is always wrong on me; I nearly tore my hair out trying to figure out if it smells more like mint or like turpentine. (Either way, it's not nice.) Then there's that blueberry. And before I can even smell much in the way of woods, I get this very very sweet, caramelly amber. The effect is of eating blueberry pancakes with maple syrup at a wooden table, close to where someone has recently cleaned the floor with Pine-Sol. If you're thinking, “Hey, that sounds pretty good,” then clearly I don't want out of my perfume what you want out of your perfume.

A couple of these I do wonder if I ever might change my mind about. No. 22, Une Rose, Chergui... those have the feel of scents that were close to love. Maybe it's my head that needs to change. Maybe more exposure would help.

At the same time, there are enough fragrances that I do really, really love, to think that I need not bother to force anything. If any of those three fall into my lap at some point in the future, particularly at no cost to me, I'd probably manage to fall in love with them. The rest? It is a relief to officially give up on them. Whew.

Top image is from failblog.org. (This pic was funnier than the "Baby Head Cemetery" one I had up earlier, and gets across the idea of "close but not quite" better, too.) Middle image is Angry Parrot by Dave Womach at flickr. Lower image is Vampire Girl by *favole* at flickr.

Dear Scent Diary, December 23-29

2009-12-29T20:51:00.002-05:00

Wednesday, Dec. 23: Chanel Bois des Iles, Les Exclusifs edt decant. Family party (well, minus my brother and his wife and the New Universe) at my parents' house. Dinner was ham and turkey with all the usual side dishes; it was delicious. Nobody cooks classic food better than my mom. It turned out to be Chanel Day, with Mom in her new (vintage via eBay) No. 5 parfum, my sister in her Coco Mlle., and me in BdI. Sadly, I was the only person who thought I smelled great, but I did smell great.

Thursday, Dec. 24: Guerlain L'Heure Bleue parfum. I like L'HB in parfum, though definitely not in edt, where it resembles the medicine cabinet of some evil apothecary. All the same, I continue to wonder why Perfumes: The Guide includes it in the Top Ten list. It smells good, and it reminds me of... of... of precisely nothing. It does not clutch at the heartstrings. It never brings vivid pictures to my mind. I mean, honestly, I don't even like Mitsouko, and even I think it's a better perfume than L'Heure Bleue. Wearing it, I smell sort of like almond pastries, but not really. Why do I own it? It Was Ridiculously Cheap - a slightly-used bottle, missing its front label and being sold by a rejected wife facing divorce, whose husband had given it to her. (I did get a sample of the real deal from TPC, just to check. It's legit.) Why did I put this on again? Oh yeah - Christmas, almond bear claws... I think I actually like this better in the summer: more anise, less pastry.

Friday, Dec. 25, Christmas Day: my new, lovely bottle of Teo Cabanel Alahine, which I reviewed a few weeks ago as I was falling in love with my sample. The parfum is beautiful, but extremely spendy, and I actually prefer the sparkle of the edp (lucky me!). I kid you not, this is what joy smells like.

Saturday, Dec. 26: Morning test scent was Frederic Malle Carnal Flower, a sample I've been saving up for some time. It was still cold today but not frigid; the snow that's been clogging our streets for a week did melt somewhat. The crystal-clear air made me think of the air inside a refrigerator, and that made me think of a description of Carnal Flower I read somewhere (Donna's, at Perfume-Smellin' Things? I think so), so I dabbed some on. Review of this one coming soon, probably next week or the week after. Baked a pumpkin pie, thirty yeast rolls, and that sweet potato souffle' casserole that went over so well at Thanksgiving. Also made a bunch of country green beans (actually that should be, "I cooked up a mess o' country green beans") and a tossed salad - twelve people for dinner at my in-laws' house. In the afternoon, I put on some more Alahine. Someday I may get to the point where I don't feel unreasonably, outrageously, happy when I wear Alahine. But I devoutly hope not.

Sunday, Dec. 27: Took the extremely crunchy cedar tree down this morning, as it was becoming quite the fire hazard. We typically cut a cedar around the 15th of December, and then take it down New Year's Day, but I could tell this one wasn't going to make it another day. We probably swept up a couple of gallons' worth of dead needles - still green, but totally dead. Eeek. It's a good thing we weren't all charred to cinders in our beds. In any case, I wanted something very floral, so tried a new layering combo with some samples: DSH Perfumes' La Fleuriste (her version of JAR Golconda - very florist-case carnation) and Parfum d'Empire 3 Fleurs (rose, tuberose, and jasmine). It's pretty. It's not sending me into ecstasy, but it's pretty. After that wore off, I was still feelin' some tuberose, so I grabbed a quick spritz of Bath & Body Works Velvet Tuberose. Yeah, you can be snobby and turn it down, but I like it. It's no Fracas, it's no Carnal Flower, it's no DSH Tubereuse, but it's a nice (cheap) warm tuberose with a woody drydown.

Monday, Dec. 28: Back to work. Very cold, sunny but windy. Tested sample of SSS Winter Woods. This feels like somebody took a chunk out of Tabac Aurea and bottled it... pleasant but boring, I say. Read March's partial review of her Lancome La Collection set, and now I'm lemming Climat like you wouldn't believe. Oh, heck, I have given up on liking this Winter Woods thing... I'm going to go spritz some vintage Emeraude pdt on top. That's more like it.

Tuesday, Dec. 29: The dishwasher has chosen this week to start not cleaning dishes, and with five people in the house all day (three children home from school, The CEO home from Virginia Tech until the second week of Jan.), we're piling up a lot of dishes. Repair guy scheduled for January 14; will I make it to then? Tested SSS Femme Jolie this morning, which I've heard described as a version of Feminite du Bois, and... no. Just no. Remember my shaving cream rant? 'Nuff said. SOTE: Bulgari Black. I don't wear this often enough, but it is some Seriously Good Stuff.

Image is L'air du temps RICCI RICCI CHANEL Delice de Cartier FACTICE by parfumgott at flickr.

In Which I Revisit the Loud Perfume Issue

2009-12-28T16:39:00.001-05:00

This has got to be the single weirdest perfume neurosis I have: if it's got monstah sillage, I'm going to hate it. Period.

Every so often, I'll run across comments from other perfume aficionados saying that they love scents that leave a trail, or that their very favorite perfumes enter the room before they do, or that they simply adore being surrounded by a cloud of good-smelling stuff. Someone on fragrantica just posted this query last week: "I must confess I adore tail-y fragrances. I love to leave a lingering hint of my presence in the room or when I walk by. Which perfumes in your opinion have the best sillage? Merci!"

That's when I start feeling like an alien, because I have the opposite perspective. (Interestingly, I just came across a post by Abigail at I Smell Therefore I Am, visiting this same issue, where she talks about not understanding perfumistas who don't like sillage. Maybe we notice the view that's not our own first. Maybe I'm not as alone as I thought.)

It's not that I adore the quiet, "please ignore me i'm not wearing perfume" e.e. cummings-type scents. I don't. (My sister, who typically wears gentle applications of Coco Mlle.* and smells lovely in it, was gifted with Alfred Sung Shi for Christmas. She encouraged me to smell it and asked what I thought. Aquatic Calone-y synthetic mess was what I thought, but what I said was, "It smells like water to me." She smiled with triumph, saying, "Yes, exactly! It's so nice and light. And look, the bottle looks like a drop of water." I was wearing two three-hours-old spritzes of Bois des Iles, the Les Exclusifs version, which smells a bit thin to me compared to the old stuff, and which at that stage was little more than a faint spicy woodiness; she found it "heavy." Good grief, woman, I was thinking, it's twenty degrees Fahrenheit outside. Why would you want "light"?)

*Side note re Coco Mad: I'm not fond of it in a bottle; I don't like it on my skin; it's fairly ubiquitous; even if it weren't my sister's favorite, I wouldn't wear it if a bottle fell from the sky. But she smells great in it; it's very floral on her with none of the gender-bending harshness it usually offers. Actually, on her it smells like a day-old application of one of the vintage classic tailored florals: Eau de Arpege, maybe, or an old version of Jolie Madame: sternly beautiful.

And I do have wonderful experiences in "loud" tuberose scents -- that's probably the one note I really want to luxuriate in -- like Balenciaga Michelle, but I like to wear them when I'm going to be alone all day. A light application of Giorgio Beverly Hills, I find, is really pretty. Tatiana parfum is beautiful. Fracas does not eat my head if I dab it. Carnal Flower is ethereal, not carnal, and I might love it best of all the tuberose scents I've tried.

I think I'll just have to admit I'm a freak. All the classic big-sillage perfumes, to be honest, sort of terrify me. Opium-Cinnabar-Obsession, known to me as the Axis of Evil, head the list. YSL Paris I can take, but only if it's applied lightly. Youth Dew? KILL ME NOW. Insolence edp almost did kill me (see below). Amarige, LouLou, Paloma Picasso, Narciso Rodriguez for her, Samsara, Angel, Alien...

I absolutely hate walking around trailing fumes like some noxious walking toxic waste dump. Hate it hate it - it's as if I've got toilet paper stuck to my shoe: embarrassing and socially inept. Worse, for me big sillage is like those I'm-naked-in-public dreams -- way too personal for words. People across the room do not need to know what sort of mood I'm in.

I like to be smellable within a three-foot radius, as a wisp of "Mmm, something smells good," if I move. I like for my husband to tuck his nose into my neck in order to smell me. I like to be, well, polite, having had way too movies/concerts/journeys ruined by someone else's perfume mugging me via my nostrils. Probably, too, my years 'n years of choral singing has inhibited me with regard to putting on large doses of scent.

Perfumes: The Guide called Insolence edp "monumentally skillful" and reminiscent of L'Heure Bleue, which I like very much, so I had to try it. Can I just say, MISTAKE? I spritzed one measly little spritz, my usual practice when sampling, and immediately wanted to cut my hand off at the wrist. Immediately. It was Loud. It was Extremely Loud. I kept walking about the house turning lights and electronics off, just to get some peace. I mean, I actually experienced it as being auditory hell. I put earplugs in. I suffered for about half an hour before deciding to be kind to myself by getting out the unscented deodorant and the Tide. In the meantime, more and more analogies came to mind:

When I was in college, I had a friend who shared an apartment with four other guys. Cisco the Architecture Student was a workaholic who frequently slept at the A-School while working on a project. Unfortunately, his door would be locked when his alarm clock went off at six a.m. -- loud and nonstop. BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP, into infinity, or until Cisco came home at four p.m. and turned it off. You could not be in the apartment and not hear that cursed alarm. Insolence!
I have a nightmare of being lost in a huge parking lot, unable to find my own car. Then suddenly, every single car alarm in the entire parking lot begins to shriek, over and over and over. Insolence!
If you ever read one of those companion books to the Harry Potter series -- Bookworm is a fan -- called Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, purportedly one of Harry's textbooks, you will come across the description of a magical tropical bird called a Fwooper, which has brightly colored feathers and which is not recommended as a pet, as its incessant singing causes insanity. Insolence!

On the other hand, one of the loveliest scented experiences I've ever had was when I put on two healthy dabs of what I thought was No. 5 cologne. It was actually vintage parfum, with much of its aldehydic oomph muted, probably by age (which is what fooled me into thinking it must be cologne) -- and when the florals came out to play, I felt as if I were trailing a gorgeously-scented cloud.

And for that vintage Magie Noire edt, one drop is plenty. Two drops is Gloriously Too Much, and I'd never wear that in company. Magie Noire is best outside in chilly fall weather, anyway, in my opinion.

31 Rue Cambon can put out some lovely, refined sillage; the one time anyone ever complimented my perfume at work I was wearing it. It might have been because usually people can't smell me. (The compliment? "That's nice perfume. Sort of flowery, isn't it?")

So, okay, I like some sillage. But I think my optimum sillage level is probably lower than that of many perfume fans. Please weigh in with your opinion: am I totally off my nut? Just a little too sensitive? The soul of sensible?

The image is Incandescent Fumes by Debmalya Mukherjee at flickr.

Handel: Messiah, For unto us a child is born (Sir Colin Davis, Tenebrae, LSO)

2009-12-25T08:05:00.001-05:00

Now that I've sung along to "For unto us" - NOW, it's Christmas.

Blessings of the day to you and yours. I'll be wearing Alahine (big grin)!

Jessye Norman - Gesu Bambino

2009-12-24T14:41:00.001-05:00

This is my mother's favorite Christmas music. I first learned to play it as a teenager, in order to accompany her; later, I sang it myself at candlelight Christmas Eve services.

Here's Jessye's tender, evocative version of the Pietro Yon piece. Enjoy your Christmas Eve!

Dear Scent Diary, December 15-22

2009-12-23T09:02:00.002-05:00

Tuesday, Dec. 15: Parfums de Nicolai Vanille Tonka. I adore this scent – it makes me so happy. Instant good mood. I had nearly forgotten about it, actually, and then I put on my green sweater, the one that's the color of apple leaves in summer, a little too blue to be spring green. I'd worn VT the last time I wore this sweater, and the turtleneck smelled faintly of it. It made me smile, so I reached for the decant bottle. I was cheerful all day.

Wednesday, Dec. 16: Caron Parfum Sacré. Weather chilly. Every time I wear PS, I think – gosh, why don't I just live in this stuff? It's a cashmere sweater. It's gorgeous. (And cheap, wink wink.)

Thursday, Dec. 17: Tom Ford Black Orchid Voile de Fleur. (I hate typing that out. It's such a stupid name.) Weather chilly; VdF is plum and edgy white flowers – beautiful, but they're wearing Goth eye makeup or something – and then a milky-woody drydown that makes up for keeping me wondering when those white flowers were going to plunge in their stiletto. Wait. That sounds as if I don't really like this stuff; I do. It's just, well, edgy.

Friday, Dec. 18: Dior Dolce Vita in parfum. Weather cold and sort of itchy, pre-snow. It began to snow about 3pm and didn't stop all night. The weather guys were saying 18 inches, but we only got about 9 or 10. DV was gorgeous, all fruit liqueur and creamy ylang and woods.

Saturday, Dec. 19: an unplanned perfume-less day. I slept late (snow will do that to you), got up and cleaned house. By the time I had my shower in the afternoon, I didn't feel like wearing any scent.

Sunday, Dec. 20: Ormonde Jayne Ta'if and Caron Parfum Sacré, for comparison testing. Also for pleasure, as I love both. Weather still cold, with snow on the ground, but we had a beautiful fire in the fireplace. No church due to snow; we stayed home and I wrapped presents.

Monday, Dec. 21: Shalimar Lite (Blue Juice), with a dab of vintage Shalimar pdt. I find that this combo approximates the effect of the original Shalimar Eau Legere, except that it lacks the lovely, lovely jasmine of said original SEL. (And I'm not even a jasmine fan!) I'm actually not in the mood for this often – Shalimar can get a little TarNilla Godzilla on me – but it's terrific when there's woodsmoke in the air, as there was that cold morning.

Tuesday, Dec. 22: Mauboussin. Still quite cold, though warmer than any day since last Thursday. I think Mauboussin is upscale fruitcake, with really good dense cream cheese icing, in a bottle. It smells great. I only have a mini, and I keep dithering on whether I need some. I probably don't, with all the similar things I own.

