Where in the world did today go? I was going to write a nice, thoughtful post for y’all, but between finally noticing that I only have 30 minutes to change planes in D.C. to make our flight for Paris and finding out some but — as — notveryniceword creepy agency decided to put some other Patty White’s unpaid bill on my credit report, which takes umpteen phone calls to protest and start undoing, plus the mandatory complaint I made to the FTC just because it ruined my zen for the day, I did not get a nice or thoughtful post written.   It’s 8 p.m. at night, and I’m finally packed and ready to go.  Some of you might point out that that happens frequently, and I would be the first to agree.

We’re off to Paris with my youngest son, my sister and niece.  My sister and niece have never been before, and they are completely freaked out that we may not make that connection in D.C., leaving her to navigate he Paris airport to the hotel on her own for 24 hours.  Taking pity on her, we’re going to go to the airport about 6 hours early and try to standby for an earlier flight.

What I’m most looking forward to sniffing is hopefully the new vanilla Hermessence. Not sure if it’s out yet, but we’ll sure go look.  And that new Serge, is it the cellophane thing?  I haven’t heard the actual date of release for it, but will definitelly take a peak at that.  Anything anyone wants me to sniff or that I should hunt down while I’m there? Besides plenty of macaroons and a couple of cute little hats.  I’ll be able to check in at different points this week.

Can we talk briefly about The Bachelor?  This is the first time they’ve had a bachelor that seems like a pretty great guy.  Every season, this stupid show sucks me in, to my bitter regret, much like American Idol.  I get emotionally attached to these media whores and just want to kick myself for watching the first episode. Am I the only one that does that?

 Oh!  Almost forgot.  It looks like March and I will be heading to L.A. in March’ish.  We’ll know dates in the next couple of weeks, but if you’re in the area or have been wanting a trip there or have ideas on can’t-miss visits, beyond the usual suspects, we’re all ears!

I love the new, controversial Bond No. 9 Booklyn bottle – I think it’s total eye candy.  Apparently some folks object to the idea of Brooklyn being represented by graffiti, but I’m under the impression that at least parts of Brooklyn are now so lousy with Bugaboo-pushing trustafarians that a little graffiti symbolism would be welcomed with (artfully tattooed) open arms as either warm nostalgia or a burst of street credibility.  But what do I know?  I’ve been to Brooklyn twice – once to visit Christopher Brosius and once when I got on the wrong train — so let’s move on to the fragrance.

Actually, let’s take a slight detour to commend the accompanying press kit, written in a style that doesn’t make me want to smack my head on my desk or wet myself laughing.   If you do not waste your daily hours reading such things, this is more surprising than you’d think.  A warm, friendly shout-out to the person tasked with taking Bond’s “vision” of Brooklyn and writing an informative, reasonably clever marketing piece that doesn’t make me suffer for my art.

So.  How is Bond Brooklyn?  Well… the notes are grapefruit, cardamom, cypress-wood, geranium leaves, juniper berries, cedarwood, leather, and guaiacwood.  This would lead you to suspect, correctly, that the fragrance is “unisex with a desirably masculine attitude,” in the words of the press release.

Brooklyn opens with a big squeeze of slightly sweet grapefruit accompanied by the cardamom, and it’s a lovely, bright combination.  The pungent-woody cypress and juniper follow right behind, for a twist of gin martini.  Then there’s a stretch of a few minutes so quiet that I’m wondering whether I’m partly anosmic to the fragrance, but it’s pleasant enough.  The grapefruit hangs around for a surprising length of time given its usual short-lived volatility.  When the geranium appears, midway though the development, the fragrance is at its most traditionally “masculine.”  This verdant, damp, aggressive herbaceousness is my least favorite part on me but I suspect probably the most interesting for a lot of men.

The leather, when it arrives, doesn’t read as leather at all to my nose.  Combined with the guaiac in the drydown it fills the spot where the florals would have gone in this fragrance, providing a sweet counterpoint to the woods and green notes.  Anyone looking for a big dose of leather is not going to find it here.

The drydown is unisex, mildly sweet, woody and dry, the way CdG Hinoki and Sel de Vetiver are dry.  It’s not camphor-y or quirky like Hinoki, and it strikes me as eminently wearable without inducing a killing boredom.  The scent didn’t stay big on me for long, maybe an hour before it faded into a very quiet guaiac-tinged woodsy skin scent, so I’ll be interested to hear how other people find the lasting power.  On the other hand, better that than the guy next to you reeking of Hummer for 19 hours, so I can think of worse things to say about a fragrance.

I acknowledge that, unlike the guys on, say, POL or Basenotes, I’m not intimately familiar with every men’s-aisle fragrance out there.  Based on the notes, Brooklyn isn’t striking male bloggers/commenters as breaking new ground, and hey – maybe cardamom IS the current cliché in men’s fragrance.  However, as I joked recently, it’s a cliché I happen to like very much.  Brooklyn does me the great favor of assiduously avoiding two other men’s clichés – fresh/aquatic, which I loathe, and iris, which (sorry) at this point is so ubiquitous it’s beginning to wear out its welcome in my nose, and I never thought I’d write that. 

I know gender-assignment irritates some perfume people, but I think it can be useful as a tool in discussion.  So.  While this is most obviously a men’s scent, I would actually endorse this as a more interesting fragrance for the ladies, somewhere along the lines of Annick Goutal Mandragore.   I also think it would be refreshing in the summer heat.

Brooklyn is supposed to debut in March (which in my neck of the woods generally means late February, how about you?) and costs $220 for 100ml, $145 for 50ml, which seems to price out slightly higher than the average Bond, if I’m interpreting the pricing at Saks online correctly.

A side benefit of having a blog is that I can use it to gather advice from you, our fearless readers, right?  Hence today’s topic.

It has become screamingly obvious to me and the people who have to live with me that I need to take a trip or three in 2009.  In the past few years I’ve managed to get to Italy, Austria, various parts of the UK, Thailand, Cambodia, France, as well as several U.S. cities, and that’s not a bad track record.

In 2009, we have a trip to Maine in July.   Also a possibly to-be-arranged trip to L.A. if I can nag Patty into it, since I hate to drive and we both want to go there.  Also (possibly) a trip to one or more of Canada’s larger cities, a topic for another post.

And so… where else?  I’ll be honest, these are lean times for us and I am budget-conscious.  This is not going to be the year of the 21-day Europe tour, although I hear it’s cheaper now than any other time I went.  Unless I score a screaming deal to an individual city (and a friend pointed out to me that last week I could fly to Prague cheaper than Albuquerque) it probably needs to be a U.S. destination.

I remember reading in a travel book once that there is a word in French (or maybe Italian?) that equates to “the pleasurable sensation of finding oneself in unfamiliar surroundings.”  That is a concept that resonates deeply with me.  I like my home too, but I like it even better when I’ve been somewhere else.

