Holiday Perfumes

My favorites:

Noir Epices, Frederic Malle
Coco, Chanel
Five O'Clock Au Gingembre, Serge Lutens
Dzongkha, L'Artisan

Merry Christmas!

if you think you hate patchouli

You must experience Chanel patchouli. I have no idea how Chanel gets the patchouli in Coco, Coco Mademoiselle, and Coromandel (Les Exclusifs) to smell so good. Seriously. Try them. They will make you swoon with ecstasy.

my favorite Frederic Malle/Editions de Parfums fragrance

Is Noir Epices. No, Carnal Flower. No, L'Eau D'Hiver! I can't decide!! AUUUGGGHH!!!!!

fleeting impressions

I have not been around these parts for a while, and though I've been reading about and smelling plenty of fragrances, I just haven't had the time to post a whole lot. But here are some windshield surveys of a few perfumes I am wearing lately:

Apres le Mousson: This one, a Hermes scent created by Jean Claude Ellena, gets a bad rap in some quarters, but I really enjoyed it during the overly warm weather a month or so back - back when I would be hot and tired and cranky and my non-air-conditioned car would be breathtakingly stuffy, and my tank top would be sticking to my back, and sweat would be dripping down my neck - I would catch a whiff of my perfume and have an actual moment of delight in the middle of all that misery.

Angeliques Sous la Pluie: Not much to say about this one yet except it's a clear cousin of Apres le Mousson; another Ellena salty-damp-spicy creation that smells delicious.

Secret Obsession: This one was love at first sniff - or, smile at first sniff, which is my favorite personal reaction to a perfume. I've read stuff calling this one loud, but it seems fairly quiet, or maybe soft, to me. The floral notes are definitely subservient to that "warm woods" thing in this one, yet the woods are very nicely complemented by other stuff going on underneath and all around, including a plummy note that bursts through when you least expect it to, and a green/dry (chypre?) thing that was more than welcome. A not at all obnoxious and not exclusively "feminine" fragrance, one that bears about as much resemblance to the original Obsession as Vivien Leigh does to Pamela Anderson.

CB I Hate Perfume, Musk Reinvention: Something about the woods in Secret Obsession reminded me of Musk Reinvention, so I pulled this one out to wear again and was struck, again, by how magnificent it is. I may be right that the wood in this one is related to the wood in the other, but there the resemblance ends - this is an overt, masculine fragrance, albeit one that somehow escapes being obnoxious (though it certainly makes you sit up and take notice). After a while, it's like the best-smelling auto repair shop you've ever been to - grease, leather, sweat, dirt, rubber, solvents, Corn Nuts. And in the middle of all of that, a little bit of mint!

I was with my sisters in Sephora the other day - my younger sister B might be the master of the perfume windshield survey. Here are her one- to two-sentence summaries (I hope I've remembered these right):

Hermes 24 Faubourg: "Very nice. Smells like money."
Bulgari Parfumee The Verte: "Food-y. Not my thing."
Armani Code: "Ooh, I like it. I'll have to go back to that one."
Kenzo Flower: "Something familiar about it! Does it smell like something Mom used to wear? Or bake?"

girly

I haven't been writing or posting much, but that should change soon. I don't have much to say today except that I've switched to ultra-girly fragrances lately, for whatever reason. Chanel Coco Mademoiselle and Juicy Couture, most often. And I'm not just spritzing, I'm dousing myself liberally. I usually go for something drier, greener, more masculine and more understated, but lately it's all about the girly. And even though I'm overdosing, it seems no one in my near vicinity is recoiling in horror upon encountering me. 'Cause I smell so pretty, that's why.

ormande jayne man and woman

I finally got my nose back after my cold, and while I haven't had a chance to do a whole lot with it, I have really been enjoying the Ormande Jayne sampler set I received in the mail a couple of weeks ago. Perfumes from this line seem to pop up a lot when I am reading perfume blogs - most often, it seems, Ta'if and Ormonde Man. I am working my way through the samplers and I am here to tell you that they are all good so far. A couple of them - Frangipani and Ormonde Man - are fast becoming favorites.

When my family was living in Micronesia, we had frangipani trees in the yard, and I can still remember their distinctively sweet, milky, gingery smell. Frangipani the perfume smells a bit different from my memory of the flower, but it is recognizable, and I love it so much I am having a hard time tearing myself away from it to try some of the others. But I did manage to also spritz two perfumes - Ormonde Jayne Man and Ormonde Jayne Woman - on either wrist this evening. Ormonde Jayne Man is another one that I pretty much adored from the first sniff - very peppery without being annoying, with some nice woods, including oud - and this will go on my growing list of masculine scents that I can't resist. Ormonde Jayne Woman is wonderful - soft spices somehow paired with dark greens, among other things. This is a captivating, complex perfume, and while it didn't grab me instantly like the other two, I know that I will be going back to it, like a particularly good Edith Wharton novel.

stuffy nose

My nose has been crippled by a cold for the past couple of weeks, and I'm dying because I just got the Ormonde Jayne sampler pack and I can't frickin smell any of 'em. Last night I tried, but the only one I could smell even a little bit was Frangipani (smelled good, from what I can tell). I am practically in tears from the frustration of it all. But it will probably be at least another week or so before I'm recovered, so in the meantime I will do other stuff, like work and laundry and stuff.

andy warhol union square

I love that Andy Warhol was buried with a copy of Interview magazine and a bottle of Estee Lauder Beautiful perfume. Popular legend (i.e., Wikipedia) doesn't tell me whether he loved this particular perfume, but he was, by all accounts, a perfume lover, and I could see how he might like a big, bright, plastic-y floral like Beautiful. And I've become curious to compare Beautiful with two recent Bond No. 9 perfumes that were inspired by Andy Warhol, i.e., Andy Warhol Union Square and Andy Warhol Silver Factory, so here goes.