I didn't test anything new this week, which I blame on my general pre-Christmas busy-ness. I'll be getting back to testing samples in January. The scent I did wear this week were good choices for the weather, no kudos to me – cold weather and orientals/florientals just go together. Duh. But I'm really, really looking forward to Friday, when I can OPEN MY ALAHINE!!!

Image is Perfume Bottles by WoOd5tOck at flickr. Somebody sure likes their Intuition...

Dear Scent Diary, December 13-14

2009-12-22T16:09:00.155-05:00

I'm planning on making this a recurring feature, in which I document the fragrances I wore and/or tested during the week, including the circumstances and whether they were right for the occasion or not. To be blunt, my Excel file is getting really bloated, and I'm not keeping track of samples very well at the moment.

Then, too, I figure this ought to be an easy way to oversee which bottles are getting used, and which aren't.

I'll start back a week ago, because I had an epiphany, and didn't blog about it because I didn't think it was worth a whole post. Turns out I changed my mind. Last Sunday and Monday, the 13th and 14th, my community chorus held its winter concerts. They went well, no major screwups. (Hey, you can't count on that. Last concert, two separate soloists went totally off the rails: one skipped a portion of her solo, which you might not have noticed unless you were familiar with it - the accompanist picked up where she was, and there was no big hole; the other got completely lost and there were several measures of either silence or wrong notes. Weird, the stuff that happens to amateur vocalists. Both of those ladies had been just fine in rehearsal.) I was fortunate this year to be picked for a solo, and for those (few) of you who wanted to know how it went - it was fine, and Monday I'd say was even pretty, although I don't think I ever did it justice. I was afraid of screwing it up and never really relaxed, which is sort of a metaphor for life, right? You can overthink things. Anyway, I think Mozart's music is like whipped cream: perfect to start with, sheer heaven if you do it right, but even bad whipped cream is better than no whipped cream.

Here is the lovely voice of Lucia Popp with the Ambrosian Singers Philharmonic Orchestra, performing Laudate Dominum. Please click on it to enjoy it - c'mon, it's Mozart. It's beautiful. You should never turn down beauty, unless you're in a hurry because somebody is bleeding. (Oh, and I could only dream of sounding like Lucia Popp. Sigh.)

My epiphany: I've been singing with choral groups since I was five. (My mother made me. That's definitely a story for another post.) One of the cardinal rules for choral singing, along with Always Have a Pencil and Never Chew Gum During Rehearsal, is Please Don't Wear Perfume to the Concert. Last week, I Broke The Rule. (Gasp!) There are people who break rules all the time - a few months ago, The CEO decided to turn left at a red light, because, as he said, "We're late for church, and nobody's coming toward us for half a mile, you can see that far," - but I'm not one of them. Breaking rules for no good reason gives me hives. (I gave The CEO down the road for that one, especially since the kids were in the car - let's all chastise him together now: bad, bad CEO. Bad Example.)

But I was really stressed. I've had this cold for seven weeks now, off and on, and while it's not really hindering my daily life - it's winter, nobody's freaking out over my tissue use - I haven't been what I'd call In Good Voice since about September. And I was dreading the possibility of screwing up Mozart, which is a crime against humanity, or at least a crime against the ears of humanity. So, I confess, I broke the rule, and snuck a spritz of Mariella Burani. Just one, in the cleavage, so I could lower my chin and catch a tiny breeze of it if I needed it. MB is a comfort scent for me - it's vaguely reminiscent of Chanel No. 5, which is what my mother wore when I was a child, although it's far quieter and less immediately recognizable to the noses of many. The low sillage and the metaphysical hand of Mom on my shoulder made it just right.

You know what? Nobody noticed. And later, it occurred to me that the whole perfume ban probably came about primarily because of those killah sillage monsters of the 80's. Which I wouldn't wear to a concert, so I think I'm safe. And I had a great time singing and smelling Mariella.

Image is Some Perfume Bottles by parfumgott at flickr. I don't know whose collection it is, but I'm envious. Check out the vintage Dior in houndstooth, and those Goutals in the gorgeous butterfly boules. There's also J'Adore and Ungaro Diva, both in pretty bottles, and I recognize at the right front a vintage bottle of Nina Ricci, probably L'Air du Temps.

Perfume Reviews: Ormonde Jayne Ta’if and Caron Parfum Sacré, or Two Peppered Roses

2009-12-20T20:57:00.003-05:00

In my Pepper post of a few days ago, I promised reviews of these two scents. (I also promised a review of Lumiere Noire pour femme, but that one’s going to take me awhile; it’s very complex and I need some more time to process it.) It also occurs to me right now that there’s a pretty famous Peppered Rose I haven’t smelled: The Different Company’s Rose Poivree – notorious for its first version smelling like a sweaty jockstrap. Apparently it’s been reformulated for polite society – but no sample has come my way as of yet. Ta’if and Parfum Sacré are two favorite scents of mine; they share a spiciness and a warm, winey rose. I tend to associate them in my head for that shared spicy rose, but of course during the side-by-side test I confirm for myself that they’re different.

This is good. How else could I justify having both? Actually, I own only a decant of Ta’if, which is by far the more expensive of the two, and which I obtained in a swap with dear Daisy the Enabler. Parfum Sacré I have only worn in eau de parfum, as the extrait is no longer made and is both hard to find and ridiculously expensive. Just yesterday, an eBay auction for a 7.5ml bottle of Parfum Sacré extrait sold for just under $150. Yes, $150, for a quarter-ounce! No matter how gorgeous it is – and it’s reputed to be The Bee’s Knees – I can’t afford that. Good thing that the edp is wonderful. I have heard that it’s been reformulated as well and is thinner than the original. My bottle, which came from an online discounter in Feb. 2008, must be old stock. It smells just like the samples that came from The Posh Peasant and a swap friend who bought her bottle in 1998: wonderful.

Today’s experiment was to wear Ta’if on my left wrist, Parfum Sacré on my right. Here are the notes for each:
Ta’if: Pink Pepper, Saffron, Dates, Rose Oil, Freesia, Orange Flower Absolute, Jasmine, Broom, Amber
Parfum Sacré: Lemon, Pepper, Mace, Cardamom, Orange Blossom, Rose, Jasmine, Rosewood, Vanilla, Myrrh, Civet, Cedarwood

The similarities are apparent – pepper, spicy notes, orange blossom, rose, and jasmine are congruent. At the beginning, each scent is strongly peppery and spicy. (And yes, I know that pink pepper is a dried berry, not a true peppercorn. It smells like “fruity black pepper” to me. I like it. Kwitcher whining.)

Ta’if smells quite peppery to me at the start, and it takes a few moments for the saffron to show up. I like that saffron note, whatever aromachemical it is – saffron seems creamy and smooth to me in perfume, and it’s a texture I enjoy. But very soon the dates come to the fore, and for several hours Ta’if is all about creamy saffron, the sweet dried-fruit character of dates, and that beautiful rose. Bookworm likes Ta’if; it’s probably the sweetness she finds appealing. There in the heart of the fragrance, there’s a fresh floral presence which could be the orange flower but is probably freesia, since freesia has a cool, dewy, florist-case quality that my brain calls “fresh.” This is such a pretty fragrance. I wouldn’t call it girly – but gosh, neither would I term it Edgy, as Luca Turin seems to imply in his review of it in Perfumes: The Guide: ‘Wear it when the desert wind blows, as Raymond Chandler put it, “one of those hot dry Santa Anas that … make your nerves jump and your skin itch…”’ Good grief. Wonder how he got Edgy out of the not-quite-gourmand saffron+dates+rose, which I consider the true character of Ta’if, and which lasts for a good three-four hours on me. As the drydown continues, it gets a little less pleasant; the amber is not my favorite type (labdanum cistus), and there’s nothing else in the base with anything near the rich sweetness of the heart. However, by the time the drydown arrives, the fragrance is nearly gone. There is a dreaminess about Ta’if, a head-in-the-stars sort of innocence about it.

On the other hand (literally!), Parfum Sacré begins with very “kitcheny” notes – it’s primarily lemon pepper, both aromatic and a little dusty. Just as I begin to think, “Well, if there’s lemon pepper, I must be cooking fish tonight,” the nutmeggy mace and the cardamom come in, hand in hand with that beautiful winey rose PS shares with Ta’if, and it’s not kitcheny anymore. I smell a good bit more orange blossom in PS than I do in Ta’if, but PS is still largely a rose fragrance in my mind. Oddly, Bookworm smells only pepper and wood in PS, no rose at all, while I get mostly rose and incense. The wood is there, of course, and I sometimes think of Dolce Vita when I wear Parfum Sacré, but I smell a great deal of myrrh too. There is supposedly vanilla in there, and civet, but I am not conscious of smelling them. The drydown of PS is beautiful; it is rich and mysterious and layered. Parfum Sacré is one of those rare fragrances that I wear for comfort, but which also seems very sensual to me. I think of phrases like "the eternal feminine" in connection with PS. When I wear it, I feel very feminine: both very motherly, and very… well, interested in doing what women do in order to become mothers. It also has that magical quality of melting into the skin, becoming part of me instead of being simply a scent I wear. It was one of the first scents I fell in love with over the past year, and every time I have worn it since, I’ve been glad I bought it.

Summing up in a few words:
Ta'if is a rich, sweet rose, with saffron and dried fruit, idealistic and young at heart. I love it.
Parfum Sacré is a rich, warm rose, with pepper and wood and incense, emphatically womanly. I love it deeply.

Top image: Rose Bouquet Well-Defended by bartholmy at flickr.
Second image is from ormondejayne.com.
Third image is from fragrancenet.com.

Mind Your Language, Part One

2009-12-19T16:40:00.002-05:00

So I've been reading Julie and Julia: A Year of Cooking Dangerously, by Julie Powell, lately, and I have this whole gigantor list of things I want to say about it, but it's difficult to know where to start. Also, I know that I'm going to tick somebody off, because not everything I have to say is positive. (No, I haven't seen the movie yet. Yes, I know I'm about three years behind everybody else in reading this thing, but - hey, I have a life, you know.)

I'm going to come at this from an oblique angle and talk about one of the things that bugs me most about the book: the language. It is, shall we say, Not Suitable For Public Consumption. Bookworm asked if she could read it, and I had to say no. (She's fourteen, and easily shocked. I'll never forget the time I picked up The Godfather from my high school library, not knowing what my 16-year-old self was in for, and about six pages into the thing got slapped in the face with a raucous sex scene. I nearly swallowed my tongue. Not that Julie and Julia is that bad, but it does have some adult themes.)

And last night, "Four Weddings and a Funeral" was on TCM, so after the kids went to bed, The CEO and I watched the whole movie - straight through, no cuts, no commercial breaks, and definitely no editing-for-TV. If you've ever seen the thing, you'll know that for the first five minutes or so, nobody says anything other than one swear word, over and over. Charles (Hugh Grant) wakes up late for his friend's wedding, says, "BLEEP!" Shows his housemate Scarlett what time it is, and she says, "BLEEP!" And of course they've got that "the hurrieder I go, the behinder I get" thing going on, where hurrying just makes everything more difficult, so every few minutes something else goes wrong. Formal clothes are a problem, BLEEP. The car won't start, BLEEP. They take the wrong turn, BLEEP. They get to the church just as the bride's car drives up, BLEEP. Charles, the best man, has forgotten the rings, BLEEP.

As much as it embarrasses me to admit this, I find it hysterically funny.

If you've ever seen it on network TV, where it's been edited for language (and some adult content), the word dubbed in for the F-bomb used in the original is "bugger." Yep. Bugger. A lot of Americans have no idea what that word is, other than it's something British people swear with and it's not considered offensive here. In case you don't know what it means, I'll post a link and you can go check it out here. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Is that not worse than the F-word? I thought so. I still think it's bizarre that somehow "bugger" was an acceptable substitute to the FCC.

Back to Julie and Julia: it too is hysterically funny in parts. I read a bit or two to the kids over the breakfast table, editing on the fly. They laughed. Really hard. Which brings me to my point: if you do a Find and Replace with all the swear words in the book, and it's still funny, why did it need the swear words?

If you do the same thing with "Four Weddings," it's not funny.  Your exercise is to imagine Charles' and Scarlett's dreadful morning with a different word expressing frustration. I like "blast," for its plosive and sibilant consonants and quasi-British sound. Or Winnie-the-Pooh's favorite, "bother." Try "dang," "darn," or "shoot." Here goes:
              Charles, waking, sees his alarm clock. "BLAST!"
              Scarlett is woken by Charles, and sees how late it is. "BLAST!"
              Charles' suspenders won't cooperate. "BLAST!"
See? Not funny. Okay, maybe the FCC was right. "Bugger" is funny, and maybe nobody but me cares what it really means.

Julie Powell, at one point in the book, remarks that during her year of blogging about cooking her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, some of her blog readers complained about the language she used. Her comment: "...Somebody I don't know from Adam takes the trouble to lament the fact that I use the word f**king so much; people who object to my choice of language always use a lot of asterisks." Ms. Powell certainly doesn't use the asterisks. Oh, no. And she doesn't limit herself to the use of "f**king," either. If you're interested, you can go and read her blog. She began posting Aug. 25, 2002, and by the 29th, there's the first of the many swear words.

I will use the asterisks. Call me hypocritical and prissy, call me a right-wingnut, I don't give a -- ahem, I mean, I don't care. (Little blogger sarcasm there, please forgive me for that.) My take on this is that if she feels free to display these offensive, or potentially offensive, words buck naked on her stage, I can certainly feel free to give them some darn underwear on mine. Plain white cotton, because it might be boring, but it won't scare your grandmother.

So why is it that the swear word in "Four Weddings..." makes the difference between Funny and Not Funny, but Julie and Julia is Funny, swear words or no? My opinion is that spoken swear words seem spontaneous, and written words were chosen consciously.

Okay, okay, I acknowledge that "Four Weddings..." had to have had a written script. Fine. But they were going after real-life verisimilitude. And never mind that for your mouth to shoot off an obscenity, you had at one point have had to learn said obscenity. The book of James, chapter 3, says that the tongue is a fire, and that no one can tame the tongue (but that we should learn to control it!).

It's a far different, and easier, thing to control the words that come from my keyboard. I'm just sayin'. I'll have more to say about Julie and Julia soon.

The image is from a German DVD version of "Four Weddings and a Funeral," from imdb.com.

A Dusting of Pepper

2009-12-15T22:35:00.002-05:00

Pepper is one of those seasonings everybody always has on hand. It's a basic – a staple, if you will, although when I label the pantry shelf where I keep things like flour, sugar, and Life cereal “STAPLES,” The CEO is wont to snicker and ask where I keep the rubber bands and copy paper.

Ha ha. Very funny.

I always have pepper in the house, with a backup supply in the pantry. The reason is my youngest child: Taz, aka The Picky One. Although each one of my children has grown up with the very same parents, the very same parenting style, and the very same on-site sous chef (that would be me, in case you're wondering), I have one child who will eat practically anything*, one child who is deeply suspicious of new things but can be convinced to try many of them**, and one child who resists any food that isn't his favorite with the will and cunning and ferocity of the Mossad, less the garroting skill. Which, incidentally, he may decide to pick up on his own, so I'm limiting his TV time to be on the safe side.

At one point, I realized Taz, then a preschooler, was subsisting on a menu that included only the following: Cheerios. American cheese. Goldfish crackers. Chicken breast nuggets. Milk. Red food (Jell-O, ketchup, and red apples, which must nevertheless be peeled and thinly sliced before he ate them).