But where else?  At this stage in my life I am almost totally uninterested in Our Natural Outdoor Scenic Wonders.  The Grand Canyon/Pacific coast/Rocky Mountains?  Meh.  I am an urban tourist.  I like cities and towns I can fly into, take public transportation from the airport, and spend the rest of my time wandering on foot or using (again) public transportation.  I am interested in museums, people watching, boat tours, people watching, the local cuisine, walking around in interesting neighborhoods, public markets, cafe sitting, flea markets, window shopping, and looking at people.  Perfume is optional.   The pleasure for me of these trips is centered around the exploration of new surroundings at my own pace, unencumbered (I’m being honest here) by the needs, desires and agendas of anyone else, specifically young children.   Nightlife is nonessential, but (relatively) safe night-time walking is deeply desired.  Some of my fondest memories in all of my vacations are solitary evening prowls of Venice, Florence, Vienna, Bangkok and Paris without worrying about getting mugged.

US cities I have enjoyed using the above parameters:  New York, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Saint Louis, New Orleans, Portland ME, Baltimore, Boston.

If you have a suggestion for a city I should visit, maybe with a recommended month/season/local event (e.g. May, the Tulip Festival) I should be there for, please comment.  If you want to lobby for Prague or whatever, go ahead.  One of my most fun adventures was an impromptu bargain-sale trip to Vienna, about which I knew next to nothing, and which turned out to be an interesting, navigable city with lots to do and plenty to eat and drink - as some of you remember I was there in October during Sturm season and spent much of my trip pleasurably lubricated.

I will end with my own plug — New Mexico is one of the few places you can visit in the continental U.S. and really feel like you have entered another country.  Fly into Albuquerque, rent a car, maybe take the scenic route up to Santa Fe, the folks at the airport can direct you.  If you are from a big, surly city, take a moment to savor how nice and friendly the people are.  Eat as much green chile as you can.  Have a breakfast burrito and enchiladas for lunch.  Smell the air.  Don’t forget your water bottles and sunscreen.  My personal favorite times to go: around Memorial Day, when the Russian olives are perfuming the air; the weekend of the Fiestas de Santa Fe (early September), when you can see the burning of Zozobra and the Desfile de los Ninos; and around Christmas, when (if you are lucky) it will snow, and the air is scented with pinon, and you can walk Canyon Road and admire the farolitos.

Perfume Incident 1 - the guy at the Bobbi Brown counter got my Full Nasal Nuzzle, while I moaned a little in ecstasy.  I asked permission to dive in there first. I had to know, what was he wearing?  It was Mugler Alien, for women.  Wow.  It certainly didn’t smell like that on me.  Men, out with it – is there some ladies’ fragrance you wear regularly, and do you get any feedback?

Perfume Incident 2 – attending a band concert at Diva’s high school.  I was fooling around with my MDCI decants beforehand and threw on the one that Luca Turin mentions has “an intensely animalic jasmine.”  Whoops.  I had absolutely no time to do anything about it, so in desperation I … sprayed Coco Mademoiselle all over myself!  I reeked, but I tell myself at least I smelled like Macy’s and not some sex club.  Also, that Coco Mad is kind of growing on me.   If I’m wearing some skankalicious number like Youth Dew and need to lighten things up a bit, a little dab’ll do ya.

On to Lipstick.  This will be my last post before New Year’s, and probably be my last post on red lips, which appears to have turned into my signature look, including a quick swipe before I walk the twins to the bus stop in the morning.  There are people who cheerfully own 27 red lippies, and I am not one of them.  I want one or two in each category of red.  I tried dozens of red lipsticks (just ask Saint Louise) but only bought a few:

1) Two long-wearing matte reds — MAC Russian Red, which is when I lost my red lipstick virginity; and the slightly warmer NARS Jungle Red.  Dry lipped people would, I think, have trouble pulling these off without some kind of lip conditioner.  Also, a mirror and a lip pencil or brush are the only way I can work this, it’s a very precision look.

2) A glossy red lipstick.  Not a lip gloss, not sheer, not a shimmer.  The runners up:

• the ultra-hydrating Lancome Absolute Rouge I am still pining for but is clearly designed for someone with drier lips than mine. 
• Bobbi Brown Red, a fun, true red that is not quite as glossy as what I was looking for. 
• Clinique’s Party Red, a rich, true red with a light shine to it.
•  Shu Uemura 165 featured in Allure as being a universally flattering red, and they showed it on Caucasian, Asian and African-American models.  It looked great them but wasn’t particularly flattering on me – too pink and too sheer.
•  Sisley has a gorgeous bright red (and I’m sorry I lost the name) with delicious sheen, but I didn’t like the taste. 
•  Dior 999 Celebrity Red, which frequently winds up in makeup spreads in places like Vogue, an eyecatching red that is slightly warmer than the others I mentioned.   

In the end I bought … MAC Brave Red.  I am turning into quite the MAC fan.  Brave Red managed to 1) be glossy while 2) staying put without a huge amount of effort on my part.  It’s a true red on me, and pink on Louise (go figure), so YMMV.  I also got the MAC liner in Brick because … the SA was adorable and it looked good?  And also their lip primer.  And their makeup wipes.  And why not that ridiculous Bankroll green eye pencil because I’ve never seen anything like it?  I put it over my gray liner which toned the whole thing down. 

3) Eventually I relented and bought two blue-reds.  It is no surprise that, with my coloring, the SAs kept trying to overcome my resistance to cooler toned reds.  I fell in love with and bought:

Clinique in Red-y To Wear, a pinky red which is apparently a smash hit and is sold out at many of their counters, I had to try three stores to get ahold of one to purchase.  It’s only $15 and is one of their long wear colors. Surprisingly long lasting.  It’s moist enough I need a lip pencil if I want a crisp edge, which I do, but if you don’t care you could probably just slap it on.  I bought a cheapie Revlon bright red pencil for this at CVS and it works fine.

We end our lipstick saga with the elegant young Asian woman at the Dior counter at Nordstrom who insisted that I try on some random blue-red lippie, her favorite red in the line, it would look amazing on me blah blah blah.  She was so nice eventually I did: Rouge Dior Red Premiere 752, which turns out to be the winner of InStyle magazine’s Best Red Lipstick award for 2008.  I stared at myself transfixed, then looked away from the mirror long enough to hand her my MasterCard.  If Snow White moved to the big city and went to work in a store that sold expensive, slightly outre leather goods, her lipstick would be this color.  It skates the razor edge between red and pink, with color saturation that would make Walt Disney smile and that fabulous tooth-whitening effect that the right cool toned red gives you.

So there you have it.  The Big Cheese hasn’t said much about my lips, but I’m kind of enjoying my suburban mom Dita Von Teese moment. Be sure to mention any great holiday loot or guilty pleasures below, particularly of the perfume sort, I love those. I bought myself some vintage Estee Lauder Cinnabar parfum and am awestruck; still waiting for my manky vintage bottle of Youth-Dew bath oil to arrive. Fingers crossed.

Oh, and Happy New Year.

photo: me and my red lips –  NARS Jungle Red — photo courtesy of 12-year-old Enigma.  I’m wearing a (fake) Mongolian lamb scarf which is what all those wiggly lines are.

We’ve done our Best of 2008, but 2008 in perfume was more than just coming up with the best perfumes.  What did we get this year?  Scads of new releases, many of them pretty awful, some of them that were okay, some that were good but overpriced, and a few that were really great.  Considering there were hundred of releases, it was disheartening to see so few that were great.