First, Andy Warhol Union Square. This perfume is a recent launch, and like nearly all of the Bond No. 9 perfumes I've tried so far, it goes on like gangbusters. Andy would certainly approve. The first blast of top notes is very pleasing to my nose, and includes the smell of grass, sugar, and possibly chlorine. There are also some bold white and green florals here, and maybe a touch of asphalt or other building materials. First impression is that this perfume pretty much nails the smell of Springtime in the city. The middle notes emerge fairly quickly, and include some big, sweet flowers - it's here, especially in the fabulous lily, where I definitely recognize some of Estee Lauder's genetic material. It's also at this point that I realize that what I mistook for chlorine earlier appears to be a wood - a bright, sharp wood that furthers a resemblance to Beautiful. But Union Square has more going on here than just Beautiful's big, bright floral. To me, it smells like the playground and the playground attendant, if it were snack time and the attendant were wearing Beautiful.

Okay, now Andy Warhol Silver Factory. I love this perfume. Although both Silver Factory and Union Square are perfumes that grab one's attention, rather sharply, I don't so much see any resemblance between SF and Beautiful. What I'm struck by instead is that both Silver Factory and Union Square have what seem to me to be very distinctive and well-integrated floral accords, each of which works an unusual job. For Silver Factory, I think the florals are what create that metallic/silver note; in Union Square, they result in more of a dessert note (maybe it's the freesia doing the work there?).

After another couple of hours, I am starting to really fall in love with Union Square. I don't know if it's the amber in the base or what, but it seems as though the combination of bright woods and sweet greens has lasted through to the end, and gained a really wonderful softness. Bond No. 9 calls this perfume warm and cool at the same time, but I would characterize it more as bright and dark - and at the end, it has a very nice depth that manages to elude melancholy. It's a little heavy and sweet for a Springtime fragrance, but I will definitely be wearing this one in the next few months.

One last note on what is probably my own favorite Estee Lauder perfume - i.e., White Linen. White Linen is such a nice, pleasing perfume in the bottle or the air that it makes me chuckle. On me it mostly smells like crayon, for some reason. Which is still a pretty nice smell.

ysl M7

My favorite perfume to wear right now is Yves Saint Laurent M7, which is a freakishly earthy, woody, dark masculine fragrance, but there you go.

andy warhol union square perfume bottle

I like this perfume bottle. What do you think? What do you think the perfume smells like?
(image courtesy of Bond No. 9)

strawberries

I went to the Lake Merritt farmer's market Saturday morning and got a basket of strawberries, and just now had some of them with my lunch. And I am here to tell you there really aren't too many things better than the sweet, dark, creamy fragrance of slightly over-ripe California strawberries in season. This incredible smell doesn't come from the strawberries that you buy at Safeway; I think the difference is that Safeway strawberries are picked green in order to make them travel well, and the farmer's market strawberries go more directly to the consumer - they are picked closer to ripening, and don't have to travel too far. To do it right, you really should go to the source - to the Central Coast, where I grew up, and get your strawberries from a location as close to the field as is available. And the strawberries you want are those ones that are just hitting that edge between ripe and rotting - based on my empirical research, there is a very short window for this, of about one or two days. And then you have your perfect strawberries, and that wonderful fragrance, which must be what it smells like in heaven.

interview

A couple of weeks ago, Robin at NowSmellThis arranged for an interactive interview with Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez, the authors of Perfumes: A Guide. Readers of NowSmellThis posted questions for the authors, and the interview is a series of responses - you can find it here. And a very entertaining read it is, especially for me since I am in the middle of reading the Guide right now (I have already broke the rule I made for myself to not read reviews of perfumes I haven't sniffed, oops).

I sent in a few, silly questions - here is their the response to one of them:


smelltheglove: Have you ever dreamed of a perfume, and what did it smell like?

LT: Thanks for the question, smells appeared in my dreams only a few years back. Until then I'd be smelling something and thinking it was pretty weak. Then in a dream I smelled perfume and it was exactly like Jeffrey Dame's Wanderlust: big, old-fashioned and very nice.

TS: Only a couple of times. I can't remember the smell, only that it was powerful. It's like when you dream you're reading something, a message of prophetic and possibly global import, and you remember everything about it (tone, typeface, paper, degree of eloquence) except what it said.


Love it!

