Can I just note here that it baffles me how anyone can go through the process of creating a perfume and then not name it.  Does that mean there’s no name worthy of bestowing upon the scent or that the creative team that  is in charge of marketing couldn’t agree?  I mean, if I was paying some cosmetic company genuises a healthy share of all sales to put this thing on the market, the least they can do is come up with some kind of  name.

Besides that, the scent is great. I’ve been cribbing from the same notes every0ne has put up. “Based on green floral notes, we can smell galbanum, boxwood, mastic, incense, bitter orange … as if they had been gathered after the rain. Additional notes include jasmine, cedar and musk.”  Not sure where they came from first, but sure, why not.  It’s a very green, woody, nutty scent. There’s some parts of it that remind me of the nutty aspects of Bois Farine, but I just went and resniffed Bois Farine, and it’s not yeasty and bready like that, so I don’t want to scare those of you that don’t like wearing bread off.  It’s like green nuts, a little incense.  I think maybe it’s the impact of the bitter orange on something that’s making me read it as nutty because I just don’t think it really is except in my head.

It’s a well done, warm, cuddly scent that feels a little like toasted chestnuts. The long drydown veers it off more in the direction or the orange and wood with a lovely green incensy underpinning.

Right now it is exclusively at Colette in Paris, who will ship internationally for a generous shipping price, but they say it will be available at other retailers in March?  I think it’s definitely one to sniff. I’ve loved wearing it, it’s snuggly and feels exactly right.

The winners of the samples of this scent are: Nina Z, Leslie and Musette because she wins the shopping sweepstakes with building a room to put her bags.

The mid-Atlantic region of the United States was abuzz for days about the impending snow storm.  My sister-in-law Kate and I, both having lived in areas where serious snow is neither unusual nor a cataclysm, started swapping drama-nuggets from the nightly news as the storm headed our direction.  I began the exchange with “a meteorological explosion.”  She countered with something like “Northeast Mauled By Snowstorm,” and then “snowpocalypse,” and “snowmageddon,” and it was downhill from there.  I’m still waiting for “DC Area Groped By the Abominable Snowman.”

But we were groped, and hard.  I laughed at the storm, and the storm laughed back in all our faces.  From Friday to Saturday we got 30 inches (76cm) of snow, more or less.  Half the county was without power by Saturday.  The temp. fell to 15F(-9.5C) overnight and the single digits in the outlying areas.  It’s 35(1.6C) degrees right now in our neighbor’s kitchen.  All the hotel rooms filled quickly, and then all the shelters.  There were rumors of a high school auditorium open (if you could get there).  By Friday night the power was out on the streets all around us, but ours stayed on.

So today’s post is dedicated to the Big Cheese, who gets an (Amouage) Gold star here, because he isn’t going to get it anywhere else.  He spent hours canvassing our neighborhood, shoveling walks and helping the heatless, particularly the folks who are older and had nowhere to go.  We’re housing three neighbors and a guest-dog, and people have been stopping by all day to warm up and charge their cell phones.  But one elderly neighbor who is in a wheelchair and her husband refused to leave their house.  So the Cheese scared up a generator (!), helped haul and install it, no mean feat in the snow, and found them some space heaters.  Then he got up twice in the night and early the next morning to make sure they weren’t dead in their beds.  He’s doing so again tonight.  We’re supposed to get another five inches of snow on Tuesday, so my guess is this could go on for awhile.  I have to say, it’s stunning to look at.

In the meantime, I thought I’d do a post on snow-scents, and solicit your suggestions.

Powdery Snow.  At the top of my list is Lorenzo Villoresi’s Teint de Neige.  Powder.  White powder.  Powdery white powder.  Powdery white powder of Death.  I wouldn’t wear it at gunpoint, but it has tons of fans.  I’m talking talcum powder, not the Nasomatto China White, a different kind of white powder.  For a more intellectual, spare powder, there’s Frederic Malle L’Eau d’Hiver.  And of course there’s Sienne l’Hiver by Eau d’Italie, which smells more like smoke, dank earth and hot Italian boys on Vespas… but I digress.

Pure Snow.  My favorite: CB I Hate Perfumes’ Winter 1972.  The perfect snowstorm.  Scent of damp mitten, frozen earth and snow.  I dig it out sometimes in the summer when I need some air conditioning.

Cashmere Scents.  The weather outside is frightful, but you’re inside, wrapped up in a cashmere throw, looking at the idiots digging their cars out even though there’s nowhere to go.  We all have a ton of these.  I nominate: Barbara Bui; Estee Lauder Amber Ylang; Prada L’Eau Ambree.  For a related, warm-radiator scent, and a great bottle to boot: Fendi Asja in the EDT.