I’ve been thinking a lot about which of those released this year will endure and become classics.  When I think classics, I think those perfumes that will be around and selling well in five years.

This is my prediction for the niche/mainline perfumes that I think will make that cut from 2008. My opinion is not necessarily based on the genius of the perfume or its merit.  It is based on the line it comes from, its marketing, name, etc.  We’ll see how good my crystal ball is in a few yars.

• Chanel Sycomore - Chanel brand and a great scent
• Chanel Beige - ditto
• Chanel No. 5 Eau Premiere - ditto again
• Comme des Garcons Stephen Jones - I may be wrong on this one, but it’s my hopeful pick, and the packaging may be enough to help it along into a mainstream breakthrough.  One mention/picture in Allure or a star’s interview should do the trick
• Creed Love in Black - The name, the name, the name. The juice is perfectly fine, and I like it on me a lot, but it’s not a classic just based on the juice, it’s the Creed name and the image the name of the perfume invokes.
• Prada Infusion d’Homme - Prada, guys, nonoffensive, what’s not to love here?
• Ralph Lauren Notorious — not sure why exactly, but this one just seems to have some legs to it, though I think the actual perfume is a little bland.  I think the name will drive sales on it and make it one of RL’s bestsellers
• Van Cleef  & Arpels Feerie — I like this scent well enough, but I think that bottle captures attention and will drive its sales/popularity for quite a while

Now, looking ahead to what’s out there for 2009, these are the things I’m most looking forward to sniffing and believe, based on my very cloudy crystal ball will be great:

• Annick Goutal Un Matin d’Orage (Feb)
• Serge Lutens Cellophane thing (Jan)
• Hermessence Vanille Gallante (Jan)
• Monique Lhullier
• Two new CdGs, Daphne Guinness and Jun Takahashi
• Bond Brooklyn

Hmm, that’s a pretty short list for 2009.  So what’s on your list for classics for 2008 and what you think will be big and great in 2009?

The Best of 2008

The first thing that hit us when we went to pull this list together is the monumental number of fragrances released in 2008, many of which we have yet to smell, even though we’re doing our best to keep up.  We’ve revised this list several times and could just as easily have added or deleted various fragrances, so feel free to mock us or offer your own list in the comments.

•  Chanel Beige and Sycomore — Both part of Les Exclusifs, they demonstrate indisputably that Chanel still has something interesting to add to the conversation.  Sycomore is a woody vetiver that’s a must-try for any serious vetiver freak (and is also more of a powerhouse than much of Les Exclusifs.)  Beige is a classic-manner Chanel along the lines of 31 Rue Cambon that surprised both of us; for something that’s not particularly our “style” we found ourselves turning to it again and again.
• Le Labo City Exclusives — Poivre 23, Gaiac 10 and Musc 25.  As Patty notes, we are on a roll now.  March didn’t even care about these until she smelled Poivre and promptly muscled her way into a split.  Bonus points for actually smelling like their names.  Points deducted for being ridiculously expensive and difficult to get.
• Amouage Homage Attar – Smoky, woody oud and ridiculously expensive, but should we hold that against it? It really is lovely, and one little drop lasts all day.
• Amouage Lyric Women – Spicy, smoldering rose, it has a soft, enveloping, addictive quality that had Patty squirming in joy.
• Dianne Brill — March adds this as her dark horse.   Celebrity fragrances seem almost destined to fail the interest test — even people like Gwen Stefani end up releasing dull juice (albeit really cute bottles for the Harajukus.)  Dienne Brill’s not an A-list celebrity, and the fragrance is not everyone’s cup of tea/cigar/sawdust/poppers, but hats off to her for setting out with an oddball vision and producing a fragrance that achieved it.
• Stephen Jones Comme des Garcons - we are seriously overdue for another interesting violet, one of the early notes in perfumery that we swooned over together.  What is not to love about a CdG fragrance in a milliner’s hatbox that is supposed to smell like a violet colliding with a meteorite?  Smoky, inky, toasted, spicy, leathery, violet and strange, and highly wearable.
• Serge Lutens Serge Noire and Five O’Clock Au Gingembre - Noire is a love-it-or-hate-it, depending on how much armpit you get, among other things.  Five O’Clock seems either to enchant or irritate.  But both of these provoke enough rabid reaction and devotion the list seems incomplete without them.
• Cartier Roadster - Unisex, earthy, vetiver goodness, slightly mineralic, a scent you can happily wear every day or all night.  Elegantly Cartier, but keeping it unique.
• Frederic Malle Dans tes Bras - Strange and wonderful earthy, mushroomy violet, it’s a walk in a beautiful forest with a little sprig of violet posies in your hand on a sublimely happy day.  Beautifullly executed and never slick
• Rosine Rose Praline - A Gourmand rose that somehow splits the difference perfectly.  One of Rosine’s best efforts in years and a line that is far too underappreciated.
• The Woods Grow in Macy’s — okay, maybe a “molten river of woods” is the new litchi, but we’re still happy to see woody/ambery mainstream scents that don’t smell like someone barfed up a daiquiri.  Honorable Mention Shout-Out to Estee Lauder Sensuous and Amber Ylang, and Calvin Klein’s Secret Obsession.

Note: image is Bottles & Reflections (Revised) by dvaires at flickr; some rights reserved, image of “Modernity, Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely” by Josiah McElheny (2003), MOMA

For other Best of 2008 lists see Bois de Jasmin, Now Smell This, and Perfume-Smellin’ Things.

Every December I come up with some malarkey, outwardly expressed or not, about how things are going to be different in the new year.  A friend said something sensible to me recently about our foolish Yankee ways, wherein we transition from a holy (insert holiday here, or not) to this upbeat honey-do list of upgrades and achievements for 2009.

For days I’ve had these two lines of TS Eliot’s Ash-Wednesday stuck in my head like the world’s longest running poetry earworm:

Teach me to care and not to care

Teach me to sit still.*

I should clarify here that 1) I took a class in college which was, I think, devoted in part to Eliot and this poem because 2) I was entranced by the professor, a tortured-by-inner-demons type with deeply expressive eyes, and 3) even though I understand a fair amount of the religious reference I’d still feel like an idiot discussing it, although don’t let that stop you if you’d like to enlighten me.

But those two lines always hung with me, and they are haunting me now.  Where do I begin, as in, where does the world end and I start?  How can I live a life less revolved around strange suns and minor planets with their trajectory disturbances, or is it a joke to even think I can change familial gravity?   How do I live this … whatever it is … this life, being both the legitimate, authentic person other people have come to count on, and the other (legitimate?  authentic?) person begging to get in?  Or maybe out.  I can’t really tell which way the door’s swinging.

Teach me to care and not to care

Teach me to sit still.

It’s some kind of meditation for me now, in lieu of screaming at the twins at bedtime because their gd wet towels are on the floor of the gd wet bathroom.  Again.   To care or not to care?  I mean, somebody has to care, but I don’t care to care, at least not right now.

Teach me to care and not to care

Teach me to sit still

But does that person even exist?  Where is she?