I sent fan mail

I read Perfumes: The Guide last night until my eyelids wouldn't stay open and today I am drinking coffee, blearily. Before I went to bed last night, I sent a fan email to Ms. Sanchez and Mr. Turin, telling them I love love love the book, but why no CB I Hate Perfumes or Demeter fragrance reviews? By golly, I got an email this morning from Luca Turin in response, the substance of which I will share: Mr. Turin writes that he feels that these two perfume brands "(very deliberately) fall short of being perfumes proper, in the same way that a sound is not music. All you can say abt them is how well they approximate the intended thing." By golly! Can't say I agree. Perfumes: The Guide includes reviews of similarly simple/one-note fragrances, such as the Clean line and (it could be argued) Jo Malone, so I still think it's an omission. But also a clearly-reasoned one.

my jicky

I am risking the discomfort of my co-workers today and am wearing Jicky, one of my very favoritest perfumes and one of the old, classic Guerlain fragrances that (as I understand it) haven't changed that much, in the last few decades at least. Some Guerlains are ridiculously, deeply gorgeous; others are so poignant they bring a lump to the throat; others are so mossy and sharp I have trouble being in the same room with them. Jicky is none of these things. Its mix of spice, vanilla and woods is similar to Shalimar, but it is earthier and somehow subtler than Shalimar, I think. The warm-skin quality of the middle and base notes could lull you into a sleepy feeling of intimacy, if there wasn't that clever little thread of herbal/floral freshness (lavender, rosemary and bergamot are in the list of notes) running through the thing to alert your senses and make your eyes fly open again. This is one of the most balanced perfumes I know, but not so much in terms of ingredients as in terms of personality - it is a balance of indoors and outdoors, depth and clarity, humor and intelligence. This may be an odd way to describe it, but it smells like a great-smelling person wearing a simple, great-smelling perfume. Another way to describe it is as a testament to a fine and easy union between feminine and masculine. To me, it is the smell of a life well-lived.

I like the name, too. If I had named it, I probably would have come up with something like "Manure and Lavender," which I'm sure would have made it fly off the shelves. And which is why nobody is eager to pay me the big bucks to write perfume ad copy.

I got it I got it I got it

Got my copy of Perfumes: The Guide today in the mail. God Bless Amazon! Or rather, God Bless the Amazon distribution warehouse, which I think is, like, 15 miles from my house.

It's over 400 pages, so I haven't *quite* finished reading it yet - A few first impressions:

1. It is fabulous.

2. I don't agree with some of the ratings so far.

3. As far as I can tell, they haven't reviewed a single I Hate Perfumes or Demeter fragrance.

Yes. Also, I have decided that I will try not to read the perfume reviews until I have smelled the perfumes. I've already read most of the reviews of perfumes that I have smelled. Here are a few choice excerpts from reviews of some popular/classic fragrances:

L'Interdit, Givenchy (lactonic floral, TS, four stars): ...much of its pleasure is the thrill of the retro, like watching a perfectly restored old black-and-white film and falling under the spell of that midcentury acting-school accent.

cKOne, Calvin Klein (radiant citrus, LT, four stars): CK One is not so much a perfume as a chemical time machine....The mix in the air is unvarying, and time forever stands still at 8 a.m.: the frozen morning of a day full of promise.

Lovely, Sarah Jessica Parker (cute floral, LT, four stars): ....Naturally, I approached it with the proper furrowed brow of the critic-not-to-be-taken-in-by-nonsense. Five seconds later, I was like Solly in Monsters, Inc., clutching little Boo to his hirsute breast. This is a truly charming floral....Makes you want to buy furry toys.

Dang, I was going to do my taxes tonight.

my jacket smells funny

I noticed a smell today, and at first I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. Smelled like old water faucet - you know that metallic, cold, slightly sweet smell? not a bad smell at all, but sort of otherwise incongruous with my surroundings. I sniffed a bunch of things until I located the smell in the woolen pea coat I wore to work today. Weird - it must be the remains of some perfume I have worn recently, but I can't put a name to it. Maybe this is the last little breath of Mitsuoko?

Perfumes, The Guide

I am counting the days (one) until Amazon ships me my copy of Perfumes: The Guide, by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez. I haven't looked forward to something so much since the last Harry Potter book. Perfumes: The Guide will include some good basic educational stuff, like the answers to such questions as "what's the difference between eau de toilette and eau de cologne?" and "how long does perfume keep?" - it will also include reviews of hundreds of perfumes, which is what I am really looking forward to. Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez produce some of the very best writing on perfume I have yet encountered, and I think reading this book is going to be an experience in just sheer, unadulterated pleasure.

Here are excerpts of two reviews from the book, taken from the authors' website - the first review is by Sanchez, the second by Turin:


What saves KenzoAmour from falling into the sticky caramel death trap that gums up other vanillas is that its loyalties lie not with cakes and cookies but with something more low-key: rice pudding. While this may make Amour seem fit only for the toothless, its soothing, softly powdery vanilla-woods sweetness stays from dinner until breakfast.... TS


....[Bois de Violette's] woody-fruity violet smell of methyl ionone recapitulates and intensifies the rest of the fragrance. Its rotation takes place around the center; the stained glass mandala is perfected by a violet gem around which everything dances. I remember stepping out of Lutens’s purple shop into the perpetually quiet walled gardens, armed with this purple smell with a purple name, thinking I was carrying the most precious object in the world.... LT


I'm not posting these excerpts here to make you run out and buy the book, just to let you enjoy some dang good writing.

perfume rampage, part two

I'm back, almost a week later, with Perfume Rampage: The Sequel!