Boozy Scents.  You’re trapped inside with your kids; school is cancelled for the foreseeable future.  Why not get liquored up?  There’s the cognac of Frapin 1270.  Ginestet Botrytis smells of candied fruit and wine.  If you need something stronger, how about Ambre Russe by Parfum d’Empire, with its notes of vodka and sin?

White Floral Camphor.  I rag on Serge Lutens Tubereuse Criminelle all the time, but who can argue with a camphory tuberose in this weather?  If you’re a camphor weenie like me, step down and go with Frederic Malle Carnal Flower, a soaring tuberose with the camphor reduced to a florist-shop chill.  Having dug up my sample, I’m ashamed I’m not wearing this more often.  Stunning. March the Maleficent Decrees: those who say they hate big white florals cannot be sure until they’ve sampled Carnal Flower.

Green, Green, Green.  Many of you have sorted this already:  like the right white floral, the piercing green scents can work on the snowiest day.  This isn’t really my category, but I nominate vintage Carven Ma Griffe or Balmain Vent Vert; JAR Bolt of Lightning; Chanel (Les Exclusifs) Bel Respiro.

What are your suggestions for Snowpocalypse scents, in these categories or others?

****There seem to be some technical gremlins at play; March is blaming a mating between Tubereuse Criminelle and Muscs Koublai Khan for wreaking havoc with the image uploading function. So, for a visual of the scent, please surf here.****

For those of you who don’t know who Leslie Blodgett is, she’s the woman behind Bare Escentuals, the mineral makeup line you either love to death, or hate with a passion. I’ll admit to being in the former camp for well over a decade, so much so that I used to drive regularly from my home on Long Island to the King of Prussia mall in suburban Philadelphia PA to buy the products. Now (of course), you can’t toss a makeup brush without it landing on a BE display in your local Sephora, or in a BE boutique in the same shopping mall. That’s not counting the infomercials and the marathon 3-hour long appearances on QVC. Recently, Leslie created two limited edition scents for Sephora, based on her love of fragrance and memories of vacations she’s taken.

I’d like to dispense with the fragrance particulars first since this is a perfume blog, but I hope no one will mind if I inject a little “Random Sunday” into my Friday post; mineral makeup is such a love-it-or-hate-it proposition.

Bare Skin is the first in the series of the Perfume Diaries franchise.  The second, Santa Barbara, was released a couple of weeks ago, but I have yet to smell it. Bare Skin’s notes are black pepper, freesia, anise, iris, vanilla orchid, plumeria, patchouli, sandalwood, labdanum and musk. It was created by perfumer Stephen Nilsen, who authored a favourite of mine from last year, Apothia Pearl.

Upon contemplating the notes, and the number of reviews on Sephora.com, I was prepared for another “meh” entry into the overcrowded department/specialty store fragrance world.  Surprisingly, the Sephora reviews are overwhelmingly positive, and miracle of miracles, I like it too.  I tried Bare Skin at the Sephora store in the Walden Galleria in Buffalo, NY. I spritzed generously from the tester and then proceeded to walk around for a bit, settling in for a humungo double-double coffee and a toasted bagel at Tim Hortons.  By the way, the extra-large cups at US Tim Hortons locations are the same size as the venti cups at Starbucks; hence, “humungo”, instead of my usual Canadian extra-large.  As I sat and ate, I noticed a spicy, warm, slightly tropical waft emanating from my right arm. As Bare Skin warmed up on my skin, I kept sniffing, and getting odd looks from the other Tim’s patrons, no doubt thinking I was practicing my “sleeve sneeze”, the recommended protocol to avoid spreading germs during the much over-hyped H1N1 flu season.  The more I sniffed, the more I liked it. Bare Skin does share similarities with some of my stalwart cold weather spice/incense/woods favourites, but the difference is that slight bit of tropical floral in the background.  The plumeria note peeks through just enough to differentiate Bare Skin, but not so much that it becomes a full-blown tropical floral scent. The labdanum and vanilla add their usual sweetness, but there is no patch-skank; not even in the drydown. This is another seamless composition, like Apothia Pearl, that goes from peppery and bright, to warm/woodsy, and a bit sweet. So, from a technical standpoint, Bare Skin is well done. From a marketing standpoint, it carries on the trend of woods gaining steam in the mainstream. As I am prone to make comparisons, I’ll compare Bare Skin to Estee Lauder’s Sensuous.  They are by no means identical, but they are very much in keeping with the growing popularity of woody fragrances with the edge taken off for the masses.  Bare Escentuals fans tend to worship Leslie Blodgett and love everything she does, and Bare Skin has all the hallmarks of being a smashing success with her minions of swirl-tap-buffers.