*checking the verse online reveals the correct version as published:

teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still

Cribbing from Wikipedia: “Published in 1930, this poem deals with the struggle that ensues when one who has lacked faith in the past strives to move towards God.”  Also …isn’t there an Old Testament reference along the lines of, Be still and know that I Am God? Here’s an interesting discussion of the Hebrew, I wonder whether it’s correct.  Okay, now I’ve wandered off into religion.  Please don’t flame me.

Hey, everyone — have a wonderful holiday, however and wherever you are spending it, and we’ll see you soon!

image of snowflakes: classzone.com

Hey, it’s almost Christmas, and this is a cat ornament!!!   My son’s cat, Lynus, who is “temporarily” staying through winter break thinks the Christmas tree is lots and lot sof fun.  The second picture is my new little bulldog, Vinnie, who comes home to live with us in January. He’s the one at the bottom of the picture, not facing the camera

I thought about reviewing some Soivohle scents today - there are several that I’m falling in love with, it’s a great line - and then I decided no, not this week. 

I do need to give the winners of the drawing for the Breath of God samples:  Musette, cataleptix (wow, I need to know about that name), Natalie, fountaingirl and Rachaelg.  Just click on Contact us on the left and let me know your address and real name, and I’ll ship you a sample! 

What I really Want is to send out my Christmas/Holiday wishes from my house to all of yours.  Yes, yes, I know we don’t all celebrate Christmas, but the sentiment is for love and joy for each of you, no matter what holidays you celebrate or don’t celebrate.

We spend so much time together - we writing, you reading and commenting - and it feels very much like a very weird family, and my Christmas is not the same without all of my family.  Most of us don’t know each other very well or even at all, but we find this little hole in the internets to relax and talk about something frivolous that winds up revealing a much larger part of who we are.

This year Christmas is pretty quiet and peaceful.  Harry is home on winter break from college, so I’m pretending like I’m on winter break too and running out to movies (Doubt is excellent) and coaxing him and Alex into going to see the Nutcracker.  I’m hoping the weather stays good so my mom can travel out and join us.  This is the week I go full-tilt into my winter Caron obsession.  Poivre and Coup de Fouet get maximum play, though I try to hold Nuit de Noel in reserve for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. 

We picked up the prime rib tonight from the butcher, along with oxtail, since I’m planning on showing off my brand spanking new cooking skills and making an oxtail stew.  Somehow I managed to neglect my boys’ education and they never saw even one movie in the Godfather series.  We’re fixing that this Christmas and watching all three in the Coppola special edition.  How could that have happened?  It’s only one of my top five films.

Speaking of films, there’s more arm twisting going on this week as I also need to see that Benajmin Button thing, Marley & Me, Revolutionary Road, The Wrestler (anyone seen this yet? The early reviews and trailer look amazing), The Reader, and a couple of others.  Do you know I’ve never gone to a movie by myself? I think I need to do that.

I’m bummed that my yoga studio is closed on Christmas Day, though I can’t blame them, but it’s probably the one day I most need to start out in a great place.  Yoga has been a weird great thing for me. I feel like one of those bobble dolls.  As long as I keep yoga’ing up, no stress or anger or upset really gets to me, I just bob over and then quickly recover my balance again. Is it like that for everyone?  I hope it is. 

That’s a little window into my world this year.  I want to give you all my heartfelt gratitude that you spend a little bit of your lives with us. We are enriched in no small way by what you share.  So what perfume are you wearing for the holidays and/or what’s your plans for your winter break?

xoxo

I think I’m overdue on a post on buying on eBay.  So here it is.  Don’t buy any fragrance on eBay, particularly vintage.  It’s all worthless crap – bottles, even “sealed” ones, are filled with substances like rum or vinegar or sulphuric acid.  Or Angel.  Trust me, you don’t want to take a risk on that stuff.

Because otherwise you end up bidding against me and I know one of you nabbed that bottle of Bakir, you shameless wretches!!  Which one of you was it?!? Damn your eyes.  I wanted that bottle, how am I ever gonna feel the Bakir love if you keep outbidding me?!?  Wah wah wah.  In consolation I somehow accidentally bought another purse flacon of vintage Femme, which I have decided has a mind control drug as its chief ingredient.

However, I also bought (and yes, look, in only three paragraphs I actually get to the point of this post!  A Christmas miracle!) some Christian Dior Poison, the old stuff.  Because in my Coco sniffage I wandered down memory lane and it was pretty clear to me that they’d been messing around with Poison as well.

There’s a limit to how much weight you can peel off Poison.  Luca Turin described wearing Poison as “like road testing an Abrams M1 tank in the evening rush hour.”  You can remove some exterior armor, and tie a thousand helium balloons to it, and hire Christo to wrap it in pink tulle, and it’s still pretty heavy.  It’s still the world’s largest Fruit Cocktail Dipped In a Molten Syrup of Um, On Second Thought I’m Not Sure I Should Be Putting This On My Skin.

Notes according to Michael Edwards’ Perfume Legends include orange blossom, honey, wild berries, cinnamon, coriander, pepper, ambergris, cistus-labdanum, opopanax. The perfume was created by Edouard Flechier and released in 1985.

Poison was the launcher of a thousand office-fragrance bans.  I can see their point.  I put the teeniest dab on my hand and it created a Yugioh-like force field around me for the next twelve hours.  If you can bear it, though, go give it a spray (not during work hours); Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s usually have it.  I am interested to see that places like Sephora and Macy’s have frequently given up on Poison entirely and just carry a couple of its lesser spawn, like Midnight, which seems to have been pretty successful.  For the record, Hypnotic, with its poisoned-almond smell, is next on my to-buy list — well worth owning, in my opinion, assuming one whiff doesn’t kill you like the cyanide it conjures.

It’s not that the current iteration of Poison isn’t strong – it is.  And if you hated the original, you’d likely hate this just as much.  But we fans love that long, resinous, cherry-cordial arm of evil reaching out to grab us by the throat, and really, what’s the point of Poison without that? The smell of Poison is almost indescribable, but I’ve always loved Marlen’s go at it: “Somewhere between a triangle of incense, cough syrup, and tanning lotion lies the olfactory pyramid for Poison.”  It seems to me that the current Poison EDT has been slightly emasculated (defeminated?) — it’s less intense.  It’s like the eau de cologne of its former self.  It also seems to have been tilted in the direction of mere nauseating sweetness, while lacking the taloned viciousness of yore.

This New Poison quasi-gourmand EDT seems faintly ridiculous to me.  I assume it’s some sort of money-saving measure, or a gesture toward the changing-tastes floral update Chanel Coco has clearly undergone.    Trying to remake Poison into anything that would appeal in the current marketplace would be to render it unrecognizable as Poison (again, see the flankers.) 

While I was at it, I bought a bottle of Poison Esprit de Parfum, which according to an old NY Times article (see link below) was the parfum version of the Poison EDT.  (Brief aside: Esprit is pictured in Perfume Legends and I only find it and the EDT online, including eBay.  Does anyone own an eau de parfum, or is the esprit the EDP?)  Esprit is apparently aimed to satisfy those of us for whom … you know … regular Poison isn’t quite potent enough.   Describing the difference between the two is like trying to gauge the difference in impact between a sledgehammer and a pickaxe.  Esprit is less sweet, slightly animalic and more amber/incense.  It is quite smooth, like many parfum iterations are.  It is also astonishingly powerful.  I had, at one point, a dot of Poison Esprit on my thumb I had applied with a toothpick, and the clerk at our corner store looked at me with an expression between suspicion and horror and correctly identified the scent.  I think she’s hoping it’s not making a comeback. 