Later that day after the I Hate Perfumes field trip, I hopped on BART to meet J in the City, at Saks. As I swung open one of the heavy glass doors, a gorgeous drag queen with a bronze up-do, a long, golden-brown mink coat and fabulous boots swept into Saks next to me. It was nice, like the spirit of the store saying, Hello darlin', welcome to my house.

I landed in short order in front of the Bond No. 9 counter. I have been very curious to smell some of the Bond No. 9 fragrances, because the discussions on perfume blogs I read have been full of them, with many raves. Bond No. 9 was started after (and partly in reaction to) September 11, by a French woman who has been a long-time resident of New York City. It seems to me as though these perfumes, named after different parts of the city (Chelsea Flowers, Bleecker Street, Nuits De NoHo), were inspired by that post-9/11 burst of feeling - of patriotism, humanism and fierce nostalgia. In a way, this line is the other side of the I Hate Perfumes coin - Bond No. 9 also evokes place, although in a style that is far more baroque, and one that operates at a higher volume. As we found out that afternoon, Bond No. 9 goes to eleven.

The guy behind the counter liberally sprayed sample cards for us of half a dozen different fragrances - here are some of my impressions:

Chinatown: a very sweet, strong, earthy floral. Not really my thing, from what I could tell from the scent on the card.

Scent of Peace: simple, clean, floral with a little bit of fruit (blackcurrant, I think), and some nice woods. As advertised, a peaceful scent.

Wall Street: if you like the way fresh, salty money smells, you will like this fragrance. I think it is supposed to smell more like marine air than a Benjamin, but I couldn't help smelling cash (maybe it's psychological). And I'm not particularly greedy or acquisitive, but I love the leathery paper smell of money as much as the next nose, and I really liked this perfume (which I think is aimed at men).

Andy Warhol Silver Factory: this perfume, whose inspiration was the studio where Andy Warhol lived and shot his movies, is one I've been wanting to try for a while. The "silver" in the title refers to the tin foil that decorated Andy Warhol's original Factory. I expected the perfume to be a whole lot funkier than it is - was somehow thinking it would smell of platform shoes, cigarettes and film stock, but it's really pretty clean. The notes, which include bergamot, cedar, and patchouli, form a seamless blend - one that somehow manages to be intense and smooth at the same time. Not so much the crumpled squalor of tin foil; more the aerodynamic elegance of fuselage. Very nice.

Chelsea Flowers: this one is a pale yet somewhat bracing floral, and smells great. Notes include peony, tulip, hyacinth and rose, as well as vetiver and musk. The flowers smell fresh, young, and very green - crunchy green - and I liked it enough to get a spray on my left wrist.

New Haarlem: the sweet flavor of this one hit me like a blast of air from a trumpet; I don't think I've ever smelled such an aggressive vanilla. New Haarlem's notes include chocolate, coffee, vanilla, patchouli and lavender, and I definitely also smelled some toasty coconut in there, as well, though it's not in the list of notes. To be honest, I sort of hated it at first (maybe because I am not really a coffee drinker?), but I am developing an appreciation for perfumes that are obnoxious right out of the bottle, and as I kept going back to smell the card, this one seemed to keep getting better after that first, noisy blast. It's an attention-grabber - a smell that seemed to perfectly match the visual and aural experience of listening to hot, loud, basement jazz. I got this one sprayed on my right wrist.

After we left, and during the hours that followed, Chelsea Flowers kept smelling good, but less and less, until it was just a faint wisp of scent on my wrist. New Haarlem, on the other hand, just kept belting it out. It stayed obnoxious for a while until it had won all of my respect, and then it softened into a nice, spicy, slightly woodsy caramel scent, and lasted until the following morning. I couldn't have predicted that it would have become my favorite scent of the day, but that's how it turned out.

minor perfume rampage, part one

My nose is still a little bit stuffed up, but I went on a minor perfume rampage last weekend anyway, on account of I was having the withdrawrals. Went seeking out two different types of perfumes: CB I Hate Perfumes and Bond No. 9. Some of the I Hate Perfumes line is carried by a little boutique in Berkeley, and I had heard that Saks carries Bond No. 9. So off I trotted, with about $7 in my wallet and $2.30 on a BART pass, and a stern self-admonition not to use my credit card (it’s the end of the month).

The owner of the boutique in Berkeley was deep in consultation with another customer when I got there, so I occupied myself at the little shelf holding about nine or ten of Christopher Brosius' creations. A word here about I Hate Perfumes: I frickin' love the way they smell. Another word: I love the way they look - the packaging design is easily the most minimalistic (home-made, even) of any I have encountered in the perfume world. Although I do recognize that it is a gimmick in and of itself, I appreciate the zero-flash approach to marketing that some of my favorite perfumers employ. Frederic Malle (Editions de Parfums) and Jo Malone are two other examples of perfumers with similarly stripped-down styles (although you could argue that Jo Malone's package design ripped off Chanel's classic white-box-with-tasteful-name-in-neat-black-font look, if you wanted to be nasty). At any rate, there’s so much more scope for the imagination in sniffing a perfume that doesn’t have a picture of a naked celebrity on the box, is what I always say.

