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.