If you’re interested, I thought this NY Times article from 20 years ago was fascinating.  They’re predicting that perfume makers were going to stop making parfum concentration because it’s too expensive and nobody’ll buy it.  Hah - this at a time when they quote a 1.7 parfum for $150, and a 1-ounce EDP for $25.   I want Santa to bring me a time machine.

I hear much of the country is being socked in by ice and snow right now.  We’re supposed to get some combo of rain, snow, sleet and a plague of frozen locusts, for all the drama the forecasters are conveying.  I’m glad I’m not traveling anywhere further than the kitchen for more hot cocoa.

It seems like the right time to put up a brief post on a nail polish I’m wearing right now that makes me smile every time I look at it — China Glaze’s Ruby Pumps, which is perfect for the holiday season, and a part of my current obsession with all things red.

Ruby Pumps is no news to anyone into nail polish — I understand it was released previously in a Wizard-of-Oz themed collection and proved so popular they’ve continued to make it.

I didn’t know any of this, so I thought Ruby Pumps was just another sparkle-glitter red.  It is not.  It is the sparkle-glitter red.  It is the ur-red-polish, the mother of all sparkly glitters. The problem is that online photos simply don’t do it justice, as nail polish bloggers lament.  It is only when you put it on your nails — where it blings its merry bling that is some sort of miracle combination of micro-red glitter and impossible shimmery depth — that you realize it is every bit as fabulous a color as Dorothy’s slippers were in the movie.  It’s ridiculously gorgeous.  No wonder everyone loves it.  Also, the glitter is really really small — so it’s not that disco-queen effect.  In fact there’s something weirdly elegant about it.

I didn’t wear it to the party with my gunmetal ball gown — that seemed a bit much, so I went with a matching gunmetal polish by Nicole.  I also feel obliged to point out that there’s a green polish in the set, Emerald Sparkle, that is also quite popular among the polish bloggers.   If you want to buy either, you can follow the link and they make recommendations for reputable polish etailers who carry these and other stuff.

Finally — I’d love some red polish recommendations from you all.   I have OPI I’m Not Really A Waitress and one of their Russians, but that’s it.   I’d love a wonderful red cream with kind of a retro vibe, which doesn’t seem like it should be that difficult, but am having trouble choosing something.  Also, like red lips, red nails seem to demand an extra level of precision.  It’s not like I’m slopping my other polish on, but messy red nails seem particularly awful to me.  Application or cleanup tips?

Matt and I had a romantic weekend get away in early December - beautiful hotel on the Ile St Louis in Paris, foul weather, and lots of, well, nothing. We ate well, slept well (except for the first night when a rutting couple howled like the eponymous monkeys, intermittently from midnight until 6, due no doubt to the supposed levels of athletic ecstasy to which each was taking the other - as an aside, we were convinced we saw them the following late morning, bleary-eyed and clearly recently ‘attached’ - an older Lothario and a ditsy blonde. His ‘bonjour’ said Gitanes and ‘I know, I can still make em feel my loving is like no other lovers’ lovin’. We moved rooms), drank well, and meandered through our familiar parts of Paris in the way we usually do - the 3rd and 4th arrondisements (more chic - or more BCBG, in a gay way - and more polished year on year), bits of the centre, some further east. We made one trip up to Printemps and a brief excursion to the left bank, and I forced Matt into a couple of perfumeries to sniff stuff. But there was no Guerlain, no Caron, and only a quick pitstop at the Salons Shiseido (more time walking around it than in the store).

Cos, I know it’s blasphemy, but Paris is about more than perfume, people.

For us, that weekend, it was about being together, elsewhere.And for the first time, we personally felt the impact of the financial crisis, and without knowing it, this probably reigned in my potential for spending. The city was so expensive, with the  pound now worth only slightly more than one euro. I don’t watch the pennies when I’m on holiday, and I had enough euros in my pocket from exhanging money earlier in the year, but even so… Goodness me. Now I understand how Americans felt when the pound was floating high at a $2 rate - days long gone, even with an interewst rate floating just above 0%…So I bought no perfume. A little tea from a couple of well-known places, a candle from Diptyque (a Paris habit of mine) which turned out to be more expensive than buying it in London, and some foodie stuff. That’s all. I’ve told you I’m not right keen on shopping, haven’t I?

So, that’s all I have to write. The year’s almost over, and two days of meetings and hectic work concerns have fried my brain. We go away for Christmas on Saturday, and I have a lot of cleaning, tidying, packing, present-wrapping  and sundry other stuff to do. Though I’m less present in comments and posts than I used to be, this place is still one of light and love for me, and I thank Patty and March for letting me be a part of it, even if half my posts and guff and guffle.Love to you all, and merry Christmas if you celebrate, and happy holidays even if you don’t.

One last task before I leave you - suggest a seasonal scent I can slip in my suitcase on saturday morning, and why I should take that one. It’ll help end my usual dithering on the matter, I hope. xxx

First, winner of the Tokyo Le Labo Gaiac 10 sample is:  monkeytoe.  Click on the Contact Us button to the left and send me your address, and I’ll get this in the mail!  You are in for a spectacular treat.

What a great name for a perfume - Gypsy Water! Before I spritz it on, I am seeing swirling, colorful skirts and shirts, castanets, flashing black eyes and white teeth set in dangerous faces that know a little too much about fun.

Does the fantasy hold up?  Well, very few of my fantasies don’t melt in the light of day.  Top notes of bergamot, lemon, pepper and juniper berries; middle notes of incense, pine needles and orris; and base notes of amber, vanilla and sandalwood.  Hmmm, this isn’t sniff-reading dangerous at all on the open.  Well, according to the literature,  this is “a fictional glamorization of this lifestyle filled with mystical woods and earthy influences.”  Well, it is earthy-ish and woody, but mostly it’s really freaking cuddly.  I want all my sweaters to smell like this.  It reminds me of something - Pafum Sacre underpinned with some not too sweet vanilla — is there something else like this?  This is snuggly and woody warm.  Couldn’t we have had just a little paprika in it for sauciness?  Well, it’s certainly a nice little cuddly scent, but the price tag is $195 at Barney’s for 100 ml, so you may not find that much cuddly to be in your budget.  Do you think it’s too expensive to spritz on my bed and pillowcases?  Maybe if they made it into a dryer sheet?  I really want to sleep in this.