Speaking of those minions, I myself am a swirl-tap-buffer, a reference to the technique of applying Bare Escentuals mineral makeup. The thing is, I am finally growing tired of the whole routine; it feels like the old, “lather, rinse, repeat” directive from shampoo bottles of yesteryear. What I’m saying is that I’ve lost patience for the whole mineral makeup application process, which consists of two steps: step one, foundation; step two, mineral veil finishing powder. On some days, I feel like I have a thick coating of cream cheese frosting on my face, rather than the weightless, gossamer perfection the product promises. I’m partly to blame for this, because I can be a bit overzealous with the application, even though I got the hang of it years ago. Now, I feel a strong urge to simplify. Lately, I’ve eschewed the swirl-tap-buff for a quicker, easier application of Clinique’s Superbalanced Powder Makeup. It’s packaged in one of those neat “shaver” containers, so it doesn’t leak, or fly all over the bathroom when you put it on. One application of this with a big, fluffy powder brush does the trick for me; no finishing powder needed. As a matter of fact, I’ve rediscovered a couple of Clinique products that I haven’t used in ages, one being Clarifying Lotion 2. After years of trying every DIY exfoliating peel product, I’ve realized that Clarifying Lotion 2 on a cotton pad is a better exfoliant than all the pads, scrubs and potions I’ve tried. All About Eyes concealer is genius; I no longer wear eye cream during the day, and Dramatically Different Moisturizing GEL is wonderful. Not to worry, though; I am not regressing from a swirl-tap-buffer to a Clinique three-stepper. I won’t be wearing Happy any time soon, although I do miss Simply. Too bad it bit the dust before the woody trend surfaced. I really liked that one.

How about a little TGIF sharing: What is your take on mineral makeup? Like, love, hate, no opinion…whatever. Tell me!

Disclosure: As I mentioned in the body of my essay, I tested Bare Skin at Sephora in Buffalo, NY.  One of the lovely SAs there made me a small sample to take with me. The Clinique and Bare Escentuals products I wrote about are part of my personal skin care/makeup stash.

This story is one I know y’all can relate to.  It started so simply.

I had lusted for this Balenciaga bag for years.  The most I had ever paid for a bag was $300 for a vintage Chanel quilted black number (I’m not going to talk about the Chanel red flap bag that whispers to me).

My friend talked me into it, though I talked myself into it just as much.   The story really started in London in July, when I fell in love with a different Balenciaga bag in Harrod’s, and I didn’t buy it, even though my friend insisted that I should.  I have thought about that bag every day between then and now.  Well, that’s a little overstated. Not every day, but regularly enough that it is a big regret. It was a limited edition bag, not one that, I foolishly told myself, I could buy any time later.  You can’t find it anywhere. Well, almost.  But that’s part of the story.

Once I had my beautiful bag, I had no wallet!  I mean, the bag I had before was about the size of a checkbook with compartments for money and credit cards built in.  So I needed a wallet to go with it.  Well, if you look in the picture, I did get a beautiful wallet from Chanel that really went with the bag.  And it will work so nicely with  my vintage Chanel bag.

Did you know Chanel had earrings? Well, I might have known that, but was ignoring that fact until I ran across these cute little danglies while I was in the Rue Cambon shop buying my wallet.  Every girl should make sure to go into the chanel shop and get a bracelet or earrings or ring or something there.  But they didn’t give me champagne this time when I shopped?  Must have been the extreme cold.

I closed my eyes and put on blinkers when I walked by the J12 section of the Chanel shop.  Have I mentioned how much I really love those white ceramic watches?  I didn’t want to spend that much for a watch, but I did set out after I got home to find a nice ceramic white watch for some more reasonable price and

——————————–  LOOK!!!! ——->>>>>>>

It didn’t cost upwards of 4,000, it was only $200, but I didn’t want a fake’ish Chanel, and it looked enough like an original design for me to be happy with it.

The shopping accidents were piling up at this point.  Have I mentioned the pretty bone china that they serve espresso in in Paris?  I drink espresso every morning, two cups, but it has to be the big espresso cup, the 4 ouncer.  The smaller one just won’t work.  But when I started looking for those cups, I was a little surprised at the price.

And I tripped over them and bought them anyway.  The point to this story is not, hey, look what I bought!  But how one thing just starts another, and it’s like once you open your wallet for something extravagant, a lot of other smaller extravagances start piling up, eventually dwarfing the cost of the original extravagance.  Anyone else  ever notice that?