On the wall behind the I Hate Perfumes shelf was a printed copy of Christopher Brosius' manifesto, which you can also read on the I Hate Perfumes website (a website with a minimalistic design, natch). A few choice bon mots:

"People who smell like everyone else disgust me."

"Perfume is the weather of our inner world bringing life to a personal landscape."

To me, the latter statement is a pretty good summary of the scent aesthetics of this line. I Hate Perfumes presents seemingly simple, un-perfume-like smells - like apple, or dirt, or crayon, or burning leaves - directly. This is perfume as place, with the perfumer letting us use our memory and imagination as the bridge. A Guerlain fragrance, by contrast, might venerate a particular idea of a beautiful woman, or man - Guerlain perfumes are ornate, opaque creations of real art and beauty - but they are about something that is often, to me at least, largely fictional. CB I Hate Perfumes is about the real. It has a certain power which is difficult for me to define any further, but it commands my respect.

And the beauty of these perfumes on the skin can take my breath away. At home, I have In the Library - my gateway I Hate Perfumes scent, which smells great but I haven't really worn it - Tea Rose, which smells, not like a tea rose, but like black tea with cream in it next to a sweet flower; while I like both scents and I really like the combination, this one isn't my favorite, maybe because the milk part starts to smell a little curdled in my nose after a while - Memory of Kindness, a perfume with a strong personality that I had a dream about - and Black March, which smells like potting soil, rain, and fresh green shoots, and is one of my all-time favorite perfumes so far. At the boutique, I sprayed Burning Leaves, Wild Pansy, Mr. (sic) Hulot's Holiday, and In the Kitchen (among others) on several paper strips. They were all great, and Wild Pansy and Mr. Hulot's Holiday were terrific, so I ended up putting one on each wrist. Mr. Hulot's Holiday is supposed to smell like an old-fashioned holiday by the Mediterranean, complete with old suitcases, and it was my favorite of the two. It seems to me to be in the "salt and leather" category, and it is an excellent, though fairly subtle, example of this class – the perfume is mostly woody and actually pretty delicate, with some fresh, breezy notes, and those nice, supporting notes of salt and leather. Wild Pansy smelled like sweet, dirty, green flower shoots – like spring flowers busting through the forest soil. Not unlike the smell you might get if you took some wild pansies and mashed them up, flowers, roots, stems and all, in a sort of joyful, Spring-inspired frenzy. Delicious. Both perfumes have pretty good lasting power. Not so good as the perfume I tried later that day. But I get ahead of myself.

I liked Mr. Hulot’s Holiday enough that I wanted to purchase a bottle, so I looked over towards the boutique owner, but she was still deep in it with her other client, and I figured that was a sign (or at least a chance for the credit card in my wallet to yell DON’T USE ME in a tiny plastic voice only I could hear), so I slipped out and bought myself some fries for lunch.

Later that day I met J in the City for a proper sensory overload. Next post!

sniffle

I have a cold, so what with the stuffed up nose and all the napping, I will be taking a break from posting about perfumes for a few days.

mitsuoko

This morning I dabbed some Guerlain Mitsuoko (eau de parfum) on my wrists before going to work. I had tried it once before and was so turned off I scrubbed myself with soap almost immediately, but I determined to try again. The first whiff of the stuff on my wrists made me feel sorry for any co-workers who might get too close today. I continued to sniff it as I biked to work, as I sat working at my computer, and as I walked around the lake this afternoon. The scent did change somewhat over the course of the day, but it only improved marginally. And I have to say I was disappointed in myself - Mitsuoko is one of the great fragrances, and I was bummed I couldn't see what all the fuss is about. It's like admitting to not being a big fan of Citizen Kane or The White Album. This perfume is supposed to be radiantly, transcendently wonderful - it's even brought some people to tears. And all I could smell was cloves and pee.

But then something happened this evening: the fierce, almost nasty edge to the perfume drifted away, and I was left with this softened, friendly yet complicated thing. It seemed as though there was something that should have been in the top notes - either lemon or apple - mixing with the ghost of the other stuff, in the base. The sharp edge from before was still there - a hint of aldehydes, maybe? - but subdued, and the scent had assumed an entirely new personality - sad, but sweet, kind of like that friend whose company you enjoy more than anyone's but who always seems to be in trouble. I splashed some of Laura Ashley's L'Eau - a simple, clean floral I really like - on the back of my hands this evening for comparison, and I was struck for the first time with the thought that the L'Eau was shallow, almost naive - at least, compared to the thing on my wrist. And now the L'Eau is disappearing, but I'm still enveloped in this cloud of Mitsuoko. I hope some of it got on my coat today. I wouldn't mind at all if this one sticks around for a while.

dream perfume

Sunday morning, right before I woke up, I dreamed of a perfume. In my dream I was in San Francisco or maybe Italy, in a Prada boutique. Once I realized where I was, I started searching for Infusion d'Iris, a perfume I had been reading about but hadn't smelled. The saleslady found it for me and sprayed it on my arm. I sniffed: a very strong, bitter scent, of green shoots and leaves, and white pepper, and jet fuel. It filled my nostrils and made my eyes sting, but it wasn't a totally unpleasant experience. But it didn't smell like a flower. I sniffed some more, then woke up.