At later stages, he added foods like plain meats and tilapia baked with parmesan cheese, broccoli, green beans, peas, fries, mandarin oranges, Mini-Wheats, gummy fruit snacks, and quesadillas. Of course, nearly all these foods – bar the fruit and cereal – absolutely must be covered with ketchup.

Or freshly ground black pepper. He'll settle for the pre-ground cheapie kind if he must, but he really likes the kind that has to be mauled before it can be eaten. (Am I reading too much into that, or is his testosterone level just that high?) Taz adores a buttered roll liberally sprinkled with black pepper – sprinkled, I mean, to the degree that the surface looks a little bit like our gravel road.

I myself love pepper -- pepper on salad, on beef, on salmon... One of the single most delicious things I have ever eaten, ever, was fresh ripe strawberries tossed with a little sugar and a profligate dusting of cracked black pepper. Sounds weird, I know, but it's synergy; the three of them together are amazing. Pepper smells hot and alive, almost like it might be vibrating inside your nasal cavities. Another favorite pepper recipe involves rubbing a mixture of salt, pepper, cinnamon, ginger, and cumin onto a pork tenderloin before roasting. Easy-delicious. Even Taz eats it!

I love pepper in my perfume, too. (Pink pepper is another item entirely, and that's a subject for a future post.) Two of my favorite scents involve pepper and rose, and I've mentioned them before: Ormonde Jayne Ta'if and Caron Parfum Sacré. Another gorgeous rose scent, Maison Francis Kurkdjian's Lumiere Noire pour femme, has pepper listed in its notes. Other peppery scents I like include Annick Goutal's odd little scent Mandragore, perfume blog fave and sadly-discontinued Fendi Theorema, Tom Ford Black Orchid Voile de Fleur, and DSH Perfumes' absolutely-gorgeous, wish-I-could-afford-it Oeillets Rouges. Then there's Frederick Malle Noir Épices, which I haven't smelled yet but am hoping to find a sample of in my mailbox sometime in the next month or two. And the ridiculously-expensive Caron Poivre, which I think I'd looooove but haven't come across yet.

I'm thinking of doing a side-by-side-by-side comparison with the three peppery rose scents soon: Ta'if, Parfum Sacré, and Lumiere Noire. To be honest, it was only when I went searching through my Excel file looking for any pepper fragrances I might have missed that I realized Lumiere Noire has pepper. That one's all about rose and narcissus doing their naughty tango, or so I remember, and perhaps I'd better wear it again on its own instead. I don't think it takes prisoners; it would probably eat Ta'if and PS for breakfast, and I'd be swoony and weak-kneed but no closer to a good compare-and-contrast description.

Coming soon to a blog near you: full-length reviews of the three peppery rose scents.

Top image is Yellow Pepper Mill by deardaisycottage; bottom one is Peppercorns by bazzinator, both at flickr.

*Bookworm will eat just about anything that's on your standard American menu, particularly vegetables, but doesn't like beets or brussels sprouts (both of which I really enjoy).

** Gaze tends to turn down sauces, and things cooked in them, unless the sauce is tomato-based, or Rachel Ray's lovely Orange-Thyme sauce for pork or chicken. He also does not care for beets or brussels sprouts, and, inexplicably, dislikes mashed potatoes and cheese – I'm thinking of having his DNA tested to make sure he's my kid.

Winners of Drawing, Dec. 2009

2009-12-11T17:00:00.000-05:00

Well, there were four commenters, and I still have a bunchaminis... tell you what: Taz drew names out of his plastic knight's helmet one by one, and you'll each get to pick a mini or decant in the order in which your name showed up in his little paw.

1. Odonata9
2. pitbull friend
3. mittens
4. Patty

Please contact me at malsnano86 at gmail dot com with your email address, so I can offer you the list. And thanks very, very much for commenting! I may not mail these until after New Year's, but I promise they'll be forthcoming.

Perfume Review: Teo Cabanel Alahine, or A Joyous Christmas Memory

2009-12-11T16:46:00.001-05:00

When I was at college, my university chorus group put on a Madrigal Dinner every year. It was a longstanding tradition that our director would prepare us to sing eight or nine madrigals, and the students would be in charge of everything else. And I do mean everything else: Rent the Newcomb Hall Ballroom. Plan the menu with Dining Services and pay their employees to cater the meal. Arrange for the medieval-music club to play instrumental music for recorder, tambour and violin, during the event. Organize the costumes - some owned, some borrowed. Print and place flyers; organize publicity; print and sell tickets; print programs. Write an original play set at Christmas in 15th century England; cast it and memorize lines. Arrange for the fencing club to do demonstrations. Give each member of the chorus a character to inhabit for the event while conversing with guests. Learn and perform a medieval dance. Select certain members to form small groups to roam and serenade dinner guests during the evening. Prepare decorations, including fabric wall hangings, fresh evergreen garlands, and clove-orange pomanders, and place the hangings and garlands in the ballroom to cover up the white Federal-style mouldings on the fourteen-foot-high eggshell-blue walls. There are 50 students and twelve weeks in which to get everything done - Ready, Set, GO!

We called it Mad Dinner, and those four evenings were some of the happiest of my life. (They were also some of the most stressful, especially the year I was Costume Co-chair. I think I still have a bald patch on the back of my skull from that experience.) I loved it - every Mad minute of it. Pure joy, from wandering minstrels to cloved oranges to funny hats to candlelight to beautiful music.

For me, Teo Cabanel's Alahine is Mad Dinner.

Notes for Alahine:

Top: Lavender, bergamot, ylang-ylang

Middle: Jasmine, Bulgarian rose, orange tree, pepper plant

Base: Iris, cistus, patchouli, benzoin, vanilla, sandalwood, musk

I probably wouldn't have gone after Alahine on my own - I like amber, but if you've read my posts about Opium you know how I feel about resiny Orientals (hint: I'd rather slide down razor blades than spend any time cooped up in a room with them). I'd ordered a sample of Oha, a dark spicy rose chypre that I thought I'd adore, and a sample of Alahine arrived with it in that package from The Posh Peasant. Oha I found very beautiful but eclipsed by the stunning L'Arte di Gucci, with which I had already fallen in love; Julia, a soft floral with tangy fruits in the top, is also beautiful in a wistful, innocent way that feels a little naive for me to wear at this stage of my life. I wasn't expecting to love Alahine, and in fact upon my first test of it, its opening notes skated close enough to "Citrus-aromatic-masculine" that I almost wrote it off then and there. But by the end of an hour, I found it heavenly. Upon second wearing, I knew I wanted a bottle.

If I am paying attention to the notes - to what I actually smell - Alahine opens with a zesty burst of lavender and bergamot, which is highly aromatic and therefore difficult for me. I am coming to expect it, and I know all I have to do is wait ten minutes before a lovely, creamy ylang-ylang will appear and soften the aromatics to a level I enjoy. Shortly after that, the curtain rises to reveal a floral heart so well-blended that I can't tease out any note except rose, and then only because I've become familiar with the deep winey rose in Caron Parfum Sacre' and Ormonde Jayne Ta'if. Spices swirl around these abstract flowers, spinning down into the ambery labdanum that is weighty and smooth as a heavy gold-colored satin shawl. The scent hovers over this rich amber for hours afterward, caressing it with vanilla and patchouli and benzoin, and wrapping it up with a resiny thread. I don't actually smell any iris, but there is the effect of something cool there that I think must be due to the iris - it does seem like satin, after all, rather than velvet.

If I don't pay close attention to what my nose tells me, but lift my head and go through my day only registering my impressions, I smell this: pine branches, curried fruit, flowers, mulled cider, cloved oranges, candle wax, vanilla liqueur, and the very faint mustiness from a costume that has been stored in the basement under Old Cabell Hall for several months. I sense candlelight, and laughter, and the faces of friends, voices raised in song, and the excellent feeling of hard work that has paid off handsomely.

When I wear Alahine, I smell joy.

For a few other reviews of Alahine, click on these links:

March at Perfume Posse

Abigail at I Smell Therefore I Am

Brian at I Smell Therefore I Am

First image: Natural Christmas decorating! by LDHumes at flickr. Second image: Medieval Group by tights&costumes at flickr. No, it's not my group, although we dressed similarly - I haven't been able to find any photos of the Real Thing, probably because none of us could carry cameras in our costumes!

Madrigal Dinners produced by the University Singers of the University of Virginia are no more. When Dr. Donald "Coach" Loach retired in 1994, they went by the wayside - seen, I think, as being too much work. I raise a glass of mulled cider in honor of Coach, who was pictured recently in the alumni magazine, still looking his natty self in a pink polo shirt.

(I hereby remind myself to someday post about the Kamikaze Tenors.)

STUFF. Christmas presents. Perfume divestiture. Giveaway drawing.

2009-12-08T17:01:00.001-05:00

Yeah, I know... it's Christmas, that wonderful time of the year when we give each other STUFF, in honor of the greatest gift ever - which was not, I remind you, wrapped up in paper printed with Santa faces and tied with red sparkly ribbons.

I have way too much STUFF. (The CEO tells me this all the time. He's right, but I hate to admit that to him!) Probably all of us have too much STUFF, and what we really need are things that can't be wrapped up in Santa-face paper: Time. Family. Love. Kindness. Grace. Patience. Contentment. Forgiveness. Relief from worry.

How often do I assume that my friends and family members just need another gift card or sweater or jar of homemade raspberry jelly, rather than my love/kindness/forgiveness? Pretty often. It's embarrassing. It's easy to spend money and hope that some of the feeling that inspires me to do so comes through, without making sure the gift recipients know that I love them.

I gave up making handmade presents a long time ago. It was even more stressful than spending money, and difficult to make the right thing for the right person. Cross-stitch makes my hands hurt these days. So does crochet, and besides, once you've made someone a fuzzy scarf, you really can't give them another one. Food gifts are handy, and making them doesn't induce unpleasant finger tingling - but they're not very personal. Once you've made twelve jars of mulling spices, for all your aunts and cousins and the newspaper carrier and your hairdresser, one jar isn't very special, is it?

And if I do nothing, nobody has any fun. Maybe the way to do this is to spend a small amount of money, and spend some of my personal time as well. So I'll go ahead and get my brother that kitchen thingy he wants - and write him a personal note, too. It's a plan, people.

As a side note to all these STUFF comments, I looked over my perfume collection and found things that I've discovered I just don't love. I'd like these scents - they're mostly miniature bottles, with a few decants - to go to good homes. So I just posted them on my notepad at makeupalley.com, and will be listing them on my profile at fragrantica.com as well (I'm mals86 at both sites). There are a few small decants I'd love to swap for, but other than that, I just want these little bottles to go to people who'll enjoy them.

If you're interested in picking out one of the mini bottles for yourself, post a comment. I'll get Taz, my nine-year-old, to draw a name out of his bicycle helmet. Winner gets to choose a prize from my list of Adoptable Minis. Drawing closes on Thursday 12/10 at 12 midnight.

Image is 3 Presents Waiting by jonmatthew at flickr.

Perfume Review: Penhaligon's Amaranthine, or Amaranthigh, or Amaranthingy

2009-12-04T17:06:00.004-05:00

Amaranthine by Penhaligon's London, New for Fall 2009
Amaranthine is a corrupted floral oriental for those private moments when everything is anticipation. It opens with a dramatic flourish of spices and tropical green. This unsettling lick of drama is beautifully ambushed by an unctuous accord of jasmine and ylang-ylang, a heady bloom renowned for its aphrodisiac properties, and clove swathed in spices, tea, musk and the rounded beauty of tonka bean absolute. The perfume is reportedly “reminiscent of the scent of the inside of a woman’s thigh”. *

Head notes - Green Tea, White Freesia, Banana Tree Leaf, Coriander Seed Oil, Cardamom Absolute Heart - Rose, Carnation, Clove Oil, Orange Blossom, Ylang Ylang Oil, Egyptian Jasmine Absolute Base - Musk, Vanilla, Sandalwood, Condensed Milk, Tonka Bean Absolute

You know what? For once, the ad copy is pretty accurate, although perhaps it overstates the "drama" and "aphrodisiac properties." * The hilarious quote about thighs is purportedly from composer Bertrand Duchaufour, from cosmeticsinternational. It alone made me want to smell this thing, and people seem to be associating the scent with the word "thigh" now. Maybe it's just that "thigh" is a funny word, which it is. Say it six times in a row: thigh thigh thigh thigh thigh thigh. Kudos to you if you said it without snickering; I couldn't.

And look at those notes, too - does that sound anything like thighs to you?? The notes say "tropical floral with oriental base" to me, and that's a category I like in general. So here it is the beginning of winter, and I've spritzed Amaranthine four days in a row, to make sure the experience isn't a freak occurrence. I think, honestly, it would be better in warmer weather. It's a bit light when one is wearing sweaters and shivering in a cold rain. But even though it's been less satisfying in early December than, say, Alahine (about which, more coming next week), I say this: Amaranthine is beautiful.

It starts out with fresh, dewy florals only lightly dusted with spices. I get very little tea from it, although other reviewers find it more prominent; I get more general "green" notes. And yes, there's a banana hit to it, probably from the ylang, although it's a green banana thing, not an overripe squishy vibe. I can't identify rose in there, but the carnation is prominent, as well as the orange blossom. The jasmine is grassy and fresh, as opposed to that indolic heavy Joy-type jasmine that makes me think of dirty panties, and it doesn't stand out.

Eventually I get down to the base, which is soft and clings to the skin, and still retains a veil of freesia and orange blossom. I was a bit worried about that "condensed milk" note, but although Amaranthine is a little sweet, it reads as floral sweetness to me rather than gourmand. At this stage, it smells a bit like skin smells if the weather is warm and it's been most of a day since it's been showered: not squeaky-clean, but not smelly-sweaty either. Like, you know, skin, warm and slightly moist.

It may be my nose, but I'm not getting of the weirdness some other reviewers have discovered. Nor do I get the smuttiness that some people have described. Is it just too cold and/or dry? Is my brain twisted? I'm not sure. All I get out of Amaranthine is tropical, relaxed, fresh beauty. I'll be putting my decant away for a few months, at least, and wearing things more appropriate to this chilly weather. When the time is right, I'll know.

On a related subject (THIGHS!), I'm going to talk about body image. I have a daughter in her early teens. She's healthy and fit; she's petite; she's still wearing a few things from the girls' department, particularly dresses, as she finds the juniors' department offerings immodest. (I'm not complaining.)

But she said to me the other day after track practice, "You know, Mom, I have big thighs." I looked at them and raised my eyebrows. "They've got muscles. I mean, you can actually see my thigh muscles. They're runner's thighs." I nodded. "I think that's the reason I have trouble finding jeans that fit." (Yeah, tell me about it.) But I'm not going to apologize to my kid for giving her the thunder thighs genes, because - honestly? - she's got great legs. She complains that her broad shoulders make her shirts fit funny, and her muscly thighs make her jeans tight, and how her jeans are always too big in the waist if they fit her hips.

And she's looking around her high school at all the girls with thin thighs and thinking, How come I don't look like them?, while I'm looking at her and thinking, Hey, that is my basic body shape, just younger and shorter and much, much thinner, and it's beautiful. It's a swimmer's body (okay, a short swimmer's body!), and it's healthy and athletic and beautiful.