This has happened a lot with perfume – here’s an area where I know all of you will start nodding.  Once you break that $200 for a bottle barrier, you soon find you have four bottles that you paid over $200 a bottle for, or you wind up buying 10 $50 bottles of perfume at the discounter, thinking you’re being virtuous, but it’s still $500.  Or, yes, you toddle off to buy a couple of samples, they don’t cost much, and soon you find yourself checking out with over $100 of samples in your cart.

Shopping accidents in the singular seem to lead to an epidemic. Mine seems to be abating (crossing fingers!).  So what was your worst shopping accident?  Perfume or otherwise.

And that Balenciaga bag that I took a pass on last July is around, at least one of them, and it is taking everything I’ve got  not to pull the trigger.  But if I don’t, will I regret it for the next year?

And!  We haven’t dont a drawing for a while. Again, I was going to review the Martin Margiela, which I’m so loving right now, but my nose is still enough off with this cold, that I just can’t be sure of everything, so let’s give away some samples of it instead.  How about three winners of a MM sample from the comments.

Join me for a perfume ramble today, full of asides and opinion.  Since I generally deliver opinion by the shovelful, that should come as no surprise.

There was a confluence of events.  First, this is the time of year that the heart (at least my heart) cries out for big white flowers of the in-your-face variety – it’s something about the cold and the general dreariness.  These are not the sorts of things I want to wear … well, pretty much any other time of the year.  Lily?  Lily of the valley?   Er, no thanks.

Second – remember, waaaaaaay back last fall, when it seemed like between Van Cleef, Cartier and Francis Kurkdjian, we had a truckload of new scents worth considering dumped on us almost simultaneously?  It sort of bummed me out, that timing.  Then 20 seconds later we’d all moved on to Amaranthigh and … there’s something wrong with the new world order if I have a full set of decants for all three lines and never really spent enough time with them.

So I decided to revisit the three white florals from Van Cleef & Arpels — Gardénia Pétale, Muguet Blanc and Lys Carmin.

A general observation – it was brilliant of them to release these soliflores, in my opinion, particularly after the disappointing (to me) Feerie-thing, which I’ll stop ragging on because I know some of you loved it, and it’s not like I’m the Avatar of Good Taste.  Clawing my way desperately back on topic – these new Van Cleefs with their big ol’ single flower studies?  It sounds so old-school it seems new to me.  No, seriously, it’s almost … edgy.  Work with me on this one.  They could have gone with a white-floral and a fresh-floral and a man-scent and a floriental or three, but they come out with gardenia, lily, and muguet?  The old guard, people (unlike me) who actually shop at Van Cleef, likely aren’t offended.  And the rest of us, perfumistas all, get to wallow in single-flower studies that happen seldom enough in “modern” perfumery to get my attention.

I checked on MUA and there are hardly any reviews of these (although I see Feerie gets a crummy 35% rebuy rating, heheh, okay, I’ll stop) but if I’m understanding correctly, the two that have the most fans are Gardenia and Iris (with maybe Lys as the third?)  If you have a different sense of the popular perfumista opinion, weigh in.

I thought Gardénia Pétale was extraordinary the first time I smelled it, and my opinion hasn’t changed.  It’s both gardenia and Gardenia, the Ideal – enormous and glowing without feeling monstrous.  I’ve blogged on my gardenia lust in the past and I’m going to tentatively dub this my favorite in terms of (hyper-)reality.  If you look at the notes, you can see the bits that have been cobbled together to highlight what makes the smell of gardenia so haunting.  There’s the piercing orange-green note at the top, and the funky smell I think of as cheesy and others call mushroomy (and it’s that smell that makes gardenia something of an acquired taste.)  Then come the deep indolic notes that give it weight, jasmine and ylang, followed by a tuberose-ish powdery sweetness.  Notes are: citrus notes, green notes, gardenia, jasmine, lily of the valley.

Gardénia Pétale is a heavy fragrance with strong lasting power.  If you’re trying it out, it’s worth waiting for an hour or even two before making your decision.  It seesaws from the greener lily-of-the-valley aspect to the cheesier, riper notes before balancing itself out.  Like most heady white florals, I wouldn’t wear this to the office (lots of people hate gardenia, the same way they hate jasmine, lily or tuberose), but if you’re looking for the olfactory equivalent of tucking a gardenia in your hair before a party, this is probably it.  Put it on a couple hours ahead of time, and use a light hand.

My all-time-favorite gardenia is Strange Invisible Perfumes’ (sadly discontinued) Lady Day, which I love for its melancholy, but even I have to admit this is truer to the actual flower.