The latest update of Perfumes: The Guide listed B Never 2 Be Busy to be — wait, B Never Too Busy 2 Be Beautiful, I think it is - annoying name, they should lose it — Breath of God as a newly minted, Genuine Five-Star Masterpiece, along with Chanel Sycomore.  B (I’m not typing that ghastly name more than once) is an offshoot of Lush that’s now also in the perfume business.  Of course I had my credit card in hand hovering over their website to immediately possess this Masterpiece.   Smoky notes, sandalwood, amber, neroli and patchouli with rose, lemon oil, floral notes and jasmine.  Sounds pretty generic, doesn’t it?  When I first spritz it on?  Motor oil can filled with flower petals, not holding the aluminum note in the least.  Listen, I love Santa Maria Novella Nostalgia and Goutal’s Eau de Fier, so this is never something that I look at as a bad thing.  I smell some bergamot, like SMN threw a little Eva in with the Nostalgia.  It’s definitely got its finger on the pulse of interesting, may even have it shoved up in the corner necking with it like crazy.  But I have to hold firm on this.  I love my oddities in perfume, love to wear them, sniff them, regale people with how freaky they are, but I just can’t put them in the Masterpiece category if I can’t argue that it’s a little mainstream and won’t send your average perfumista screaming from the store on the open.  This one does eventually yield a little, and the florals make some of the weirder things sit in the backseat of the oil-smoking Chevy, but you get up close, and it’s a freak, pure and simple.  Being also super-fun and interesting, I’ll happily wear it on dates with men I don’t want to see again, but no Masterpiece star from me.  The good news is this PTG Masterpiece is relatively cheap.  I can’t remember exactly what I paid for this huge bottle, but like 40 pounds maybe?    They have smaller bottles available for a lot less. 

Hey, it’s almost Christmas, and I have this big honking bottle of Breath of God sitting here, so let’s give away some more samples.   Drop a comment, tell me your favorite freak perfume and I’ll draw out five names to win a sample!

Today’s post was supposed to be on the two new Lubin re-releases, Nuit de Longchamp and L de Lubin. But since one smells exactly like the top notes of my CVS nail polish remover and the other one fills my head with a deep, profound, Zen-like nothingness, I dug up and finished a post I wrote awhile ago and was too annoyed/embarrassed to publish.

It’s no great secret that perfume houses reformulate their fragrances without announcing that fact to the general public.  They do so for various reasons: to save money; to bring a fragrance in compliance with some new tedious regulation; to save money; to compensate for scarce/banned/overharvested raw materials; to save money; to subtly tweak a fragrance in a more “modern” direction; and to save money.

Chanel has, I think, largely avoided the kind of shameful cheapening of its fragrance ingredients that some other houses have resorted to.  Nonetheless, as I sniffed and resniffed their Coco eau de parfum in the department store over the last few months, I became … suspicious. 

My friends, the current iteration of Chanel Coco is not half the man she used to be when I worked through a flacon in the late 1980s.  They shaved her legs, did some manscaping, made her stub out her cigarette.  She’s been powdered and plucked and waxed and fluffed to a glossy sheen, and … no thanks.  Luca Turin described Coco in The Guide as “terribly dated,” and all I can say is — dude, I wish.  Where’s that obnoxious, big-shouldered floriental I remember so fondly?

So there was nothing to do but buy a bottle on eBay, and lo – the exact same stoppered flacon I owned popped up for sale at a reasonable price.  I won the auction, sent my money, got my bottle, and … nooooooooooo.  It had clearly been diluted or adulterated with something.  For which I can’t/don’t hold the seller responsible, by the way.  It was one of those rummage sale deals, it was recognizably Coco, even if not very good, and what are you going to do?  I owned a pretty bottle, and that was that.

Coco was my first Chanel, and it arrived in my life during a time of personal and professional setbacks.  I’d tried and failed to get involved with several of the others (Cristalle, 5 and 22).  At the time Coco was my attempt at “classiness” via aspirational branding, and I loved the crystal flacon it came in.  But it was something more.  It was the first fragrance that made me feel and smell like an adult woman.  It was bitter and sweet, direct and complicated, fierce and yielding, hot and cold.  Long before I swore the oath of a perfumista and learned the secret handshake, Coco spoke to me.  It said, you may be broke, and scared, and wearing hand-me-down suits to your crummy job, and in a welter about all sorts of things, but you can still be beautiful.  I put on Coco when I stepped out of bed in the early morning — before I dressed the babies and made the breakfast and the lunch and had them both to daycare before arriving at my desk at 8 a.m.  Coco gave me the strength and a firm jab in the ribs and told me stand up tall, no sniveling.  Coco said, fake it till you make it.

I used up that entire flacon.  My favorite part was the last half inch, which at that point had become dark and viscous and smoky and strange.  It was probably not really office appropriate, but I wore it until there was nothing left but memories.

Anyhow.  I never posted this because I was embarrassed and annoyed by how weirdly upset I was about my bottle failure,  completely out of proportion to the event.  Weeks went by.  Eventually I bid on two other bottles (sprays this time), won them both, and gave it another whirl.

The bottles are from two different sellers in different parts of the country, and … both are off on the top notes in the same way.  Interesting.  One bottle was boxed and one wasn’t, and who knows how they’ve been stored, but I find it noteworthy how the same part of the structure crumbled in both bottles, I wonder what the issue is.  It’s not terrible, but whatever was constructed to greet me is now gone a little lopsided in the direction of varnish.  That blows off pretty quickly, though.  Then we are back to the glory that was Coco, with her unibrow and moustache restored to their proper places.

You can find various notes listed, but I’m going with the ones that sound most spicy floriental: frangipani, orange, mimosa, rose, jasmine, clove, coriander, labdanum, ambrette, opoponax, benzoin, sandalwood, tonka, and vanilla.   In my “vintage” bottles dating from the late 80s/early 90s, the emphasis is on the oriental aspect.   Coco is kissing cousins to Cinnabar and Youth Dew.  It is dense, honeyed, rich, with the spice notes featured prominently in the drydown.  In fact, my tiny vintage flacon of Youth Dew Bath Oil reminds me quite a bit of the last dregs of my first flacon, when it had boiled itself down to its essence.

In contrast, a spritz of new Coco EdP feels, well, newer.  It’s considerably brighter and sweeter, with far more emphasis on the florals, particularly the mimosa and rose.  It’s also considerably more powdery than my vintage versions (or my memory of it.)   It’s not that it isn’t lovely – it is, actually, judged on its own merits or as close to that as my biased heart can get.  To give Chanel credit, it isn’t thinner either.  It doesn’t have that strange, depressing anorexia you get when fragrances have been reformulated on the cheap.  And probably for many young women accustomed to fragrances with a more fruity or gourmand tone, Coco is about as far down the Sodom-and-Gomorrah path in the direction of Opium that they ever wish to go.

So.  I’m happy with my Coco experiment, or as close to happy as I’m likely to get.  I even found a use for my watered-down flacon: bedtime Coco.  It’s like an eau de cologne, and so weak it’s like I put it on that morning and it’s lingering on my clothes.  But it’s kind of nice that way.  For those of you who want a taste of the bad old 80s Coco, seriously – new Coco layered on top of a drop of Estee Lauder Youth Dew Bath Oil ($31 at Nordstrom or $3 at your local thrift shop) will do it.

First, if you haven’t seen Slumdog Millionaire, just go see it and don’t ask questions.  Despite the scenes of abject poverty and horror that litter the movie, it is ultimately about hope when there should be none. It is funny and touching.