And I think I want it back. I've been avoiding exercise for way too long. Time to remedy that.

Ad copy from Penhaligon's. Top image: Amaranthine in the limited edition crystal flacon, from Penhaligon's.
Center image: Shield Bug on Globe Amaranth by innermt at flickr.
Bottom image: 2008 Cross Country by nmhschool at flickr. No, it's not Bookworm, but she runs cross-country and distance track. I'm so proud of her.

Holy Cow, It's December!

2009-12-03T16:40:00.001-05:00

Wow, I can't believe it's the last month of the year. Time does march on... (duh!)

I have so much to do. I'm really glad I completed my National Novel Writing Month project a few days ago (yeah, okay, I'll shut up about it now), but I'm very far behind on the whole Christmas thing. It's December 3: three days before Bookworm marches in the local Christmas parade, ten days before my community chorus concert, twelve days before we'll go get a Christmas tree, and three weeks before the Small People Living In My House will be pounding down the stairs, demanding to open their stockings and eat homemade cinnamon rolls.

I need a lot more time. I haven't bought any gifts; I haven't baked anything; I haven't decorated anything.

Next project: Make Christmas happen, simply. I mean, I need simple and inexpensive and easy ways to make it feel like Christmas around here without doing a lot of the work myself - and I could pick up Better Homes and Gardens or Woman's Day or some other magazine, but that would feel like wasting time. (Blogging's not a waste of time, is it? Please tell me it ain't!) Might have to go check out the emergency holiday missions at FlyLady.org, too.

As I'm formulating the Christmas plan, I think I'll start by cleaning up the joint. (Eek!) Get all the fall stuff put away, help the kids pack up anything they won't need over the winter months, ditch the "I haven't used this in months" items lying around. We'll see how it goes.

As an aside, I smelled the Laura Mercier Minuit Enchante' parfum that people are raving about on my favorite perfume blogs. I don't live anywhere near a Nordstrom's, but managed to hit the one in Richmond a few days ago, in the course of attending a farmers' conference and, incidentally, visiting my brother in order to hold the new baby. (He's precious, of course. I got to snuggle him and kiss his little fuzzy head, but not for long enough.) Anyway, I was expecting a big ol' dusty resiny Opium-like thing, and instead what I got was a gorgeous spice overload. It spends about twenty minutes in the too-sweet zone, but then it's a pileup in the spice aisle, with freshly ground cinnamon tackling clove, and nutmeg jumping on top of vanilla bean. I thought it was terrific. Better, I got some on the inside wrist of my jacket sleeve, so my jacket still smells great too.

On the other hand, my brother, when invited to sniff my wrist, jerked his head back as if he'd been slapped and asked what I'd done to tick off the sales assistant. As if you couldn't guess, he doesn't care for perfume. Minuit Enchante' is a bit linear, and seems more like a Generally Good Smell than a serious perfume. I'd rather have Teo Cabanel Alahine, otherwise known to me as Happiness In a Bottle, Winter Variation. But ME is a nice thing to see in a mainstream release. Bottle's pretty, too, with that heavy magnetic cap.

Well. I'd better get cracking on that cleaning-up thing. I plan to be back tomorrow with a review of Penhaligon's Amaranthine (better known to my swap buddies as Amaranthigh, or Amaranthingy).

Here are links to a few other reviews of Minuit Enchante':
Abigail at I Smell Therefore I Am
March at Perfume Posse
Angela at Now Smell This

Image is Advent Calendar by laurasjoquist at flickr.com.

NaNoWriMo 2009: I DID IT!!!

2009-11-29T21:30:00.001-05:00

Okay, so technically it was more like 29 days and 51,094 words... but who's counting?

Ha ha. Me, obviously. And the nice people at NaNoWriMo, too. In fact, my OpenOffice document swears on a stack of Bibles that my novel is 51,787 words; I don't know what the heck the difference is between the two word count widgets, but BOY, am I glad I wrote that extra scene.

Here's some more statistics for the month of November:

Extra cups of coffee: 23

Loads of laundry done solo by The CEO, graciously picking up slack: 26

School lunches for Gaze and Taz flung into bags at the Very Last Minute Before We'll Be Late, because Mom had a hard time dragging herself out of bed: 15

Pounds of food (turkey breast, ham, sweet potatoes, green beans, cranberry gelatin salad, celery sticks, and pumpkin pie) prepared for Thanksgiving, unfinished novel notwithstanding: 29
Blog entries posted, including this one: 8
Late nights: too many to count
Christmas gifts purchased: zero (Ack, better get crankin'!)

Here's the kicker: I'm not even finished. There's more story... I only got through 68% of the scenes I intended to write. The ones I did write - well, they need careful editing. It might be more accurate to say they need lopping with a chain saw, so there's still a lot of work ahead of me.

But now I know I can do it. It might take me another month (how's, oh, February? February's pretty quiet), but now I know what I'm capable of. I'm so proud of me.

NaNoWriMo 2009 Winner's Badge from nanowrimo.org. Go check 'em out, seriously.

Thanksgiving 2009

2009-11-26T10:04:00.002-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving!

My NaNoWriMo word count stands at 45,027.

The turkey breast is in the oven. The ham and the sweet potato casserole await their turn. Cranberry gelatin salad, green beans, and pies are done. Guests are bringing rolls, dressing, fruit, and broccoli casserole. Gravy is a last-minute project. Floor has been mopped, bathroom has been cleaned. (Kitchen is still a mess, but there's time to clean it.) The house smells good.

My family is all healthy and together. We have a roof over our heads, clothes on our backs, shoes on our feet. We're warm and comfortable and well-fed and we love each other.

I often forget that many people don't have those things.

I will be making time in the next month to do something that makes life a little better for someone. This month was for me, but it's time to turn my focus outward and let God love someone through me. That is, to me, what "giving thanks" should mean - that we not be complacent about what we have or envious of what we don't have, but that we set our faces toward making things better for everyone.

May your Thanksgiving be so blessed.

Image is Happy Thanksgiving by *Gracie at flickr.

Week Three, NaNoWriMo 2009

2009-11-23T11:25:00.000-05:00

So here's what's burning my britches:

Sunday afternoon I'm counting up all my words from all the scenes I've written, most of them through the fabulously stern Dr. Wicked's Write or Die widget, and I'm excited because I'm ahead of schedule now - 38,203 words written, according to my math, and I should be at the 36,674 point. Yay me... so I go and start saving all these scenes into a big long (and I mean long!) document so I can upload it to the NaNoWriMo official word counter. And then I check the word count for the entire document, and it says, "34,959." What?!? Less than 35K?

Less than 35K? So where did it go? Is my math that bad? You wouldn't think someone with a degree in accounting would have that much trouble adding stuff... Oh, okay, forgot this little piece of a scene I wrote and somehow saved in the wrong spot; let's add that in. New count: 36,003. What!?! Where are my other two thousand words?!?

Turns out, see, that the WriteOrDie wordcount works differently than the OpenOfficeDocument wordcount - WriteOrDie being the cheerful optimist with rose-colored glasses, curse it. Totally out of character for a program that punishes you for seven seconds of no keystrokes by playing the most heeeedious noises you could imagine (babies crying, air raid sirens, untuned violins, shrieking alarm clocks, you name it). To get the noise to stop, all you have to do is start typing again. Simple but brilliant, right?

Actually, it is brilliant, and I'm going to keep using it. I'll just be checking word counts very thoroughly in a serious word-processing program from now on. New word count as of midnight, 11/22: 38,482. So there.

And the other thing I want to know is, Why is my face all broken out? Am I that stressed? It's not That Time, I haven't been eating loads of chocolate (all right, fine, I did have a square - ONE square - of NewTree Dark Chocolate with Ginger last week), and I haven't had any Diet Dr. Pepper, which, although I love it, tends to break me out. And I have been cleaning my face with the same cleanser and using the same brand of noncomodegenic makeup I always use. I don't get it.

Scents worn in Week Three:
Sonoma Scent Studio Tabac Aurea, custom samples of three versions: Zero Patchouli, Half the Patchouli of the Original, and Different Patchouli than the Original. Winner: 50% Patch. Gorgeous. Exactly what I wanted - pipe tobacco, dry leaves, grass, spice cookies, damp moss, golden sunshine, leather jacket, warm skin, and stolen kisses. Whoa baby. Laurie Erickson is a genius.
Chanel Bois des Iles, Les Exclusifs, decant: sandalwood, cool iris, warm gingerbread. Why does this seem thinner than my sample? It smells like the right smell, but disappears faster and has less presence.
Teo Cabanel Alahine sample: a mellow, happy Party In a Bottle, complete with "candles at the window, carols at the spinet."
Guerlain Chamade parfum de toilette, decant: a green-and-gold springtime. (Is it sacrilege to say that this is beautiful but not as good as Parfums de Nicolai's Le Temps d'une Fete? I'm sayin' it anyway. Luca Turin's right, Guerlain (LVMH) should hire Guerlain granddaughter Patricia de Nicolai as head nose.) In any case, I've now written the Chamade scenes into the novel. Now I can stop feeling so seasonally disoriented - no wonder I've been reaching for the cool-weather stuff when I'm not at the laptop. I can't believe, now, that for so many years I wore one perfume at a time. Freesia and peony in the winter? Thank goodness I can leave the whole "signature perfume" idea behind.

Top image is wordfind by thinkroni at flickr.com. Bottom image is Alahine, from fragrantica.com.

Week Two, NaNoWriMo 2009

2009-11-19T09:23:00.001-05:00

I'm a little behind. (Ba-dum-bum.)

Hindered by feeling yucky, and the fact that people need clothes ironed and lunches packed and bathrooms cleaned, yada yada, and the fact that in all this mess, somehow I'm actually expected to go to work, I haven't been working as hard as I should.

Not to mention that I got mad at one of my characters and didn't want to write about him at all, and I got bored with the other major character - she was too nicey-nice. Well, I fixed that all right, mwah ha ha! She's going to do a few questionable things, and that's fun to write about. And I started fleshing out an uninhibited minor character, so that should help too. Tonight, the 18th, I should be at 30K words, and I'm not - I'm sitting on 29,213. But it's still doable. In fact, if I stop blogging right now, I could probably go write another 1000... okay, probably not.

Scents worn in week two:
Tom Ford Black Orchid Voile de Fleur - stupid name, lovely scent. Plum, white flowers, and a milky, ambery base that is sweet and smooth without being sugary. In fact, the drydown reminds me of creme brulee. One of the few that lasts and lasts on me. Makes my sweaters smell great.

Teo Cabanel Alahine sample - Wow. This freebie sample is a favorite of Abigail's - see her review at IsmellthereforeIam blog here. Smells like, for some reason even I cannot pinpoint, Christmas. In fact, what it's reminding me of is the Madrigal Dinners we chorus students produced at college: clove oranges, curried fruit, dusty music books, lit candles, slightly-musty costumes, evergreen branches hiding the Federal style mouldings on the ballroom walls... not that I actually smell all of that, but I think I'm getting olfactory illusion here. Which is nice, actually. Mad Dinners were so much fun.

Sonoma Scent Studio Tabac Aurea custom blend - I had this huge, head-over-heels emotional reaction to the standard version, only slightly marred by the patchouli it contains. It's nice patch, actually - grassy and fresh-smelling, not dusty and not the synthetic-y "clean" patch that seems to inhabit so many mainstream scents lately. But patchouli has a way of simply hijacking my nose away from the whole composition, so that all I smell is patchouli. Laurie Erickson was kind enough to make me a few custom samples to choose from: one with no patchouli, one with 50% patchouli, and one with a different grade of patchouli. I think the 50% patch is winning, at this stage. I love it.

Just like last week, I highly recommend that you go smell something good, read something good, and hug someone you love. And I'll add one more: eat something good.

Image is Butt by Shooting the Kids at flickr.

Perfume Reviews: Guerlain Shalimar Light/Eau Legere, or The Story I Really Wanted to Tell You

2009-11-12T16:25:00.002-05:00

By the time I came to The Kingdom of Perfumistas, Queen Shalimar had an acclaimed flanker, which was widely praised and subsequently discontinued. This modernized version was known variously as “Shalimar Light,” or “Shalimar Eau Legere Parfumee.” Even more confusing is the fact that the version concocted by Mathilde Laurent was later tweaked by Jean-Paul Gaultier, after Ms. Laurent had a falling-out with her boss and went to work for Cartier.

I have done some research on this phenomenon, which I'll share briefly with you. Also, I highly recommend reading yet another one of Helg's terrific posts on the subject, here. (One of these days I'll stop pointing you in the direction of Perfume Shrine, but she'll have to stop writing so beautifully and thoroughly first. Like that's going to happen.)

Shalimar Eau Legere, composed by Mathilde Laurent, was a pale straw-colored liquid, presented in a pale blue bottle with dark blue lettering that brought that distinctive Shalimar bottle to mind, pictured at left. The sprayer mechanism was located in the fluted ventaille top, which does not come off. This is the version that most perfume-lovers call the better iteration. It's nearly impossible to find these days.

The second version is generally known as Shalimar Light, although all bottles of SL/SEP bear the same two descriptions (Shalimar Eau Legere Parfumee/Light Fragrance). The second version, with notes similar to the first, is light blue liquid in a clear bottle with gold lettering. This bottle has a removable cap, with spray mechanism underneath. This version is slightly easier to find, although it's getting scarce too. I have a photo of the two bottles side by side, but am experiencing camera problems at the moment. I'll post the photo when I can.

Recently, a bottle of SEL (first one) came into my possession, so now I have both it and SL , as well as some vintage Shalimar proper, in the rich parfum de toilette concentration. Of course, I had to test them simultaneously. The review of the newest version, Eau de Shalimar, in the quarterly updates to Perfumes: The Guide seems to indicate that only the top notes were slightly changed for the J-PG version, but I would disagree. These two are definitely versions of the same fragrance, but I smell differences throughout. (Be aware that my bottle of Eau Legere came from someone who had bought it in a duty-free shop several years ago, and I have no idea in what conditions it has been kept in the meantime. My bottle of Shalimar Light, blue juice, came from an online discounter.)

Up top, SEL (Laurent) has a ton of citrusy bergamot. It's very elegant citrus. But right away I smell the familiar Shalimar TarNilla base, much gentler than in the original, but there in its recognizable ice-cream-on-the-asphalt glory. This glowing bergamot slowly slides into a blended floral heart, a lovely creamy jasmine and ylang mixture that seems augmented by something herbal (rosemary? sage?), and to be honest, this is the very first time I've gotten the reference to the Shalimar Gardens. It does make me think of gardens, albeit not fresh dewy gardens. This is a woody garden, with stuff like rosemary and sandalwood underscoring the florals. Eventually this subsides into that smoky-tarry-vanilla base I mentioned. However, the base isn't strictly vanilla – it's at least as much about benzoin and tonka bean as it is vanilla. And although it's very much like original Shalimar, I get no patchouli sticking out to my nose; it's very smooth. There's just that hint of tar...