Muguet Blanc has been kind of a mixed bag for lily-of-the-valley lovers, mostly I think because it suffers in comparison to the now-bastardized Diorissimo; without the dirty base of civet that many love, muguet ends up smelling like the familiar smell of a household product, lily-of-the-valley soap with a higher price point.  While I am blessed/cursed with a lack of proper appreciation for Diorissimo, I can’t say I worked up much of an appreciation for Muguet Blanc either.  It’s an extremely cold fragrance, and on my skin it’s almost unbearably soapy (the neroli isn’t helping matters in that regard).  I grew up picking small bouquets of lily of the valley from the neighbors’ yards, and while it’s been eons since I smelled the flower properly, I’m remembering something greener and sweeter and less aqueous than Muguet Blanc, which does indeed smell like expensive soap to me rather than a proper flower.  It also has a musky base that throws me a little.  Patty loved it, so don’t take my word for it.  Notes: lily-of-the-valley, white peony, neroli and white cedar.

Finally there’s Lys Carmin.  If I liked the Muguet Blanc less than I expected to, Lys Carmin was a surprise in the other direction. Non-gourmand vanilla lovers alert – read on. I’m not a proper lily-lover when it comes to fragrance; I appreciate them in the abstract, but something like Donna Karan Gold, which I think is a great fragrance, tends to be migraine-inducing.  I can’t help but notice that Lys Carmin, of these three, adheres more to popular convention than the other two, with more spicy warmth than a “typical” lily fragrance, but it’s a convention I happen to like.  It’s sweetly woody and smells less like a soliflore than a cold-weather comfort scent, spicy/vanillic without being gourmand.  I can’t imagine this would be anything but a disappointment for anyone looking for a Stargazer-lily or Easter-lily scent.  Instead it smells like an extremely high-end version of the spicy vanilla trend, quieter and not stunningly unusual.  It’s woody rather than gourmand (that lush vanilla-sandalwood drydown — squeeeee!)  I moved this decant to my winter-comfort shelf.  It’s as cozy as a cashmere sweater.  Notes: lily, pink peppercorns, ylang-ylang, vanilla and sandalwood. ** Update — I swear this reminds me of something, it must be a niche vanilla, but I can’t think what.  Any ideas?

Source of decants: private samples from The Perfumed Court.

Suffering from a raging cold or flu, this will be a fairly short and dull post.   But let’s not make this about me.

I’ve been cuddled up all day with my Butterscotch tea from Marriage Freres. If I hadn’t picked that up, I would have gone for the Noel from MF or the Joy from Taizo that Starbucks sells.  When I’m sick, tea must have all those great spicy notes in it.  Probably doesn’t make me feel better, but the smell is so comforting.

And my blanket.  I’m attached to the Little Giraffe microfiber blankets. I get probably two of them a year, when dreamalittledreamwithme.com puts them on sale (they’re on sale now, plus 20% off with bigsale2010 as the code) because as much as I love them , I’m in heaven when I get a new one, it’s fresh from the package, and it’s my virgin snuggle blanket.   Yeah, a little weird.  But they feel amazing. And my new one I got on sale shows up today, early in the morning, and I wrapped up in it, with my Butterscotch tea, and other than being all sniffly, feverish and sick?  It was perfect.  There is something almost joyful it letting go when you are sick and just sinking into that semi-lucid fog, completely understanding how helpless you are, and that the sick has to run its course.

I thought about trying to put on some perfume and write somewhat thoughtfully about it and just gave up. I am loving that new Martin Margiela thing I got at Colette. It’s nutty-like, but more than that.

And Root beer. Zuberfizz root beer is the other thing I have to have. I’ll settle for Hansen’s or something, but Zuberfizz with real cane sugar in it is my first choice.

Now that it’s clear we just aren’t going to talk about perfume today, what’s your getting sick rituals or things you sink into when you stop fighting it?

Unfinished business — first, for anyone who’s wondered what I look like — here’s a photo of me, as you can see I’m not really a 65-year-old man.  This is my new short hair cut, it was quite long, several of you asked what it looked like.  There’s a slightly different version of this photo in yesterday’s makeup post if you want to see my snazzy lipstick.  That white stuff on my coat and hair is snow — Diva took this of me on Saturday in the middle of the blizzard.  I think I look like I’m ready to tear somebody at Guerlain a new one, don’t I?  Musette says I look a little feral, and I know she means that in a nice way.

Second — as we all suspected, I am an idiot about Beyonce’s Heat fragrance.  It is, indeed, a fruity, insipid musk; I must have had something (God knows what) on my hands that gave it that skank, and don’t you dare start typing nasty things into comments.  The musk in the drydown is that same sour-fresh musk that I hate in large quantities in, say, some of the JLo fragrances.