Le Labo is rolling this year.  I’ve fallen in love with all of their new city exclusive scents so far, each different, umnique and beautifully made.  Gaiac 10 is the latest to cross my doorstep.  Created by Annick Menardo with notes of gaiac, cedar, musk and olibanum.  Peppy and happy on the open, it sifts down into woody incense that is like settling into your favorite woods where you have always been at home and happy.  I gave one spritz of this on my neck Sunday when we went to the symphony, and that tiny spritz lasted all day, all night and was still going strong on Monday morning until I hit the showers, enveloping me in lush smelly comfort.  It feels, I don’t know, authentic?  It doesn’t veer off into churchy like the woody incense of Armani’s Bois d’Encens or a couple of the CdG incense series. It’s slightly milky maybe.  There’s a smoothness to the wood that makes it feel like polished, beautiful wood, impossibly elegant, but warm and snuggly. 

I’m not sure who is handing out the sketches for the three scents Le Labo came up with this year, but they have done an outstanding job of giving the perfumers plenty of room to create three memorable scents.  Hard to get?  Too much so.    I do hope at some point they will at least make all of these available for a limited time once a year, and then everyone could be a lot poorer, but happily smelling beautiful.

Let’s do another drawing today to get a sample of this into one of our commeter’s hands. Just leave a comment, and I’ll draw out the winner on Thursday.

Before I forget … are we at the Posse your fragrant love slaves?  Have we combed the lands on our faithful MasterSteeds, far and wide, clad only in our ridiculous pointy-toed boots and some frankly uncomfortable chaps, looking for all that’s old, new, and in between?  Have we salted the earth with snarky reviews, batted around the skank, and started the stampede of a thousand lemmings?  Yes, we have done these things.  And now, poppets – it’s time for you to meander over to Basenotes to vote in their 9^th annual fragrance awards, with such categories as best 2008 fragrance, best niche fragrance, and … your favorite perfume blog.   You have to register to vote, and then you’re entered into a drawing for a $250 gift certificate from FragranceNet.

Okay, today’s post.

Maybe it’s the weather, or the dire economic situation, or my new red lips.  But all I’m interested in right now are my heavier and vintage classics, which are my current comfort scents.  Hard times call for tough perfumes.  Off with the fleece slippers and on with the suit of armor, apparently.  In heavy rotation right now:  Mitsouko; Jicky; vintage Femme, which I have worn more in the past month than in the years I’ve owned it; Tabu parfum; Bal a Versailles.   As soft as it gets for me right now:  Patou Normandie*, and my beloved bottle of my mother’s My Sin. Today I’m blogging about another classic with plenty of personality — Chanel Cristalle EDT — I revisited recently.

What a difference 30 years can make in terms of perspective.  In its debut in the mid 1970s, Chanel Cristalle eau de toilette was the “young” Chanel – the one with training wheels, if you will.  Sure, daddy might buy you a bottle of No. 5 for your 16^th birthday, but by the late 70s Cristalle was the fragrance of choice for my high school girlfriends not wearing the original Ralph Lauren (these were the days that spawned The Preppy Handbook.)   Unsurprisingly, Cristalle EDT remains in my mind an elegant teenage scent.  The EDP, created 20 years later, is more floral and, to my nose, less interesting.

Now, of course, Chanel has things like Coco Mademoiselle, Allure and Chance Eau Fraiche.  Out of curiosity I asked my daughters what they thought of Cristalle and they wrinkled their noses - it might as well be my atomizer of vintage Femme as far as they are concerned, modern tastes having shifted so dramatically to the fruity, gourmand and floral.

Cristalle EDT’s notes vary depending on where you look, but this sounds about right: lemon, bergamot, basil, petitgrain, galbanum, jonquil, jasmine, hyacinth, oakmoss, rosewood, and vetiver.  It’s the sort of classic scent that crops up when people on the perfume boards ask for a fragrance that smells like cut grass.  And it does have that kind of sharp, green freshness, but it’s Chanel, not Comme des Garcons.  It’s an abstract, jewel-toned grassy lawn with a mannered bed of flowers in the distance.  The citrusy/green herbaceous notes are most intense at the top; it’s a bit of a shocker if all you’ve ever smelled is the powdery No. 5 in cologne.  As it settles, it becomes woodier and somewhat smoother, but I would never describe it as “quiet.”  As is true of many Chanels, I think a man could wear this beautifully.

I have long admired Cristalle’s pungent, herbal bouquet, but only recently have I come to like it.  Unlike my more sophisticated high school friends, I felt Cristalle was too much; it wore me rather than the reverse.  It was brunch in a fancy restaurant and I was still wearing my bathrobe.

Smelling it recently, I realized Cristalle brought to mind something else – specifically, a younger version of Estee Lauder’s Azuree.  I looked up Azuree’s notes:  aldehydes, basil, bergamot, gardenia, jasmine, cyclamen, ylang ylang, patchouli, leather, oakmoss, amber, patchouli, vetiver, musk.   You can see the overlap there; in particular, the smokiness of the vetiver and oakmoss stood out.  Azuree is the elegant woman in her forties having a cigarette on the country club terrace while still clad in her tennis dress.  Cristalle is her teenaged daughter sneaking a Marlboro Light with her girlfriends behind the pool house.

It seems to me that Cristalle is trapped in the no-man’s-land between Les Exclusifs and No. 5, and it doesn’t really belong in their youth-market group either.  It strikes me as a strangely hopeful fragrance in these somber times, while still being completely plausible on a grown woman.   I was too young for it at 15, and too old at 30, but now at 45 it somehow feels just right.

* Hey, who sent me that Normandie decant?  Gail, was that you?  Goodness, what a lovely fragrance, I really should review it.  Rose, carnation, jasmine, vanilla, balsam, moss, and a must-try for carnation lovers.  Is it vintage?  I notice that unlike a lot of the others I can still get a bottle online.

photos: Chanel Cristalle advertisement, perfume4u.co.uk; C.Z. Guest and her son at her Palm Beach estate in 1955, one of many extraordinary society photographs by Slim Aarons at photographersgallery.com

The two winners of the Stephen Jones sample are:  helenviolette and Shelley!

The two winners of the Le Labo Musc sample are:  Karin and Aimee L’Ondee

Thanks to everyone who entered.  Winners, just click the Contact Us button on the left and shoot me your mailing address, remind me with sample you won so I don’t forget!

It’s Friday, and I’m writing this before heading off to my company Christmas Party, and I’m contemplating what scent to wear to an event that I never really look forward to. Why are there company Christmas parties when most people don’t even seem to like them or want to go?  Torture?  At least we’re doing a Lucky Strikes bowling thing, which will be fun.

So if you’re going to a company Christmas party this year, what scent are you going to wear? I’m going with the Stephen Jones

 First, the packing?  Completely, terminally, unrepentently cute.  A little black hat box full of whimsical black netting and an adorable black bottle with a black bow on it.  The designer of this complete package needs an award and a big sloppy kiss.