As for the Jean-Paul Guerlain version of Shalimar Light, pictured at right, it's subtly different. The first five minutes are strongly reminiscent not of bergamot, but of lemon oil furniture polish, intense and inedible. I love the smell of lemon oil, but I'm not enthused about smelling like the maid, so I turn my attention elsewhere for the first five minutes.* After that the strength of the bitter lemon note softens and becomes very enjoyable. This citrusy facet seems to stick around longer than it does in SEL, and is still faintly apparent in the drydown. The florals are less apparent in this version; I do smell jasmine and ylang, but this iteration of Shalimar Light seems more focused on the citrus and vanilla, without the floral focus the first version seems to have. The drydown is far less smoky, but the vanilla is smooth and unsweetened, and augmented by the rich creaminess that tonka bean and benzoin provide. This one is pretty much lemon-vanilla-tonka all the way, delicately garnished with a single jasmine flower. It's somewhat less complex than the Laurent version, and bears less of a resemblance to classic Shalimar.

I think the first Eau Legere, the Mathilde Laurent composition, is a better fragrance. It's as detailed as tapestry; it takes the wearer on a scent journey; it keeps surprising with things one might not expect (the 3D florals, the herbs, the smokiness).

BUT. (You knew this was coming, didn't you?) I actually prefer Shalimar Light, the version tweaked by Jean-Paul Gaultier, or as I like to call it, SL 2.0. I think there are a couple of reasons informing my preference. One, I smelled the blue juice first, and liked it. I didn't compare it to anything, I just enjoyed it, unburdened by any idea of trying to identify which I liked better. Two, SL 2.0 has become a comfort scent for me in all seasons except summer, when I find it too heavy. It's one of those wonderful perfumes that just plain smells nice; I don't have to think about it, or process it emotionally – I just put it on and feel like myself. Three (and Three is actually related to Two), it reminds me somewhat of My Darling Emeraude in feel. It's a “me” scent. Shalimar Light shares that velvety benzoin-tonka-vanilla base with Emeraude, and with Mariella Burani, another one I feel very comfortable in.

Notes for Shalimar Eau Legere/Shalimar Light:
Orange flower, lemon, bergamot, jasmine, rose de mai, iris, opoponax, tonka bean, vanilla, ambergris, incense
Notes are quite similar to Shalimar (well, duh), but the basenotes have been pared down considerably - no vetiver, no leather, no sandalwood, no civet, no patchouli. No musk is listed, but Shalimar Light can smell fairly "dirty" on me at times, and I think there's some musk in there.

If you went and checked out the Perfume Shrine post, you probably read that comment from Guerlain's PR rep stating that Eau de Shalimar is the same as the Jean-Paul Guerlain version of Shalimar Light. I'd disagree. I tested a sample vial, and assuming it's representative, Guerlain has thinned down the Blue Juice even further. The opening smells like lemon baby wipes, not even as assertive as the lemon oil furniture polish in Shalimar Light v. 2.0. The florals are thinner, and the base smells more straight-up vanilla than that creamy, deep benzoin-tonka-vanilla thing that I love. This one's all watered-down lemon cream soda, too sweet and thin to be worth something. There's a good reason it's clear liquid in clear glass, seems to me, and in my opinion, Eau de Shalimar is a mess to be avoided.

Images are all from ebay and fragrantica.com. Like I said, I'll try to post that one I took myself sometime soon.
*And I AM the maid around here.

Perfume Review: Guerlain Shalimar, or The First Story

2009-11-12T08:37:00.019-05:00

My father-in-law is a storyteller. What he especially likes to do is tell you a story, and then say, "I told you that story in order to tell you this one..." The second one is always better, but it would not make any sense unless you've heard the first one.

This is sometimes true of perfumes, and of perfume reviews. In this case it's true: I've been wanting to review Shalimar Light for some time, but have thought that it was pointless to do so without reviewing Shalimar first. Shalimar is one of the oldest extant Orientals, along with Emeraude. (Emeraude's been mangled so many times by reformulation that the current version is utterly unwearable. But we won't discuss it.)

Officially released in 1925 by the house of Guerlain, home of several of iconic classics - Jicky, Mitsouko, L'Heure Bleue - and named after the Shalimar Gardens of Lahore, it's been called the “reference Oriental,” and is famed for its combination of bright citrus underscored by creamy, yet smoky, vanilla. It's also been known for decades as the scent of indecent, sensuous women... if you want more information, check out Perfume Shrine’s review here.

But you know all this. Let's dive right into the shallow pool of my own opinions about it.

I think the bottle is one of the most distinctive and beautiful ones ever. It's hard to mistake a Shalimar bottle for anything else, with its shield-shaped flacon and blue fluted top. Yes, I know Shalimar has been presented in a number of different shapes over the years. My own miniature bottle of vintage parfum de toilette is not the classic shape. My point is that, as far as I can tell, no other scent has been released in the classic Shalimar bottle, thus making it distinctively identifiable as Shalimar. It may also be Guerlain's biggest seller. Devotees seem to stick with it – and indeed, nothing else smells quite like it. It's not like my replacing a worn-out bottle of Revlon Xia Xi'ang with one of Elizabeth Arden's True Love... no, for Shalimar wearers, only Shalimar seems to do.

I'll list the notes here, not so much because they matter, but because these notes are the pattern for later development, and also because I am something of a geek who likes to compare lists of notes both to what I smell in the fragrance, and what I smell in fragrances that are similar.
Notes for Shalimar: bergamot, lemon, mandarin, rose de mai, jasmine, orris, vetiver, heliotrope, opoponax, vanilla, civet, Peru balsam, benzoin, tonka bean, patchouli, leather, sandalwood.

Before I “fell down the rabbit hole,” as they say, I used to pick up the lovely tester bottle from the department store counter, sniff longingly, and then quickly put it down. All I could smell was bergamot and patchouli. Ick. Now I know that I seem to be extremely sensitive to patchouli, picking it up in quantities unsmellable to the general public. And now that I have smelled many other Orientals, the patchouli doesn't stand out to me as it used to; now what presents itself to my nose is the small amount of birch tar added to the vanilla to replicate the smell of the original composition, which had a particular impurity that caused it to seem smoky. I like to call Shalimar The TarNilla Godzilla – it's tar, it's vanilla, it's loud, and it's one of the few scents that seems to last for days on my skin.

I like that bottle of parfum de toilette a lot more than I ever liked the EDT in the tester, which just proves my belief that classic Guerlains (the ones I mentioned above) are difficult for me in the lesser concentrations, but more easily wearable in parfum or PDT form. You don't want to know what I had to say about L'Heure Bleue in EDT – but the parfum is probably my favorite classic Guerlain. (I leave aside the gauzy silk chiffon of Apres l'Ondee. I suppose you could call it a classic Guerlain, since it's old and it's still in production, but it's so light that people never seem to hate it. They might not find it compelling, but nobody is wishing it out of existence. Or at least not to my knowledge.)

A drop of Shalimar is lovely when it's chilly outside, and particularly when there's woodsmoke in the air. What I like better, though, is a drop of Shalimar followed by a spritz of Shalimar Light 2.0... and now we come to that second story I was talking about. To be continued...

Image is Shalimar pure parfum by bhperfume5mor at ebay.

We Won't Forget

2009-11-10T15:24:00.000-05:00

Veterans' Day, 2009

To my dad, who served in the US Navy in peacetime

To my brother-in-law Bob, who served in the US Army in Desert Shield and Desert Storm, and who will soon be serving again

To my friend Army Lt. Terry Plunk, who died clearing landmines in the Gulf War

To all those who gave their lives for their country

To all those who served

To all those who are serving now

To all those who will serve in the future

And to their families

My deep and heartfelt thanks.

Photo is Arlington National Cemetery, by RuthannOC at flickr

Week One, NaNoWriMo 2009

2009-11-08T16:35:00.002-05:00

So, how's it going?

Pretty good. At least, I've written five of the seven days, and am sitting at 13,912 words with loads more to come and no writer's block so far. Also, everyone has eaten this week, including two bottle-fed calves named Davy and Beth, and no one has run out of underwear. (Must give props to The CEO for doing laundry, though: ten loads. Eek. Note to self: don't add any more children to the family.) I'm still looking waaay, way up at the top of the hill, but I can see it.

Scents worn this week:
Tom Ford Tobacco Vanille sample. Smells like gingerbread, which is kind of nice if you like that sort of thing, which I do, but it's ungodly expensive for something that smells like, hello, gingerbread. Honestly, I'd rather just bake some.
Guerlain Chamade vintage parfum de toilette. Smells like spring. Is allllll wrong for this time of year, but one of my characters wears it.
Coty Ex-clam-a-tion! Smells like rose+violet+face powder, drenched in syrup. Was this an advance entry into the "I'm a teenager, I must smell like dessert" running? Same character wears this one at a different stage of life. She prefers Chamade, and I must say, so do I.
Guerlain Shalimar Light/Eau Legere, two different versions. Review may show up this week, if I manage to post it. Watch this space...

I have instructions for people who want something good to happen to them this week:

Go smell something good, even if it's just dry leaves outside and some homemade gingerbread inside. (There, now you won't owe Tom Ford $170 for the 50ml bottle. Or you could put a pouch of flavored pipe tobacco next to a bottle of Bath and Body Works' Ginger Vanilla body wash, and pretty much get the same experience.)

Go read something good. Comic books are fun, but they do NOT count. Sorry. You only get a pass on this one if you have a newborn baby at home.

Go hug someone you love.

You have your instructions.

Image is Montsant, climbing up hill, by Monique vd Hoeven at flickr.

You Win Some, You Lose Some

2009-10-31T15:31:00.001-04:00

You know who holds the record for the most losses by a major league pitcher?

Denton True "Cy" Young.

Yeah, that guy. The one they named the award for, the one that honors the best major league pitcher each year. The guy that pitched 21 seasons, the one who still - even close to a hundred years after he retired, in 1911 - holds the record for the most wins by a major league pitcher.

Total losses: 316.
Total wins: 511.

A lesson for us all.

Especially for me. This is my second attempt at NaNoWriMo. I failed last year, only racking up 47,000 words ("winning" means you wrote 50K during the month of November). But that was last year. Ol' Cy lost a bunch of games, too, and it didn't stop him.

So it can't stop me.

I probably won't post full-blown articles here for awhile, just brief notes on how things are going, with the occasional Scent of the Day comment, or something short like that. I'll be back in full swing in December.

Image is from wikipedia. Click on the link to read more about Cy Young at baseballhalloffame.org.

Perfume Review: Magie Noire (vintage)

2009-10-29T16:07:00.007-04:00

All Hallows' Eve approaches. I've been waiting to review this perfume for months, and so I suppose I've had months to think about it but had not yet written a post before today. I first heard of Magie Noire last spring, from a commenter on one of the perfume blogs. I no longer remember which one. In any case, the comment was something like, "Magie Noire is the most sensual potion I've ever smelled, I'm so sad they've reformulated it." I didn't know much about what to expect from a list of notes at the time, and I thought it would be a good idea to find a home for vintage Magie Noire, so I trolled ebay for it. What luck! A mini bottle of vintage edt for something like $12 including shipping. The seller had several on hand, having inherited her parents' pharmacy. She was attempting to clear the back room of old fragrances they had bought in the 80's and stored.

I bought it. On the day it was delivered, the weather here was warm and characteristic of early spring. Daffodils were out; I was wearing a spring green blouse. I came home from work and found my package in the mailbox. The box was ugly – black, with russet, orange and gold curving stripes and zodiacal symbols on it. I rolled my eyes (those crazy mystical types! The things they'll buy!) and opened it, expecting the tones of the spicy floral oriental of Fragrantica.com's listing. The top was a bit tight, so I had to work it loose, getting a drop on my fingers in the process.

This is what went through my head: What the heck? This is NOT an Oriental! I jerked my hand away from my nose. What the heck IS thi – wait a second, I want to smell that again. I did smell it again. And again and again. I sat at the computer desk in the basement for what seemed like hours, just sniffing. I didn't have to bring my hand to my nose; the sillage was tremendous.

I was immediately transported to an evening from my first year at college, when I was walking back to my dorm after a choral dress rehearsal that had gone late. It was not raining, but it had rained earlier in the day, so that the dead leaves, oak and maple, felt like just-made papier mache' under my feet. A huge harvest moon sailed overhead, shining pale orange as clouds scudded behind it. The wind blew in swirls. I remember being stunned by beauty. I didn't stop at my dorm; I kept walking in this windy November night: through the little cemetery, through the Dell, up Observatory Hill. It grew chilly. I walked back to my dorm. I barely slept, for the moonlight and the drama and the silence, for the romance and the longing.

Coming back from the past on that spring afternoon, I realized that the weather had changed. It had been sunny and pleasant, but while I was dreaming the clouds had come in and covered the sun. It had begun to rain. I had the eerie feeling that Magie Noire had effected the change all on its own.

Notes for MN: Created by Gerard Goupy, released by Lancome in 1978. I keep seeing it classified on perfume forums like fragrantica and basenotes as a floral oriental. This is crazy talk (at least for the vintage version). It is clearly a woody chypre with floral elements, and a Big, Honkin', I Mean Business Chypre to boot. A man could wear this, if he had enough confidence and a very, very light hand on the applicator.
Top: Blackcurrant buds, galbanum, raspberry, hyacinth, bergamot.
Heart: honey, tuberose, orris root, jasmine, ylang, lily of the valley, cedar, narcissus, Bulgarian rose.
Base: spices, sandalwood, amber, patchouli, musk, civet, oakmoss, vetiver.

Some fragrances are far, far more than the sum of their notes. This is one of those fragrances. I could not tease out individual notes at all the first few times I wore it. I still cannot identify more than a few: the cassis buds stand out as always. Narcissus has become a favorite, and after falling in love with PdN Le Temps d'une Fete, I can pick it out now. There is a ton of oakmoss and vetiver in this, too. And although it's not listed, I seem to smell something quite herbal, like coriander, in the top notes. Everything else is a blur, even tuberose and rose, two more favorites of mine. I freely admit that my bottle may not have been stored properly. In fact, I can't imagine that it was kept properly in a warehouse in California for 25+ years. It doesn't matter to me whether it smells the way it did when it was created, because it smells amazing.

I cannot wear Magie Noire frequently – I have only worn it a handful of times, and only in very small doses. For one thing, it seems to call for cool weather, and particularly weather in which one might wear a sweater and boots. For another, the sillage is so enormous that it seems wrong to subject other people to it. Lastly, Magie Noire hijacks my thought processes. If I wear it, I can think of nothing else, but am lost in the sensuality, the elemental earthy quality of it. It makes me think of people who worshiped the Earth and its powers, its changing seasons, in centuries past and – who knows? Even now. I am not comfortable in it, but when I wear it I do not want comfort. I am like Bilbo Baggins, unceremoniously yanked from his cozy burrow and set on a quest for treasure.

Magie Noire turns. It turns like the turning of the seasons - it cartwheels, rotates, opens doors ponderous on their hinges. The wind blows in with a blast when the door is opened into November forest, floor damp and spongy with leaf mould, glowing rose at the heart like shafts of sunlight through treetops. It is the death of many leaves and the life of trees, the heart of the earth beating under a blanket of dead leaves and moss. It is warm under the blanket, when the night air is chilly. There now, don't cry at the loss of the summer: we will make our own. It will be fecund and humid with exhalations from our mouths, and this will be our own summer. It is a kind of magic, do you see?

One of the songs we'd been rehearsing that November night was a piece by Samuel Barber, with text by James Stephens: The Coolin (The Fair Haired One). Here is the poem, and following it is a link to a beautiful rendition I found on youtube.