I got a couple samples of new Dawn Spencer Hurwitz stuff in the mail (thanks, secret friend!) and so I got to try Kohl Gris, which seems to be making its way through the perfumista circuit the same way a couple other DSH scents like Mahjoun and Cimabue did.

As quoted from the DSH website, “Kohl Gris is the scent of the smoky eye; sexy, seductive and smoldering. Built on a classical base of ambergris, Kohl Gris wafts in sensuality and spicy smoke.”  Notes, also from the website: Bergamot, Black Pepper, Black Pine, Clove Leaf, Centifolia Rose Absolute, Egyptian Jasmine Absolute, Esprit de Lavande, Ambergris, Australian Sandalwood, Brown Oakmoss, Clove Tobacco, Labdanum, Olibanum (Frankincense), Orris.

Given my makeup post yesterday, a “smoky-eye” fragrance seemed like the perfect review choice for today.

As you might expect from that list of notes, it opens spicy and peppery – and with quite a bit of lavender.  At that point it seems to me to be a darkish, stormy purple-gray.  Then it becomes quite sweet, sweeter than I’d expected, the florals accenting the way that incense scents can sometimes be quite sweetly resinous; I assume this is the ambergris (which so far as I know is synthetic, in case the mere idea freaks you out) along with the labdanum.  I’d had hopes for the sandalwood, given my current sandalwood search, but I’d describe this as more resiny/incense/spice than woods.

How do I feel about Kohl Gris?  I don’t know.  I can’t decide whether it’s beautiful and I like it, or whether it’s too ambery/rosy/lavender and I don’t.  However, given that I’ve sprayed it on seven or eight different days to try to make that determination, it is clearly interesting, which is more than I can say about any number of other scents I smell in a week.

Next up: E’pices d’Hiver, the first in “an all botanical collection of fine perfumes.”  (Does that mean all natural?  I have no idea.)  Notes are: Bergamot, Bitter Orange, Citrus Oils, Coriander Seed, Davana, Pink Peppercorn, Star Anise, Cinnamon Bark, Clove Bud, Grandiflorum Jasmine, Moroccan Rose Absolute, Nutmeg, Spice Notes, Ambrette Seed, Labdanum, Siam Benzoin, Tolu Balsam, Tonka Bean, True Arabian Myrrh, Vanilla Absolute.

This would be a classic DSH spicefest, which you probably either love or loathe.  Interestingly, this one has to sit on my skin for about five minutes, during which it’s very light, before it starts to bloom.  Like, say, Mahjoun or Sienna, there isn’t a ton of development – lots and lots of spices, not especially sweet, I particularly love the first half hour when the bitter orange is quite prominent.  There’s nothing pomander-ish about it; it’s fresh, not dusty.   More complex than Sienna (which is an ode to cinnamon) and less ornate than Cimabue, it’s a nice interplay between juicy citrus and pungent kitchen spices.

I actually used a Posse post awhile back to gather feedback on DSH’s huge (and somewhat confusing) inventory and website.   Among other things that happened after that feedback, they now offer smaller sizes in almost all their scents.  Also, heeding the pleas of potential customers who were just looking for someplace to start, she came up with sampler sets (Holiday Favorites, Hidden Gems, etc.) , which I think is a great way to meet a line.   I grabbed the Top Ten list here, for anyone familiar (or not) with the line, who might be curious: Cimabue, Jitterbug, Mahjoun, Nourouz, Cardamom & Khyphi, DSH Special Formula X, Au Lait, Rose Vert, Wild Fig, Ashram and dirtyROSE. ** All in EdP format.  (This is available as a sampler set.)

That certainly includes some of my favorites.  I’ll put in a plug here for Special Formula X (I have the X-treme version in oil.)  My understanding is that it was first developed for Dawn to get a sense of how various notes might work out on a customer’s skin, depending on how they perceived X.  I like musky scents and SFX is one of my favorites.  Neither laundry-soap-musk nor dirty, it’s a warm, faintly sweet skin scent that is a perfect wallpaper scent while managing to be sexy at the same time.  Fans of DSH will likely recognize it, it seems to me it’s a familiar base in her line.

And finally, there’s Cimabue, which is how I (and many other perfumistas) met the line, a riff on L’Artisan’s Safran Troublant, only a lot spicier and more ornate, highlighting the saffron without killing me with rose, which is the problem with ST.  Cimabue is hands down my favorite saffron – and I have done some looking, believe me.  Dawn told me once that saffron and rose, a common combo, are often paired because saffron on its own can be very bitter, and needs some sort of sweeter/floral counterpoint.  While Cimabue has rose in it, I can’t pick it out.  Instead, florals like jasmine and tuberose, as well as cardamom, nutmeg, clove, and lots of vanilla, craft this saffron scent into something labeled a gourmand/oriental.  I don’t want to eat it myself, but I’m happy to smell it all day long.