Today when I came home, I got some more samplers in the mail (these are the last for a while. I swear.). One of them was Prada's Infusion d'Iris, so I eagerly dabbed some on my wrist, to see if it smelled like I dreamed it. It smells, in a word, heavenly. A delicate, sweet (but not sugary) floral, with a hint of warm woods, and just a little bit of a green edge. It is a beautiful, pale purple perfume. In other words, nothing at all like the one in my dream. But a real beauty. It has won some awards, and I can see why.

Two other perfumes that I got in the mail, both from CB I Hate Perfume, are worth mentioning here. One is called Memory of Kindness, and I couldn't quite place the smell - grass? leaves? - so I looked it up: the main note is tomato leaves. And it smells exactly like tomato leaves - bitter, peppery, earthy. The other one, called Black March, smells exactly like clean, fresh dirt with some green shoots poking through. I really like it. Put them together and they actually smell pretty close to the perfume in my dream, except for the jet fuel.

I love I Hate Perfume.

more tiny bottles

I wore Eau de Soir by Sisley today - it's starting to grow on me. It's a more traditional French perfume, somewhat aldehydic (like Chanel No. 5) and, to my mind, fairly aggressive. My first experience of Eau de Soir actually made me recoil a little bit. But the initial, volatile burst of top notes does evaporate, and the perfume eventually mellows somewhat - by the end of the day, I smelled pretty good (to myself, anyway).

This evening, my sister picked me up and we went and got dinner and did some shopping. I dragged her to the Body Shop, where I layered a few more scents on top of the Eau de Soir. Then I went home, to discover a bonanza of samplers in my mailbox. I was ripping open packages even as I was walking through the door to my apartment, and within minutes I had five more fragrances on my skin. As I type this, I am probably smelling somewhat ridiculous. And I am totally blissed out. My cat doesn't know what to think.

The problem, of course, is that I am wearing too much perfume. I can't quite tell one smell from another at this point. I think I may need to take a two-day sabbatical in order to be able to use my nose properly again. My sister made a good point tonight - that the more one uses perfume, the more likely it is that one's sniffer becomes de-sensitized. (I think she made this point partly because she noticed how, um, fragrant I am today.) At any rate, I need to take a break.

One last thing - one of the samples in the mail was a Laura Ashley perfume, and I will have to re-visit this when my nose is less handicapped, but my first impression is a really nice one. It's L'Eau, made by Jean-Claude Ellena, and it smells like...water. Imagine it's a hot, thirsty spring day and you are drinking a cold glass of clean, sweet water, and you will have an idea of what this one smells like. The fragrance is really delicate - it's definitely a "fresh" perfume, with some light floral and citrus notes, but there's also a faint tinge of anise, or licorice, and something else - a saltiness, maybe? so, so nice.

Oops, I was supposed to write about men's perfumes or cat butt (not necessarily linking the two). Okay, that will be the next post.

probably too much information

I think my sense of smell, and my sense of what smells good, changes depending on what time of the month it is. Hmm.

super longs

Last weekend, I went with my sister to the Super Longs on 51st in Oakland. We went there for plants (her) and kitty litter (me), as well as some aimless browsing. Since there was nobody at the cosmetics counter when we walked by, I felt free to try some of the perfumes that weren’t enclosed in glass. I sprayed Y Tu Tambien on one wrist, Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen's Beach Honeysuckle on the other wrist, and Love's Baby Soft on the back of my hand. Then someone came over the loudspeaker and said something like "customer needs assistance at the cosmetics counter," so I booked it over to the earring racks to avoid someone asking me why I was opening boxes and spraying myself with stuff. Serves them right for not having testers.

The beach honeysuckle was actually pretty nice - smelled a lot like, well, beaches and honeysuckle - and not too sweet, but it wasn't memorable, either. I liked Y Tu Tambien - mango and vanilla, with a little bit of green, kind of like J. Lo's Live but less complex - but my sister turned up her nose at it. I thought about getting one of the (very cheap) bottles of Y Tu Tambien gathering dust on the counter, but it turned out to be lacking any base whatsoever - it evaporated and nearly disappeared, leaving only the faintest trace of vanilla, before I even left the store. I guess I've been spoiled by some of the fancy scents I've been experimenting with at home - the ones that stay around long after you've forgotten you were wearing them. Light Blue, Live, and (especially) Bigarade Concentree are all able to sustain memorable and varied conversations long after the first spray. Is the name for that quality sillage, or persistance? At any rate, my sister and I both liked the Love's Baby Soft. It is a pretty classic scent.

We also got some lip gloss (her) and a People magazine (me).