Come with me, under my coat,
And we will drink our fill
Of the milk of the white goat,
Or wine if it be thy will.

And we will talk, until
Talk is a trouble, too,
Out on the side of the hill;
And nothing is left to do,

But an eye to look into an eye;
And a hand in a hand to slip;
And a sigh to answer a sigh;
And a lip to find out a lip!

What if the night be black!
Or the air on the mountain chill!
Where the goat lies down in her track,
And all but the fern is still!

Stay with me, under my coat!
And we will drink our fill
Of the milk of the white goat,
Out on the side of the hill!

Reincarnations: The Coolin (Barber/Stephens), about 3:45 minutes long.

I have no info on the top image, having found it on a free image site - but I can't remember where or when. If you know, please tell me and I'll credit it properly. Bottom image is my own bottle of Magie Noire, bought off ebay.

Random Thoughts

2009-10-28T18:27:00.003-04:00

My nose is stopped up. This is rotten. Not only can I not smell anything, I wake up at night because I can't breade drough by dose.

Watched The Outsiders recently with Bookworm. The DVD she has is the more recent 20th anniversary release, with scenes that were deleted from the 1983 theater release. Still a great movie, still a terrific book. When the movie came out, only a year or two after I read the book as an 8th grader, I spent my babysitting money to go see it at the theater - twice! Partly because it's a great story, filmed well, and partly because it is an ensemble cast of, let's be honest here, really cute guys. Seriously: C. Thomas Howell, Ralph Macchio, Matt Dillon, Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise, Emilio Estevez, Patrick Swayze, and Leif Garrett. At the time, I was a Tommy Howell kind of girl; I had a poster of him up on my corkboard in my room. Ralph was too sweet for me, Matt too edgy, and Rob too pretty. Now, 25 years later, what I notice about the boys in the movie (who were all in their late teens while filming, except for Patrick, who was 30, and Ralph, who was 20) is different.

Tom Cruise has a gap between his front teeth, and really great biceps. The less said about his acting skills, the better.
Emilio is, actually, a pretty good character actor. Too bad Charlie got the looks in that family!
Ralph looks like a middle-schooler. Or maybe a human puppy. Also, I cannot believe Casting bothered to audition anyone else for the role of Johnny; Ralph is perfect.
Rob is seriously gorgeous. Apparently it is possible for a human being to approach physical perfection. And I had no idea that the guy actually could act. Sadly, a lot of his work wound up on the cutting room floor in '83, but his scenes as middle brother Soda have emotional punch.
Patrick cannot act. I knew this already, but I still don't care. Fab abs. And that jaw...
Leif makes me think of Justin Timberlake. Same frizzy blond hair, same cheesy acting skills.
Tommy Howell is a little out of his depth, but he has beautiful eyes.
I dissed Matt Dillon for years as having no reason to be in front of a camera other than his bad-boy good looks, which I claimed were overrated anyway. Matt, I wronged you. I apologize. Now I know why all my friends had posters of you in their lockers: it was your mouth. Or maybe those cheekbones. Or perhaps the "provoking charm of [Matt] altogether." * And your intensity dominated the whole film. Every scene you were in, Matt, wound up slipped into your back pocket. You rule, baby.

Sigh. Well, I suppose I wouldn't go back to being 15 again, but I can watch The Outsiders and pretend that it was a lot better than real life.

Fisher-Price has released a new toy: Elmo Live. This animatronic wonder sings, laughs, stands, sits, tells jokes, and plays games. Holy cow, what's the world coming to? I hereby confess that I always hated Elmo. Kermit was cool, Big Bird was dumb but sweet, and Oscar said what I always wished I had the guts to say. Elmo is a toddler in red fur. What's so great about that?

NaNoWriMo starts on Sunday. I'm getting ready. Squee!

And, most importantly, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to The CEO! Lots of love to my favorite husband (yes, I know you're the only one), and many years of happy life ahead. Mwah.

* Apologies to Sir John Suckling, for cribbing/messing with his poem "The Constant Lover." Image is from moviestore.com.

Perfume Review: Rochas Tocade

2009-10-27T16:32:00.001-04:00

In 1994, Rochas released this honkin' ugly bottle of wonderful stuff, created by Maurice Roucel. Thank goodness I read a positive review of it before ever seeing the bottle, which is one of the cheesiest things I have seen in my life. The bottom part of it reminds me of the pretty shape of the Femme bottle, but it's topped with a cylinder and a coolie hat in plastic Made In China colors. It's a shame, really, about that cap. It's too tall. It's pointy. It's plaaaaaaastic.

Ahem. Muses in Wooden Shoes never, ever, buy perfume for the bottle. And isn't that lucky for us? Tocade - which means "Infatuation" in French - is just lovely, and a genuine bargain at $25-30 for a large 100ml bottle.

Here are the notes for Tocade:
T: green notes, bergamot, freesia, geranium
H: magnolia, iris, orchid, jasmine, lily of the valley, rose
B: patchouli, amber, musk, cedar, vanilla

Tocade is primarily a rose-vanilla-patchouli fragrance, and like Organza Indecence, it's right at the edge of my low patchouli tolerance. Other people might not find it very patch-forward, but I do. Tocade opens with a breath of galbanum and a whisper of something my brain calls "fresh" - it's probably the freesia - before heading full tilt for that rose-vanilla combo. It's a lovely rose, neither the fresh lemony rose you smell in, say Perfumer's Workshop Tea Rose, nor the winey rose of Parfum Sacre or Voleur de Roses, but, rather, a glowing deep pink rose, smooth as painted china. I do smell the magnolia and lily of the valley, and although I can't pinpoint the orchid, there's a smooth floral quality to the heart that seems to be common to orchid scents. And although the base skates toward the sweet side, it's not the marshmallow variety of vanilla/amber - there's enough backbone in the cedar and patchouli, and enough dirt in the musk, to keep it honest. Although it doesn't smell like Shalimar, it does have that dirty, smoky vanilla vibe in the drydown.

This is one of my sexier perfume options, I confide. It's a casual, comfortable, party-girl kind of sexiness, a white tee shirt and jeans sort of sexiness, not the femme fatale variety. It's so friendly and affectionate that one imagines Tocade to be unable not to flirt outrageously with everyone (yes, everyone) she meets. In fact, I usually refer to it as That Slut Tocade.

Which is probably unfair, but since it amuses the heck out of me while expressing that "friendly sexiness" that is Tocade, I'm going to keep using it. That Slut Tocade. Heh. Beavis and Butthead would be so proud. (By the way, according to a French-speaking friend, it's pronounced toe-COD. Just in case that might be helpful.)

True story: I bought Tocade this past spring, just about the time the weather was getting too warm for it. I promptly put it in my closet, inside a box with a few other cold-weather scents. Two months later, I opened the closet, and a big waft of Tocade stumbled out and threw her arms around my neck, slurring, "Hiiiiiiii! I'm Tocade. I'm a little druunnnk (hiccup) and I've somehow (giggle) lost my panties, will you take me ho-ome?" Whew. I promptly made sure the (ugly) top was on firmly, and then put the bottle inside a plastic bag inside the box. That was three months ago, and I continue to get hints of Tocade when I open the closet.

(So be careful with this stuff, willya? Don't, you know, spill it on your closet floor or anything.)

I've used the phrase That Slut Tocade often enough now that I think I'd better clarify: I like it. I really, really like it. It's comfortable without being a real wallpaper scent, and my husband likes it too.

But it really deserved a better bottle.

Five for Fall, 2009

2009-10-23T16:18:00.001-04:00

Inspired by the Fall Picks posts on many perfume blogs this week, I’m doing my own. And I was going to make it Ten Picks, but since I’m hoping to be doing this again next year, I’ll keep the list short so I can explore different scents in 2010.

I love fall. Love it, love it. The temperature’s generally comfortable. The sunshine (when we get it) is a golden shade we never see in any other season. The wind is bracing rather than icy. The trees change colors; hickory nuts and black walnuts drop onto the drive. Squirrels and chipmunks are busybusybusy. Woodsmoke begins to fill the crisp air, and there’s frost on the ground in the mornings. More than that, autumn has always been for me a time of new beginnings. Feelings rise up in me and can’t be quashed – or forgotten.

For those warm golden days when the sun pours warm cider over distant tweed hills: Sonoma Scent Studio Tabac Aurea. To me, it smells of dry leaves, pipe tobacco, fresh hay, a worn leather bomber jacket, and the warm skin of one’s sweetheart, and an aromatic mossy forest floor, with spiced cider wafting by from somewhere in the distance.

For cold rainy days when you just want a sweater (and a good raincoat!), I want Givenchy Organza Indecence. This is spice cake eaten near a bonfire, so that you smell the spice and vanilla just as much as you smell the smoke and the wood. Cozy, it sticks fairly close to my skin and only wafts gently when I move. I like that.

For romantic evenings, Ormonde Jayne Ta’if casts a spell, with its peppery rose and saffron creaminess. It is delightful, sensual, and a bit dreamy, as if it can’t quite keep the memory of stars out of its head.

For dreary days, when the sun is slow to wake and the sky remains gray, I love Lanvin Arpege. I have a small bottle of the reformulated EdP, and also a tiny bottle of vintage extrait. I really, really wish there were some way to merge the top and heart notes of the reformulation with the drydown of the vintage – the new stuff just disappears when it gets past its harmonic floral heart, but the basenotes of the old are symphonic and jaw-droppingly gorgeous, with creamy sandalwood and crisp vetiver. The middle stage of development in the original is so rich it feels almost decayed. Of course, that effect still seems to fit with leaf mould on the ground and the richness of fruit that ripens in the fall.

For anytime I need a close-to-the-skin veil of loveliness, I would want to wear Tom Ford Black Orchid Voile de Fleur. I still haven’t smelled the original Black Orchid, but VdF has plenty of personality, and I think the original would, um, scare me. VdF races through plum and very smooth florals (ylang and gardenia, prominently) through cinnamon and woods to a very creamy, luxuriously feminine ending. It’s like a bowl of Feminite du Bois with milk poured over, and it doesn’t disappear on me like Feminite du Bois.

Others I'm enjoying: Lancome Magie Noire, Chanel 31 Rue Cambon, Amouage Lyric, Gres Cabaret, and Shalimar Light. It might soon be cold enough to break out the Bal a Versailles, too.

Image is Fall in Forest from nancymeowdrew at flickr; it was taken in Virginia in 1991. This is very much what fall looks like around here.

A Few Swoony Rose Scents

2009-10-21T16:14:00.003-04:00

I feel like going off the deep end with some luxuriant, voluptuous, carmined, velvety Dark Rose scents. SOTD is Tom Ford Black Orchid Voile de Fleur (did anybody think a name that long was a good idea?), and while it is lovely, I'm waiting for it to wear off.

I simply want Take No Prisoners Rose at the moment. I want to reread Philippa Gregory's sensual and frightening Wideacre; I want rose petals in my bath; I want a cashmere sweater in the richest deep red. I am longing to sniff a couple of new ones - the Francis Kurkdjian Lumiere Noire PourFemme (you can read Helg's voluptuously-written review here- she's clearly smitten!), and DS&Durga for Anthropologie East MidEast (Kevin's more straightforward review is here).

I'm not sure what to wear next, but here are a few of my options. Most of these are decants, the full bottles being a little out of my price range, which is why I'm careful with dosage - something in my brain goes cha-ching! every time I spray. Not to mention that most of these are also Grande Dame Perfumes with corresponding sillage...

Amouage Lyric Woman - deep wine-y rose and dry, smoky, astringent incense. Piercingly beautiful, Leontyne Price singing Vissi d'Arte. Quite expensive, but in this case, price indicates quality.
Ormonde Jayne Ta'if - a rose of the desert, sweet and deep, dusted with pepper and saffron, standing barefoot under the stars.
Caron Parfum Sacre' - lemon-spice-pepper and rose, flowing into warm vanilla-woods and cool myrrh. This is the mother that tenderly kisses her sleeping children before becoming a lover again in the bed of her marriage.
Gres Cabaret - rose curled atop a down comforter before the fire, letting its smoke twine through her hair. Wonderful fragrance, ugly bottle, unbelievably great price. I think I said something about "toasted marshmallow" before, but it's not sweet - what I was getting at was that cushy, pillowy musk.
Juliet Has a Gun Citizen Queen - rose dolled up for the nightlife, in a violet bustier, fishnets and leather stilettos - and a killer-diller red lipstick. Very, very sexy.

That Slut Tocade is little too flirty and shallow for the current mood, L'Arte di Gucci a little too imperious. I'll take my roses rolling in passion today.

Come slowly, Eden
Lips unused to thee.
Bashful, sip thy jasmines,
As the fainting bee,
Reaching late his flower,
Round her chamber hums,
Counts his nectars - alights,
And is lost in balms!
- Emily Dickenson

At Home in Orientals

2009-10-20T16:52:00.003-04:00

When I was young, Opium was the Hot Ticket in Fragrance. And not just Opium, but Cinnabar, Coco, LouLou, Poison, Obsession, Tabu, Youth Dew, and Shalimar. Seems like everyone was just drenched in resiny, spicy, heavy Orientals that, to my young nose, were related to Chemical Spills, Nuclear Power Plant Accidents (anyone remember Three Mile Island? Or worse, Chernobyl?), and Industrial Waste. Opium ruined more cultural gatherings than I could shake a stick at, and all I really knew about it was that it was, duh, an Oriental.

I had a friend at college who seemed to be going through the same things that I was – we suffered through first year together. We conferred, discussed, and giggled over all manner of issues. And we sighed, in tandem and at a distance, over Smoky Charles, who had stunning smoky gray eyes, and Gorgeous John from the Basement, who was as Cary Grant as a college freshman could be. We liked performing in musicals; we both played the piano (she far better than I); we both sang in the chorus; we loved novels and poetry and romantic English love stories. Suzanne and I dithered over whether or not to ditch our long-distance boyfriends, and rolled our eyes at our mothers' ridiculous worries. We haunted the thrift store for elegant vintage night wear and cashmere shrug sweaters – which, at the time, were long out of style - and diamante' brooches. Occasionally she let me borrow that thrift-store black velvet dressing gown with ivory crocheted lace. Together we counseled our friend Beth on how best to flirt with a fun, handsome boy we all knew: Mark ImpossibleLastName.

Three years later, Mark and Suzanne would marry, a few months before the end of college, telling her worried mother that they "just couldn't wait to live together." Gasp! How shocking! Getting married in order to have, you know, S-E-X!!

Suzanne had long wavy strawberry-blonde hair, loved Asian décor, and enjoyed making toast over the bulb in her desk lamp. She could make waiting for a bus fun. Her faults? 1) She simply could not manage to arrive anywhere on time. 2) She could be oblivious to other people's moods. 3) And she wore Cinnabar.
She wore it discreetly, instead of bathing in it as so many Opium-lovers seemed to do, but it was the one most frustrating thing about her. I remember saying to her once, when I was having a supremely bad day (it involved a calculus test, among other things), "I could never wear those Oriental perfumes. They're so heavy and dusty and strong."