On me, the oils hold up a bit longer than the EdP concentrations, although you have to give them time to set up on the skin, although I don’t have any complaints about the EdP longevity.  I think the general consensus is that Dawn also does really nice roses for those of you who love that note in fragrance.  I’ll stick with the spices and comfort scents, myself.

Sources: all DSH samples except Special Formula X-treme are private samples.  I got X-treme directly from DSH.

It’s snowing hard while I type this and I’m feeling crabby and housebound, so let’s do a makeup post and cheer me up.  I have info and some questions sprinkled throughout.

1) Eyes. As some of you know, I cut my long hair recently – here’s a photo my daughter took, I’m wearing the lippie/gloss combo below in #3.  Something about that change has allowed me to feel comfortable wearing more makeup – specifically, strong lips and eyes at the same time.  I’ve always followed the rule of one or the other (in terms of intensity) – strong lips, neutral eyes, or vice versa.   Now, though, I’m working a smoky or multi-colored eye with bright lips and feeling like it looks fresh.  What say you?  BTW when I say “neutral” I don’t mean no eye makeup.  At bare minimum I fill in my sparse brows, and put a Bobbi Brown cream shadow on my lids (applied with a brush) that renders my rabbit-pink eyelids a more aesthetically pleasing neutral color while skipping eye-primer.  I use Suede or Slate, which is slightly grayer.  Suede looks like hell in the pot, a warm, nasty yellow-brown, but both of these are a hint of soft, shadowy color on my lids.  If I have another 30 seconds I do a Bobbi Brown gel liner along the top lashes, which stays until you remove it – I have plum, dark blue and slightly shimmery dark brown.  I’ve experimented a little with other brands, but I think the BB has the nicest texture and the most longevity.

2) Related to the eyes – I’ve been experimenting with lining the inside of my lower lids, which looks great and I’ve never done before.  I know, I know – we’re not supposed to do that with eye pencils because it’s dangerous unsanitary my arm will fall off – oh, wait, that’s my perfume that’s going to cause my arm to fall off.  Somebody call IFRA!

Anyhow, I’ve been using a Laura Mercier in a dark purplish-black and the effect is gorgeous but it doesn’t stay.  I have to check my eyes while I’m out to make sure it hasn’t smeared or run into the inside corner (ew), and it’s not like I’m using a ton of product.  I’m trying to find a balance … what do I need?  A harder pencil?  Will that run less?  Should I get something labeled kohl?  Recommendations?

Makeup tip from Gina, a professional makeup artist and occasional commenter – I have greenish/hazel eyes.  While I use brown or gray shadows for smoky eyes and to create some depth (I have deep set eyes, and a little round) she suggested trying a darkish purple (think eggplant.)   I have a Cle de Peau shadow that is a very dark plum-purple, almost black, not quite matte, which I’d been using with a damp brush as a liner.  As a shadow, placed on the outside half of my lid near the corner to give depth and lift, it’s a great color with greenish eyes and does not register as “purple.”  Sorry, I can’t find the name, but I’m sure most makeup lines would have a similar color.

3) Lips! I’ve fallen in love with the NARS lip lacquer gloss pot in Hot Wired – a bright, slightly blue pink that is thick and stays on, the swatch here looks like the true color on my screen.  It’s great over bare lips (this stuff is thick) but I’ve been experimenting with layering it over lippies, trying to up the intensity.  BTW this is only for you who like a cool-toned pink, if you’re a warm red you might as well skip ahead.  Anyhow, my regular pink lippies are nice underneath but don’t provide the pop I’m looking for, my pink lippie choices tend to be not so intense.  Much as I love NARS Funny Face, that’s almost too much, and it’s very dry on me.  So eventually I tried a red lippie I blogged on before – Dior’s Rouge Dior in Red Premiere, which is a bluish red.  I tend to wear it dabbed lightly on my lips for a pop of color rather than as a full-on lipstick, because it’s very emollient and tends to travel, unlike, say, MAC Russian Red.  So.  Dabbing that on my lips gives a strong pink base that isn’t too dry.  With an application of Hot Wired on top – shaZAM!!!!!  It’s an amazing combo, that’s what I’m wearing in the photo.  It’s not so neon-bright that I feel uncomfortable, but certainly brighter and glossier fuchsia than anything else I own. Anyone who’s got the Hot Wired and a blue-red lippie, you might want to give it a whirl.