The next post will be about either men's colognes or cats' butts.

dream interpreter

Lo and behold, a perfume website has a dream interpreter feature. Click here, the website for Tommy Hilfiger's Dreaming perfume, click on The Dream Expert, then click on the dream interpreter link. Interesting. Incidentally, I've smelled this new perfume and it's pretty nice - as fruity (peachy) florals go, it may be one of the better ones.

I just tried to use the interpreter to de-code a dream I had a few nights ago, but "poison cupcake" isn't one of the recognized terms. Drat.

old spice commercial

Possibly the best commercial ever. Featuring Bruce Campbell.

tiny bottles

I’m almost, but not quite, embarrassed to admit that my perfume collection has grown recently to over two dozen fragrances, with the help of the internet. But wait, I hear you ask: don’t all those bottles take up a ton of space? And are you going to start selling drugs to little kids to finance your habit? The answers to your questions are No; and Thank you for your concern but no. Because all of the perfumes I’m talking about are sample sizes of 1.5 mL or less. And most of them cost about two dollars each. Yeah, homes. That’s what I’m talking about.

Turns out, with the help of the tiny, frantic monkeys inside my computer, I can order samples of nearly any perfume I hear or read about. My favorite website is The Perfumed Court, where they sell hand-decanted samples of hundreds – maybe thousands – of perfumes. But even Amazon.com sells perfume samplers – Lovely, J’Adore, and Angel, among others. And if you have vials of those three little babies, you’ve really got something good there.

See? Didn’t I tell you don’t need a ton of dough to be able to appreciate perfumes? Truthfully, I do need to stop getting samples for a while, because even at two or three bucks a pop, it starts to add up.

On my left wrist is Angel (sweet, chocolatey, great-smelling but not really me); on my left shoulder is Apres L’Ondee (pretty disappointing; smells like violets and toilet cleaner); on my right wrist is Bigarade Concentree (stunning; smells like mandarin orange rind and warm cedar, in a really, really good way); and on my right shoulder is Rose Barbare (Ah. Divinity.). I smell…interesting. My cat doesn’t know what to think.

lovely/covet

I am sitting here - reclining, actually - on the couch, and I smell like Sarah Jessica Parker. On my left wrist is Lovely, which was created about two years ago (I am always, always behind the curve); on the other is Covet, which was released recently. Both are perfumes created by Ms. Parker. And I must say, I smell really fricking good. Especially on the left.

A lot has been written about Lovely, especially by Mr. Chandler Burr (otherwise known as my boyfriend [if he weren't gay]). His still new-ish book, The Perfect Scent, includes an in-depth description of how this perfume was created. I personally thought Lovely was a dorky name for a perfume and I thought the commercial for the perfume was dorky, too, when it came out. At that time, I think if I had to choose between browsing celebrity perfumes and chewing on a lightbulb while it was still plugged in and glowing, I probably would have picked the latter. What a difference a couple of years makes. My goodness.

Covet, the more recently-created perfume, smells pretty darned good. It starts out with a nice, sharp blend of fresh greeny-ness and lemon, along with a few other fairly assertive smells. The whole thing would, in fact, be maybe too aggressive except mixed in there is also a small handful of smoother qualities - I couldn't really define any of them for myself until I looked the perfume up on the internet and was able to identify: Chocolate! Nice choice.

Lovely is the twin sister of Covet, but, like, the paternal twin sister. Definitely the blonde one. Covet, in fact, would probably smell pretty irresistible on a guy, but Lovely could work well on either or any of the genders. It is pretty wonderful, in fact. In fact, I can't seem to stop sniffing my arm. The perfume has settled down to a quiet powderiness, but the first smell out of the bottle was a real zinger, albeit not a noisy one. I inhaled: a sweet, subdued floral mixed with a nice dose of woodsiness and a very nice ambery smell...plus something else that I couldn't name, except that it smelled exactly like drama class. Exactly like Lisser Theater on the Mills campus. I'm still not sure if it is the mixture of cedar and amber, plus the delicate touches of narcissus and patchouli, but whatever it is, it's great. It smells like white flowers and salty skin. Chandler Burr calls it "a sheath of light built around a core of dark." Yes.

Okay, I've been sniffing myself for a couple of hours now, and it seems as though Lovely has settled down with a pillow and a book in her corner of the windowseat, but Covet is still goin' strong and wants me to know about it. Even after a few hours, the greeny-ness is still mixing really nicely with the chocolate, plus all the other stuff that's going on in there.

DAMN, I smell good.

name that smell

So, you knew there were perfumes called White Linen and Egoiste, but did you know there was one called In the Library? Perfume names, like perfume bottles and (some) perfume commercials, are one of the fun parts of the whole perfume obsession. (Obsession, that's another one.) Some names are simple and direct - Chanel No.s 5, 19 and 22 come to mind - others are more lyrical, like Hermes' Un Jardin Sur Le Nil (it smells like green mangoes, which I guess are common in gardens on the Nile). And others are metaphorical, whimsical or just plain weird, like Dzing! by L'Artisan Parfumeur.