She serenely told me, "I know you couldn't, but they're very Suzanne." She shook back her hair, releasing a wave of Cinnabar (ugh), and then smiled at me. "Let's go find something for you." The Something turned out to be a very, very small bottle of Coty Ex'clam-a'tion!, a straight-up sweet rose floral that I eventually ditched along with that boyfriend (um, yes, the one that SSS Tabac Aurea reminded me of). I don't regret saying goodbye to either one.

I spent years afterward saying to people, "I like perfume, but no Orientals please. I don't like them at all." I had no idea what, exactly, an Oriental was, but I thought it meant, "nasty thing that smells like Dust of the Crypt."

Fast forward fifteen to twenty years, and I've gotten interested in perfume again, now that the bombastic 80's and the soap-and-clean laundry smells of the 90's have fallen out of fashion. I rediscover an old love, Coty Emeraude… and am utterly stunned to find out that my Darling Emeraude is, yes, an Oriental.

Oh, yes, it is. And it turns out that many of the scents that I love, that I just adore and feel the most "me" when wearing, are Orientals too. Shalimar Light comes to mind, as does Natori, Tom Ford Black Orchid Voile de Fleur, Amouage Lyric Woman, Ormonde Jayne Ta'if, Bal a Versailles, Parfum Sacre', Citizen Queen, L'Heure Bleue, Organza Indecence, Bvlgari Black, Rumba, Bois des Iles, Dolce Vita, La Myrrhe, and Tocade. Whew. And I don't even own all of those – but all of them feel comfortable and warm and lovely, and in some way like a second, beautifully-scented, skin. They're weighty and smooth – ornate and lushly detailed – luxurious and beautiful.

Suzanne and Mark did finish college; they've been married now for nearly twenty years and have four lovely children. I haven't seen her since 1999, when Gaze was a baby and Suz was pregnant with her third. We've only been corresponding through Christmas cards for years, but I have recently found Suzanne's email address and will be contacting her soon. I'm hoping for more news than will fit on a Christmas card. I can't wait to find out what perfume she's wearing these days, and I can't wait to tell her how wrong I was about Orientals!

Perfume Review: Bath & Body Works Moonlight Path, Clone No. 3

2009-10-19T15:26:00.006-04:00

Okay, today we’re going way downmarket for the review of our next Chanel No. 5 clone: Bath and Body Works Moonlight Path. I’ve long been a customer of B&BW – largely because if I want anything fancier than drugstore body products, they’re it. I do have a few favorites among their offerings: I dearly love their Aromatherapy Orange Ginger lotion, their Velvet Tuberose is a terrific, low-budget Fracas Lite, and I wore the Freesia bath products all during my honeymoon.

On the Late & Lamented List: Freesia is gone. It’s been replaced with Sheer Freesia, which is simple and pretty but lacks the crisp greenness I remember smelling in the old one; I think there may have been some aspect of lily of the valley along with the freesia in the old version. Sigh. Well, I still have some Diorissimo.

My husband’s sister and her husband once gave me some really rich hand cream scented with Moonlight Path for a birthday. I opened it, sniffed and exclaimed, “Chanel No. 5!” My brother-in-law gave me the fish eye, and I hastened to explain that it wasn’t exact, of course – it just reminded me of my mother’s scent. And then I had to explain that I liked No. 5 but didn’t wear it because, well, it was my mother’s scent, “and you know how that is, right?” And then I shut up, because I was Just Making It Worse. (Sorry, K. It was a nice gift you and E. picked out – I used it all up with pleasure, and it smelled nice, and you have good taste. And I love you both. Which you know. Grin.)

So when I began seriously sniffing No. 5 Smell-Alikes, I remembered Moonlight Path, and went back to the Bath and Body Works store at the mall to retest it. It’s not as close to the icon as Mariella Burani is, and even farther away than Eau Premiere, but it does echo some of the facets of No. 5, particularly the powdery aspects.

Here are the notes for Moonlight Path:
Top: Bergamot, lavender, mandarin, coriander
Heart: Rose, jasmine, violet, tuberose, ylang, lily of the valley
Base: Sandalwood, vetiver, oakmoss, vanilla, amber, musk, patchouli

I never smell the lavender in Moonlight Path, which is probably a good thing, lavender being an un-favorite of mine. The congruencies of notes between the two scents include bergamot, rose, jasmine, ylang, lily of the valley, and all the base notes. Indeed, it’s the drydown of MP that reminds me most of No. 5, and since MP is fairly light, it’s the drydown that I spend the most time in while wearing it. I do smell that rose-jasmine-ylang-LotV combo that is such a pleasant part of No. 5 for me, and that’s enjoyable in Moonlight Path, but sadly, it doesn’t last very long here. It is powdery. Very powdery. Intensely powdery, even – and I’m not all that big a fan of powder. The list of basenotes sounds more complex than it actually is in Moonlight Path, contrasted directly with No. 5’s rich and shimmery sandalwood and musk base.

It’s perfectly nice. But powdery, you know… and if you like that kind of thing, the body products might layer very nicely (and, um, cheaply, if you care) with No. 5.

Top image: Moonlight Path body butter at B&BW; bottom image is Fillable Puff Patter with Powder at ebay, which my late grandmother would have absolutely adored. She'd have bought one for every woman she knew, bless her heart.

Oasis in the Desert

2009-10-16T14:35:00.001-04:00

This is going to seem ridiculously familiar to some of my perfumista friends: The American Mall – at least in bucolic suburbia – is a perfume wasteland.

I had the rare chance to go to the mall yesterday. The CEO insists that all errands be combined as much as possible, so I don’t often go to the small city/big town in which the mall is located. It’s twenty miles away, a good half-hour’s drive – but I had a dentist’s appointment today, and afterward hit the mall. Our mall has four anchor stores: Sears, JC Penney, Belk, and Dick’s Sporting Goods. Only one of those, Belk, has sniffies available. They’ve got a big sale going on at the moment, so I went in.

I should explain that it always sort of depresses me to read a blog entry about some new commercial release, because I know that I’ll maybe possibly someday get to sniff it – but only if it’s at Belk, which is mainstream all the way, baby. I won't get to stroll into Aedes and smell the new L'Artisan, but things like Marc Jacobs Lola, Idole d'Armani, and Lancome Hypnoses Senses are available.

There were testers for all three at Belk. I sprayed each on a card, and they were either “Bleah, too sweet” or “Meh, boring.” What a waste of aisle space. Belk has all the Estee Lauders, except the new Private Collections – which does me absolutely no good because of that Horrible Lauder Base. They’ve also got some Escadas, the Jessica Simpsons, Queen, Juicy Couture, Ed Hardy, a few Lancomes (Tresor, Hypnose, Magnifique, and Hypnose Senses – no La Collection here), and Ralph Laurens. Oh, and of course they have Chanel (no Les Exclusifs, obviously).

The SA who came over to talk to me about Chanels… doesn’t like them. Oh, except for Chance Eau Fraiche. Which she pronounced Aw Fresh. I mean, I grew up here and I’m used to the local accent, but really. I told her that I liked Eau Premiere and got a blank look, like “what’s that?” I pointed. “Oh. I don’t like No. 5, it’s too heavy and old fashioned. But try this, it’s nice and soft.” She sprayed Allure on a card for me. This SA, at a guess, is at least 40, judging by her skin (and yes, I know that’s not nice of me). Hey, I’m 40… ish… too!

I asked to sniff Coco, having heard from a longtime wearer that it smells softer these days. “No, it hasn’t been changed,” the saleslady says. “You like that? That’s an old one.” She sprayed it for me anyway. I was hoping it would be less Opium-ish than it used to be. I don’t hate it as much as I used to, but… still NO. Dear God, NO.

So now I get why people are always complaining about the arid landscape of mainstream, and why they hate that SA’s are so uninformed about what they’re selling. True, all true. Recently over on Now Smell This, Angela reviewed vintage Millot Crepe de Chine as something of an antidote to an unsuccessful sniffing trip; the comments about perfume SA’s are interesting to read. You can access it here. I just hadn’t realized how bad it is – gosh, if you’re going to sell something as luxurious as perfume, perhaps you should find out something about it, hm?

Lost in the scented desert, trying to find my way out, I finally saw an oasis: Shalimar. At the bottom of the case, lovely blue-and gold tester bottle locked up, the only Guerlain in the place sat on a shelf and glowed at me from amid the dreck. I don’t even wear it – it goes pretty tarry on me and can scare the horses, if you know what I mean – but boy, did it look good! Shalimar is still the Grand Old Diva – and to quote Luca Turin, “God bless Guerlain for still doing this stuff.”

I went home and put on a drop of vintage Shalimar parfum de toilette, and then topped it with a little spritz of Shalimar Light. It was lovely; the Shalimar TarNilla was just right in the woodsmoke-laced rainy evening. Ahhhh.
Top image: Sahar (Kavir) by Hamed Saber at flickr; Shalimar extrait at ebay.

Random Thoughts

2009-10-14T15:57:00.000-04:00

In my rant of yesterday, I completely forgot to wish Gaze a happy birthday. Dear Gaze, Noticer Par Excellence, you'll never completely know how wonderful you are. I consider myself privileged to be your mother. Many more years of life to you, sweet baby.

Two drops of vintage Magie Noire EdT does indeed turn out to be way too much. In a glorious sort of way.

Scent of the Day: Parfums de Nicolai Vanille Tonka. The weather is cold and wet and nasty, and VT is a good antidote. For some unexplained reason, this scent always makes me happy. I love the way it makes me feel like Miss Piggy, sipping champagne (fine sparkling muscatelle, actually, a bargain at 95 cents) and complaining that the bubbles get up her nose and make her all giggly. Limes, vanilla, carnations, Dr. Pepper and frankincense - what's not to love about this scent? Heck, no, it's not Serious Perfume, but it's not some candy-coated fruity teenybopper blah either. And for your viewing pleasure, here's a small clip from The Muppet Movie, showing Piggy and Kermie on their first date and featuring Steve Martin. It doesn't go long enough to show the bubbles, but they're there. Trust me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiGAAHG0O1A

I'm off to sniff the bottle cap, myself.

Rant: I Don't Want to Smell Like Shaving Cream!

2009-10-13T14:56:00.003-04:00

If I can manage to keep from swearing, I would like to say something about fragrance that smells like shaving cream:

I hate it with a passion.

Shaving cream actually smells good. It’s a good clean soapy smell, on its own, and I do really enjoy snuggling up to a freshly shaven man (thank you, CEO), but I don’t want to smell like that. Really. Seriously, Perfume-Creating Folks, JUST STOP DOING THAT. Please. I’m begging here. It ruined another drydown again today, and I'm just getting really sick of that.

A short list of scents I’ve tested – either unisex ones or those intended to be marketed as feminines – follows, delineating scents I’ve found to contain whatever-the-&*##-it-is that smells like shaving cream.

Pilar & Lucy Tiptoeing through Chambers of the Moon (tuberose, amber, shaving cream)
Ava Luxe Midnight Violet (violet, earthy woods, shaving cream)
Caron 3rd Homme (jasmine, woods, shaving cream) Okay, okay, this one’s ostensibly a masculine… but worn by many women.
Les Nereides Imperial Opoponax (soap and shaving cream)
Parfums de Nicolai Eau Turquoise (citrus, cedar, shaving cream)
PdN Cedrat Intense (lemon zest, shaving cream)
L’Artisan Iris Pallida (anise, florals, vetiver, shaving cream)
L’Artisan Passage d’Enfer (pine, lily, and shaving cream)
Slava Zaitsev Maroussia (spice, rose, and shaving cream)

GAH. If I knew what note combination equals shaving cream, I could avoid it. (Lavender, tonka bean, musk? Opoponax?) I don’t even know. And half the time the lists of notes are so sketchy that even if I did know what combo creates sharp-edged-bathroom-sink angst for me, the accord might not be listed so that I’d know to avoid that scent. Okay, I get it that not all people get “shaving cream” out of those scents. But I do, and I’m not happy. GRRRRRRR!

Fine, I give up, I'm scrubbing this off, and then I'm going to put on way too much vintage Magie Noire (two drops should suffice) and go for a windy walk. A girl has to do what a girl has to do.

Image is "Angry Woman" at Acclaim Images (no, it's not actually me).

Perfume Review: Mariella Burani, Clone No. 2

2009-10-12T23:38:00.001-04:00

This is one of several posts in which I’ll be reviewing perfumes that are similar to, or are based on, or that remind me of, Chanel No. 5. Today we’ve got Mariella Burani, which I have in EdT. I first heard of it through Abigail’s review on I Smell Therefore I Am, which you can read here, and when ScentScelf (of Notes From the Ledge) approved, I had to try it. People, this stuff is dirt-cheap and lovely, which is a combination that always sacks me for a loss. I bought my bottle on ebay, slightly used, for $15.50.

This is one of the prettiest bottles I own. If I didn’t worry about light damage, I’d leave it out for decoration – I adore the hefty glass rectangle topped with the red-orange resin roses that should be tacky, but instead are kitschy fab.

Mariella Burani starts out with the sunniest, happiest citrus ever, with a sheer fizz of aldehydes. The aldehydes don’t give the impression of soapiness here; they sparkle briefly and evanesce. This citrus is miles away from furniture polish, and although the notes don’t list orange, I infer it. In fact, MB reminds me of childhood Florida vacations and the tangerine sherbet we’d eat at Baskin Robbins at the beach. It seems soft, rather than bracing. This citrusy veil seems to cling to the perfume as it develops. But as the scent moves into its floral heart, it begins to smell reminiscent of No. 5. When I look at the list of notes, it’s clear why: ylang, rose, jasmine, lily of the valley, and iris are listed for both fragrances. MB’s floral heart is blended very well, and the effect is smooth, voluptuous, and Just Plain Pretty.

I should explain that I am a sucker for Just Plain Pretty. I’m never put off by such girly articles of clothing as cotton sundresses trimmed in eyelet, or by fluffy blue sweaters, and Mariella Burani is no exception. It’s not that I never want something complicated or interesting or tough – it’s just that a pretty, feminine, fragrance always makes me smile.

My favorite part of the scent story is the part where the floral heart begins to fade, and the orientalesque base begins to turn up. There is, as Abigail mentions, a creaminess about it that makes me think of pearl necklaces. The effect may be due to the benzoin-tonka bean-vanilla combination. Geek alert here: I checked my Excel perfume file for the notes on some of my very favorite perfumes – Emeraude and Shalimar Light – and bingo! Benzoin, tonka, and vanilla.

Another attractive aspect of MB is that it seems weightless – neither a light, refreshing cologne for summer, nor a richly gourmand oriental for winter. In this, too, it is reminiscent of No. 5’s uncanny knack of being Appropriate For All Occasions. Also like No. 5, it seems ageless to me as well – my teenage daughter and my mother could both wear it as well as I can.

If Mariella Burani has any flaws, they are that a) it doesn’t last very long on me, and b) I don’t get much sillage. It zips through its development, from sunny orange through pretty-lady-florals to creamy base, in about three hours. This is, of course, normal for my skin experience with EdTs, and my bottle was so inexpensive that I don’t mind spritzing with abandon. Our weather has been what I call comfortable (60-70 degrees F), which may not be warm enough to show off MB. On two successive nights, I sprayed my wrists and neck one time each, and woke up warm and cosy the next morning, smelling the most gorgeous creamy floral scent; I was actually sad that it was time for my shower. Perhaps warmer weather would encourage the scent to bloom into the air a little more. And I think the EdP might suit me better; one would hope that the longevity would be better than the EdT’s lasting power.