The juice is perfection.  Cold violet on the open.  I’m not sure where the meteorite or magma comes in, but this thing is over the top violet that makes me just laugh, bubbling over with aldehyes.  As it settles, the notes deepen, and you pick up the spicy clove, florals and dark woods, but it still has a coldish feel even while it warms up.  It’s unsettling, slightly odd and stunningly gorgeous.  The woods and cumin keep it dry enough, it never tips over into sweet, but it’s not as dry as one of my other favorite violets, Caron’s Violette Precieuse.  Did I mention the burnt quality to it?  It’s like you scorched Aunt Minnie’s violet-doused dress and rubber-soled practical shoes, but I don’t mean that in a bad way at all. Robin’s review is here for another opinion on this marvelously fun perfume.

Most of you know how much I adore violets, so when I say this is my new favorite violet, that’s saying a lot.  It’s so much more than a violet scent.  Good grief, I’ve got three huge hits that I love at the end of the year, which goes to show, they seem to have saved the best  for last.

 Okay, cooking class is beckoning, so let’s do a draw and a discussion of violets.  Up to now, if you love violet scents, what is your favorite?  I’ll  also be doing a draw for two samples of this from comments, and winners of this and the musc draw will be announced Friday!

If you visit the Dianne Brill fragrance blurb on Beautyhabit, in search of information about the scent, it says “Instead of giving you a list of the many precious ingredients in this fragrance, I would like to offer you a moment to FEEL THE SCENT.”  And it goes downhill from there, with cringe-worthy prose about being fulfilled and feeling the vibration.  I probably would have stopped there, in disgust, with any other celebrity – particularly one whose heyday was the 80s club scene.

Except I love Dianne Brill.  When I first heard about her fragrance I deeply, perversely wanted it to be brilliant.  I had no idea she was already something of a success, with a website featuring her own makeup line and confirming the main thing I liked about her in the first place – she clearly has a sense of humor, even (especially?) about herself.  I remembered the outsize 80’s personality that matched her big hair and generous …  poitrine and was happy to hear that, unlike so many other figures from that time, she hadn’t gone down the tubes, a sad-sack victim of drugs and debauchery.

Eventually Chandler Burr did a review of her fragrance for the NY Times and in his interview managed to come away with a sense of the process (Brill worked with Valerie Garnuch) and some of the suggested inspirations/notes, cribbing from Burr’s review, include: a piece of leather Brill bought in a flea market and kept in a box because she loved the smell; an unnamed, discontinued Kiehls body oil that had “a sort of naughty/beachy/salty scent;” wood from “construction sites, I didn’t want sandalwood, nothing Indian or exotic;” figs, both ripe and green; the smell of a Cuban cigar box Brill owned; and spices, “although the spices were a real tough call for me. My husband and family had just bought a wonderful sailboat, and we were off the coast of Mustique, and we found the producer of an excellent West Indies nutmeg, which has a very weird, disco-nasty smell, people just starting to sweat on the dance floor. So Valerie put that in.”

The result is what Burr beautifully describes as “edginess polished with a gourmand brush.”  It’s strange from the top to the bottom – a sweet, rich, floral opening that is slightly off kilter, letting the wearer know immediately that the trip will be interesting.  As Patty noted in her review, “it has the resemblance of something more traditional on the open, but quickly veers off into some completely new territory, then back to traditional fruity-ish floral, then completely heads down the path of something far more interesting.”

The figs interwoven with the smell of the interior of a tobacconist shop is one of the most singularly strange and delightful combinations in recent memory – sweet fruity ripeness and bitter astringency pushing against a backdrop of hay and tobacco.  Underneath that, a salty smell that reads less as “marine” and more as salty, sweaty skin – “disco-nasty” indeed.  Also, there’s a whiff of something peculiar and ozonic and a teeny bit nasty that runs through the whole thing, a chemical smell reminiscent of the synthetic/hairspray note in Gucci Rush (apparently a reference to a popular brand of poppers).

Once you get past the misleading sweetness of the first 20 seconds (additional notes Garnuch gives are ylang, Peruvian benzoin, and chocolate) it smells pretty unisex to me, although I can’t imagine many men (or even some women) wanting that froufrou bottle on their dresser.

In the end, the thing I love most about Dianne Brill’s fragrance is it’s the rarest of birds – a perfume with a sense of humor that also manages to be very good (Burr gives it three stars).  In this respect I’d compare it to Cumming – it doesn’t smell a thing like Cumming, of course, but it shares Cumming’s wearability and quirky charm.  Based on what I’m smelling, the perfume Brill described is very much what she got — Garnuch did a brilliant job of combining a fairly disparate set of Brill’s loves into something easy to love in itself.

I feel like starting a new filing category on the right – one labeled “Perfume Contrarian” – for fragrances like this that I can’t help but sense I’m swimming against the popular tide on.  Who besides me wants to wear something made by Brill?  I have no idea.  I also feel duty-bound to report I tried this on at least two people on whom it started out – and remained – unbearably sweet, as if it had turned into straight vanilla-fruit hitting their skin.  All the other notes simply disappeared.  Also, it’s tenacious, so if you hate this, you might be hating it for hours.

I wonder if you, reading this, have a fragrance you’d file under “perfume contrarian” – something you continue to love and wear while feeling it doesn’t get the respect it deserves, and whether that bothers you.  As for me – I want a bottle of this stuff.  I think it’s kind of cute, actually.

Dianne Brill is available from Beautyhabit for $95 for a 50ml bottle; and if you’re still trying to figure out who the heck Dianne Brill even is, here’s a link to her website – and wow, she looks amazing, doesn’t she?

images: beautyhabit.com

This year has been an interesting and trying time, pulling me inward until I was so sick of myself that I could scream and then forcing me to live more outwardly than I had in a long time, finally ridding myself of my more curmudgeonly and misanthropic traits.  Every day that I go to yoga class, I know how much more I have to do to finish opening myself up and releasing, well, everything.  My taste in perfume over this time has changed and shifted with my moods and, er, challenges.

Finally I have in my hands a perfume that fits exactly who I am at this moment.  Those clever boys at Le Labo say they made this for Los Angeles, but they really made Musc 25 for me.  Tom reviewed it already, and I completely ditto everything he said.  The open on me is a little more aldehydic and bubbly in the way Dallas’ Aldehyde 44 (which I adore) is, not nearly as sparkly, though, but bellowing up under that is a delicious, sensuous musk.  Now, as a word of warning, I don’t find CB’s Musk Reinvention skanky in the least - it just seems like a nice, mellow skin scent to me, so if you find it really rank, well, you’ve been warned, my nose just doesn’t perceive musk as rank most of the time. 

The notes for Musc 25 are aldehydes, civet and muscone.  It’s pretty much everything  a musk should be for me - my skin, but sparkling with sun and a little leftover sex, and not just your run of the mill sex, some really luxurious smutty sex on Pratesi sheets.  It shimmers like some impossibly beautiful thing while remaining incredibly human.  I adore it.

As much as the Le Labo City Exclusives have vexed me in trying to get ahold of them, I have to say that they have been outstanding, and I have adored them all.  From the effervescently melancholy Aldehyde 44 to the incense powerhouse of Poivre to this gorgeous musky creation, they have done a really outstanding job of making these special perfumes.

So… let’s do a drawing for a couple of samples for this great perfume. Just drop a comment in, and I’ll draw two winners of a sample.