Here are some of my favorites among the more weirder perfume names (some descriptions taken from the Perfumed Court website):

In the Library, by CB I Hate Perfume - First of all, love the name of this perfume house. Perhaps predictably, this is supposed to smell like "a combination of Russian & Moroccan leather bindings, worn cloth and a hint of wood polish." Other perfumes by CB I Hate Perfume include Burning Leaves and I Am a Dandelion (which is supposed to smell "rich, earthy, with a slightly milky feel").

Dzing! by L'Artisan Parfumeur - Chandler Burr says this smells "like a plank of newly sawed pine still warm from the blade."

Garage, by Comme des Garcons - I love the description of this one: "Don't think just grease, oil and rubber...Think of your father working on a car, an old leather chair, or your grandparent's toolshed." The scent of this one is supposed to include notes of kerosene and "plastic flowers."

Guerrilla, by Comme des Garcons - This one has notes that include saffron, black pepper, and vetiver.

Lady Vengrance and Miss Charming, by Juliette Has a Gun - I don't know what these two smell like, but I just like the juxtaposition of the names, and the name of the house.

Let me Play the Lion and Unicorn Spell, by LesNez - Another good pair of names.

Magazine Street, by Strange Invisible Perfumes - I mostly just like the name of this perfume house. Magazine Street is in New Orleans and I think this perfume is supposed to be somewhat spicy.

Dzing!

I like me some perfume. I think this confuses people who know me and know that I am neither a rich old lady nor a young, ultra-feminine one. I blame the internet, and the many good perfume sites out there, for feeding my interest in all things smelly. I have known about some of these sites for a while, but it hasn't been until recently that I started really scouring them for information, following links, going from one site where the writer raves about the candy-and-concrete flair of Thierry Mugler's Angel, to another site that describes Angel as "chocolate-covered vomit."

The godfather of all perfume critics is, of course, Chandler Burr, who writes a regular column for the New York Times Style section. I have yet to be convinced that Mr. Burr has better taste in perfume than, say, the women who write reviews for the Perfume Posse (theirs was the "chocolate-covered vomit" quote), but he is an enthusiastic critic and his writing style really pops off the page (er, monitor).

For example, reviewing Guerlain's Insolence, Mr. Burr writes that it "smells like fruit compote sprinkled with Splenda: aesthetically nondescript...spiritually flat...Inside the industry they speak of Insolence grimly, as of a suicide." His review of CK One: "It's the freshness of laundry washed in the artificial gravity of a space colony." His review of Calyx: "It's a green freshness that is viscerally alive...vivid as a young tree ripped in half by a storm...This is an HDTV perfume." And Yves Saint Laurents' Kouros is like the "hot, ripe smell of a French trucker's Jockey shorts after a muggy day on the A51...This perfume is fecal." Hard to top that.

Other than perfume websites, there was also this recent visit I had with the Guerlain counter at Neiman Marcus in San Francisco. I was browsing - couldn't really afford to buy - and looking at some of the perfumes near the front of the display. The small French woman at the counter started spraying perfume on strips for me - I think she was picking scents that she thought I would like. They were nice - floral, pretty - but none of them really sparked. I spotted a bottle of Sous le Vent and asked for a strip. Her eyes narrowed. "'Ow you know Sous le Vent?" she asked, almost suspiciously. "Um, think I read something about it," I muttered. She sprayed a strip, I sniffed: It smelled like damp woods and the city. Flowers, too, but also other stuff. Spices, but it wasn't spicy. There were lots of things in there. "That one's interesting," I told my petite friend. She steered me towards some other perfumes, on the shelf behind the counter. "This one is Double Vanille, and this one is Rose Barbare," she told me, spraying two more strips. I sniffed the first one: a deep, rich vanilla - strong, but not overpowering. I was an instant fan. And then I sniffed the second strip. And my brain exploded, a little bit. I had liked Sous le Vent, but this one smelled almost unbelievably good. Like the most beautiful, dark rose, but also like earth, wood, deep water. I sniffed and sniffed. My nose was glued to the small piece of paper. My French friend smiled at me through her little German glasses. "Wow," I said.

And that's where I am starting from. I would like to find other perfumes that make the same impression on me as those ones from that visit with the Guerlain counter. And I would like to be able to use words other than "wow" to describe them. I want to develop an ability to smell the parts of a perfume - jasmine, iris, bergamot, chypre, civet - and I want to be able to write it all down on the page - er, monitor.

And I'm here to tell you that my working hypothesis is that sniffing perfume is neither a particularly girly, nor a particularly high-class pursuit. We all have noses, don't we? and we all know that what we like to smell is as particular as what we like to eat. We just talk about it less than we talk about food. But there are perfumes for all noses. Some people love the smell of microwave popcorn, others love the smell of a really green banana, others love tuberose. And others love the smell of leather mixed with a cat's dirty butt. (No, I did not make that one up; and yes, there really is a perfume that smells like that.) All of us, or most of us, love the smell of vanilla.

So this is my new web page about perfume, but what it is really about is how I am trying to learn how to use my nose, and then write about it. It's not a joke. It's for real. And it's harder than you might think. Also, it's really, really fun. I have named this new page after the classic Spinal Tap album.