This scent is lovely on its own; it’s an excellent alternative for those who find classic No. 5 difficult to wear. If the edp comes within my reach, I will snap it up.

Notes for Mariella Burani:
Top: tarragon, bergamot, rosewood, lemon
Heart: ylang-ylang, rose, jasmine, lily of the valley, iris
Base: amber, sandalwood, tonka bean, patchouli, musk, benzoin, vanilla, vetiver

Top image: my bottle, purchased at ebay.
Bottom image: 50's cotton sundress at syriekovitz.com

Perfume Review: Chanel No. 5 Eau Premiere

2009-10-08T15:55:00.003-04:00

This is the first of several posts in which I’ll be reviewing perfumes that are similar to, or are based on, or that remind me of, Chanel No. 5. First up is Chanel’s own flanker, No. 5 Eau Premiere, created in 2007 to modernize No. 5 for the current taste.

Opinions have been rather divided on Eau Premiere, with perfumistas typically taking one of two positions:
1) It’s No. 5, slimmed down and warmed up, palatable to modern consumers and quite wearable.
2) It took all the glory of No. 5 and sold it out, dumbed it down, ruined the perfection.

I take Position 1. Bear in mind, though, a few facts: I like aldehydic florals. I have generally found No. 5 to be a little on the cold-and-powdery side, at least until I discovered that vintage parfum I wrote about in the last post. Slight differences from classic No. 5 actually make me happy, because I can wear the scent without smelling exactly like my mother. And lastly, I tested Eau Premiere before I found that vintage parfum.

The listed notes for both No. 5 and Eau Premiere are, duh, pretty much the same:
T: aldehydes, neroli, bergamot, lemon, ylang-ylang
H: rose, jasmine, LotV, iris
B: vetiver, sandal, patchouli, vanilla, amber

I suspect that the differences in smell come from changes in the proportions of the notes. Eau Premiere, which is an eau de toilette, starts off with a burst of juicy citrus, only lightly veiled with aldehydes. I never smell citrus in the original, and I’m guessing that the aldehydes simply overpower the citrus – or maybe the citrus is only there in light proportions, to keep the aldehydes from smelling too soapy. From that pleasant, smiling citrusy start, EP moves fluidly into its floral heart. This is the point at which it tends to smell most like its famous ancestress – that creamy ylang, the floaty jasmine, the cool powdery iris. The rose is more prominent to my nose in EP than in the original, and that seems to make EP more friendly, more romantic, and, possibly, less whip-smart, as if the EP girl has taken off her reading glasses to entice her chem lab partner into asking her for a date.

(No. 5 wouldn’t have bothered. She’d have stared him down through those lenses, model-beautiful nonetheless.) This floral stage lasts about two hours on my skin – by and large, Eau Premiere seems to develop less than No. 5, with stages flowing into each other instead of the striking changes of No. 5.

EP finally moves into a sandalwood-vetiver-vanilla-and-musk drydown. It is nicely balanced between dry and sweet, between the vetiver and vanilla, but it is quite light, and does not amaze like the cool-warm/dry-rich base of vintage No. 5. The sandalwood is, sadly, not the full-bodied and gorgeous thing one finds in the vintage No. 5 – but then, what is these days? I don’t even smell the same sandalwood in modern No. 5 parfum – it’s nice, but not jaw-droppingly beautiful as it is in the vintage. I have read several complaints that Eau Premiere’s drydown seems to just disappear, but that hasn’t been my experience. Scents, especially edts, don’t last very long on my skin: usually I can expect three hours from an edt, four tops. Eau Premiere, on the other hand, lasts 6 hours + on me, with the last half of it emanating a decidedly citrus-musk blend. I think – I am not entirely sure, but I think that I’ve read that there exists a particular musk that has citrus overtones, and my guess is that this musk is present in EP. Toward the end of the story, it is all I can smell – a light, clean musk, with a hint of citrus.

As promised, the skin difference anecdote: I bought a small bottle of EP for my mother, the No. 5 girl, for her birthday. While I was visiting her, she gave me one spritz on my neck and one on my wrists, then spritzed her own. An hour later, we were in the kitchen peeling potatoes and I leaned over to sniff her neck. Hmm. I sniffed again. Mom smelled like your average ditzy fruity-floral mall frag. I sniffed my own wrists: Hmm. No. 5. Mom again: peachy floral mish-mash. Me: No. 5 (except less powdery). No peach. Three hours later, she smelled like No. 5 (more powdery than I had smelled), and I smelled like citrus musk. Weird. Of course, this may all be simply my perception, but it is odd that it doesn’t smell the same on me as it does on her.

I find Eau Premiere very lovely, and like its famous precursor appropriate to any number of occasions. It is more citrusy, more rosy, more friendly, more linear, while being less aldehydic, less cold, less complex, less powdery. In short, it is designed to suit the modern taste. I think it does so admirably.

Images are Chanel No. 5 Eau Premiere at fragrantica.com and glasses model 0072 by gwg_fan at flickr.

My Mother Wore Chanel No. 5

2009-10-07T16:13:00.009-04:00

I came to the investigation of perfume with emotional baggage (don’t we all?): Chanel No. 5 is the scent of my mother. I cannot smell it without thinking of her – the person who is my mother, and my mother who is a person, by which I suppose I mean both the individual and the role.

Sometime in my teens, it began to feel odd to me to call my mother “Mama,” since all my friends said “Mom” instead. So I changed. But in my early childhood, “Mama” she was, and Mama wore Chanel No. 5 eau de cologne. She’d grown up in a very frugal household, and my father was also quite a frugal person, and like many others of her generation, perfume was only for special occasions, and if she was wearing pantyhose, the perfume would follow. I remember watching her get ready for some social event – a concert, probably, or perhaps a Christmas dinner for my dad’s office – and as soon as she’d gotten dressed and put on her shoes, it was time for perfume. She’d dab some from the bottle onto the base of her neck, her wrists, and behind each ear. I always asked to sniff the bottle, and I always recoiled from the bright-lights and bug spray smell that came from it. It was hard for me to understand that that nasty smell would turn into a floral, intensely powdery, very feminine scent on Mama’s skin.

Eventually that bottle of No. 5 ran dry. It was replaced, briefly and unsatisfyingly, by Anais Anais, and then later by Coty L’Effleur, and still later by Elizabeth Arden’s 5th Avenue, all of which are strongly floral and containing at least some element of bathtime, either soap and/or powder.

As a young woman looking for a scent to call mine, I automatically crossed No. 5 off my list. I’d pick up a bottle in a department store from time to time, sniff, and think, “Nope, too powdery and cold. And anyway, that’s Mom’s perfume.” As recently as last year, I was still thinking, “Oh, I can’t wear No. 5. It’s too powdery. It smells like my mother.” And that was my mindset: Chanel No. 5 is a classic, an icon, a lovely scent that resembles the cold marble perfection of a Michelangelo statue, giving off Don’t Touch Me vibes. Uh-uh, not for me, not this girl, no way no how.

And then… dum dum DUM… the ebay auction. I was looking for a bottle of parfum to give Mom, since the miniature bottle of Eau Premiere I had found for her was perfectly pleasant, but somehow not as nice on Mom as it was on me (more on that in a few days.) Then, too, the perfume blogs were full of outrage over the IFRA restrictions on fragrance ingredients like jasmine and oakmoss (both of which are components of No. 5), and how awful it was that many classics were going to be reformulated, if they hadn’t been already, and how it might be time to go hunt up vintage bottles of this and that on ebay…

So I bit. I started watching auctions for “vintage No. 5 parfum.” Bid on a few and lost. Bid on a few and got horrified at the prices. Read many many blog comments saying, “Watch out for fake Chanel perfume on ebay!” and “Beware of ebay sellers filling an old parfum bottle with new cologne!” Checked on the price of a new bottle (eek! $155 for half an ounce). Bid on an old, opened-and-slightly-used 1-ounce bottle of parfum… watched over the auction like a mother hen her chicks… and it was mine, for $33 including shipping.

The bottle arrived. I opened it, deeply suspicious – how could it be such a pale color, when we know that jasmine scents tend to go orange with age, and the box was clearly so 1950’s? – and was surprised not to be knocked over by the aldehydes. They were there, but quite muted. “Cologne,” I sighed out loud. “Cheaters.” Ah, well – it was recognizably No. 5, and even if it was cologne, it was worth something, right? I smeared two healthy dabs onto my wrists and went to eat lunch, musing that aldehydes are weird molecules, smelling as they do of soap, candle wax, and glacier ice.

Half an hour later, I became aware that I was moving in a cloud of gorgeousness, and my mouth dropped open. This wasn't cologne, this was No. 5 parfum, the Grand Dame of Classic Perfumery. This was No. 5 as I had never smelled it: intensely floral, seamlessly blended, with a sort of golden glow that made me think of angels. I wandered about the house kicking myself because I could have been smelling like this, instead of all those drugstore fragrances, all my life! Still later, as the florals began to subside into a base dominated by real sandalwood and a glowing musk, I was astonished at the way the scent seemed dry and cool, yet at the same time rich and smooth. This was a drydown in the grand old-fashioned style, seemingly composed of nearly every base note in the perfumer’s lexicon. Amazing. Amazingly beautiful. Women should indeed smell like this, I thought.

I have now worn No. 5 extrait de parfum from five different bottles, four vintage and one modern (thanks to Daisy and Belle de Sud, my swapper friends), and every one of these bottles is different, although clearly recognizable as No. 5. I’m sure that most of the differences can be attributable to age and storage conditions, but it’s so strange that the scents are now so divergent from each other. One has loads of aldehydes and a musky drydown; one has wonky topnotes that smell a bit of floor polish and a heart that seems heavy on rose; one is mostly jasmine, iris, and sandalwood, very powdery; one is the bottle I just described – glorious – and one is a modern bottle, which seems to be all there, in the proper proportions, and is crisply edged as a brand-new hundred-dollar bill.

What I like best about No. 5 is its versatility. It seems weightless and ageless; it is unaffected by weather or by events of the day. It could be worn as easily to a fried-chicken picnic as to a symphony concert, and as easily in winter as in summer. Then, too, it seems to smell of money and class: both expensive and beautiful. I even like the fact that it’s fairly ubiquitous among a certain age group, and nearly everyone has smelled it enough to identify it, therefore making it an ideal mask of sorts. If I feel the need to hide my vulnerable, emotional self behind a competent costume, No. 5 is perfect for that. I’m not saying it’s absolutely perfection, mind you, or even that it is the pinnacle of the perfumer’s art. But for what it is – cool, elegantly lovely, and aloof – it is wonderful.

And I’m struck again by the fact that my mother, who’s always preferred tailored to frilly, classic to trendy, plain to fancy, has great taste in scent. I still can’t smell No. 5, in whatever incarnation, without thinking of her. I always smile. For early scent memories, for hugs and kisses, for peanut butter and apple sandwiches, for not killing me outright after I walked nonchalantly across the top bar of the swingset, for homemade dresses and baths and haircuts, for teaching me manners and for the millions of things you've done for me... many thanks, Mom. I love you.

Listed notes for No. 5:
Top: aldehydes, bergamot, lemon, neroli, ylang-ylang
Heart: jasmine, rose, lily of the valley, iris
Base: vetiver, sandalwood, vanilla, amber, patchouli, oakmoss, musk

No.5 was composed in 1921 by Ernest Beaux, the fifth of nine options created for Coco Chanel to choose from. It may be an apocryphal story, but M. Beaux commented that he was inspired by the smell of snow. (Indeed, having been close to an actual glacier in New Zealand, I can understand the reference.)

Images, from top to bottom: Chanel No. 5 parfum, from chanel.com
1973 Catherine Deneuve photo Chanel No. 5 pefume ad #2 by 237 at ebay
1959 Elegant Woman Chanel No. 5 perfume ad, from magicelectron at ebay
Mom at my sister's wedding in 2002

For Christmas, Mom will be getting part of my favorite vintage bottle – I can’t bear to give it up entirely! – and perhaps a bottle of her own. (Sssh, don’t tell her.)

Life, the Universe, and Babies.

2009-10-05T18:53:00.007-04:00

No perfume review today, as I'm anxiously awaiting a call from my brother, announcing the safe arrival of his firstborn. Today also happens to be the birthday of my youngest child, whose nom de blog will henceforth be Taz, for obvious reasons. (I considered, and then rejected, Genghis as being a tad too bloodthirsty for this affectionate whirlwind.) His older brother - whom I'll be calling Gaze - is a little disappointed that this cousin won't be arriving on his birthday next week, as we'd been told was a possibility. Their older sister, Bookworm, is torn between wishing for a girl cousin and wanting to be the only granddaughter on that side of the family.

Therefore, of course, as a mother I've been dwelling on the miracle of a new baby. (I'm aiming for philosophical rather than sentimental here, but please forgive me if I roll all the way down the hill.) I don't mean the miracle of reproduction; every plant, animal, and insect on the planet is set up to make copies of themselves. And I don't really mean the miracle of birth, that most of the mammal babies on the planet manage to extricate themselves from the birth canal without damage to themselves or to their mothers. You see it on Animal Planet all the time (especially if Taz has control of the remote)! I don't even mean the miracle that all that complex genetic code gets read correctly, producing perfectly healthy human babies, so often. How amazing is that?

What's miraculous, and a little eerie, about a baby being born, is that the baby changes from the Imagined Baby into its real self. Before it's born, a baby is UNLIMITED POSSIBILITY.

It could be a girl or a boy, or it could look like its father, or its mother, or Great-Aunt Doris... it could have Dad's eyes, Mom's chin, and Grandmom's fingers. Or Dad's feet, Granddaddy's jawline, and Pop's eyebrows. Mom's musical ability, Aunt Amy's artistic skills, Aunt Ellen's gift for compromise, Dad's stubbornness, Bambaw's talent for making a party out of a cucumber, some pudding, and a cup of apple juice... not to mention some heretofore-undiscovered-among-the-family talent for, I don't know, synchronized swimming. The kid in there could be the next great left fielder for the Boston Red Sox, or the scientist who discovers a cure for cancer, or the greatest American novelist of all time... the possibilities are literally endless.

(I acknowledge that Kid could also be a future Skid Row bum, among other unpleasant things, but we prefer not to entertain those possibilities, and I'll thank you to not kill my buzz.)

At the moment of birth, when Imagined Baby turns into Real Baby, we parents feel an unexplained sadness for all the things this baby could have been - but isn't. The universe shrinks to the size of something that fits in newborn-size jammies, something noisy and rather damp, something that keeps us awake at night.  But very soon, the joy at what this baby is grows much larger than the diaphanous regret for the lost possibilities, and we're caught up in everyday miracles: the perfect rosebud of this baby's mouth when she sleeps, or the steady, dreamy, regard of his eyes, or the beautiful hazelnut shape of his head.

God bless this baby, that New Universe in a Diaper. God bless the New Universe's parents.

God bless us all.

Top image: Andromeda Galaxy, posted by clownfish33 at flickr
Lower image:  Nace' un bebe', nace' una mama (A baby is born, a mommy is born) by happy-mami (Rebe) at flickr

Update: New Universe is here, and will be living on Earth under the name of Airin.   Mama and baby are well and healthy, and dad is very happy! We're all proud.