4) Nails. Having whined in March’s Maxims about my difficulty getting a decent professional manicure (I know, I know!  The horror!) I stumbled across a woman at a local salon who gave such a great mani I drove back out there to get her name.  She gave me the oval tip I asked for, not the squoval or the Carmela Soprano, and she didn’t hack them off.  Also, maybe my nails are snaggier than usual, but I almost always have to point out some rough edge they missed that needs to be re-filed before the polish.  She did it perfectly the first time.  My mani, which takes a lot of abuse in this kid-centric household, lasted a full week.  I do wonder whether it’s just a really long-lasting polish (Sephora OPI in Run With It, a lovely, subtle dove-gray with a very slight shimmer that works better on cool skin tones.)  But this gal took the polish brush and ran it along the edge of my nail tips as she painted, which I certainly can’t do.  I’m guessing that helped.

Question: I’ve been sticking to my grayish neutrals and ugly greiges like Metro Chic on my long nails.  How do you all feel about darker/brighter/classic red on longer nails? “Long” being a quarter-inch of tip, nothing too freaky.   Are long, bright nails too garish or young-looking?

An observation: having seen a number of older, well-dressed women wearing very dark polish (like navy) on short nails this winter … wow.  I work a navy or a purple or a dark green and I think it looks pretty, but on a woman in her 70s it’s fantastic.  It’s chic in a way that I can only aspire to.

Throwing this open to any makeup items, discoveries, opinions, layering ideas, product raves, or anything else you’d like to discuss.

photo: Diva took it with her fancy new camera she saved up and bought herself.  BTW that white stuff on me is snow.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen — it’s that time of the year again, when we all put forth our Top Ten Fragrances of Winter.  These are scents that may be new, or just new to us — or perhaps rediscoveries or simply old favorites that we rely on to get us through the gloomies until Spring.

Lee: We’ve had more snow this year than I can recall since childhood. A full two inches laid on the ground for a week. Hell indeed, or its inverse (waves at Canadians, Scandinavians and midWesterners with irritating insouciance). Anyways, what’s ringing my bells and pulling my buttons? Well, the first is no surprise – Parfumerie Generale’s Cozé. Pure wonder. But I reckon this will be a year-round mainstay for me. (By the way, winners of the samples from two weeks back are Geordan1244, carlene and chasa. Get in touch, peoples!).

And sticking with the patchouli and chocolate oddness, I’m going to choose dear old Serge’s Borneo 1834. Reeling from Perfume Shrine’s discontinuation revelation, and still soccer-punched by my sample of l‘Eau Serge Lutens (bright light, squinting eyes, iris squeal, high pitched melody – “Der Hölle Rache” from the Magic Flute is how high it goes -  facets of bleach and scrubbed sanatoria, with Dior Homme in the far drydown) Borneo 1834 is the perfect elegant off-centre number for when I want to project more … something… than the delectable Cozé will allow. No nasty vomit comments (vomments?) now please.

March:  It’s been a funny winter (aren’t they all?) because it’s either 67 degrees, or it’s cold and there’s 20 inches of snow on the ground.  Oddly, I have not yet shifted to my gourmand cozy-sweater comfort scents.  Instead I’ve been reveling in these two:

The first is Lancome Climat, re-released in La Collection, I blogged on it already.  Part of the ongoing fascination is that I’ve fallen in love with a fragrance I wouldn’t consider “me” at all.  It’s too big, too angular, too green-and-white.  Too dressy.  Too … too.  Not that I’m opposed to ballsy elegance (hello, Mitsouko!) but I never thought I’d find myself swooning over an aldehydic white floral with plenty of the dreaded lily of the valley.  I like wearing it casually — in the daytime, with my jeans and a sweater.  Perfume is always full of wonderful surprises, isn’t it?

The second is Serge Lutens Santal Blanc.  When I mentioned it in my sandalwood post, several sandalwood fans said they hated this scent.  My new interest in sandalwood (my timing couldn’t be worse, could it?) allowed me to have a perfume experience I’m not sure I’ve had before: to view an already-appreciated scent through a completely different lens.  I think SB was my second Serge bottle, and it’s always been that weird pencil-y thing.  But right this second it’s the perfect sandalwood for me, radiant, with no giant rose to spoil it for me.  Also, sandalwood and fig together are delicious.  Having acquired several figs during my fig jag, and then promptly burning myself out, I’m getting a chance to wear those figs again.  (My personal fave: Philosykos layered with SB.)

Musette:  A lifetime ago, my (then) husband had the noive to sniff my best friend and say “you smell intoxicating.”  It was in Winter.  She  was wearing Prescriptives Calyx.  I was furious.  But intrigued.  Went and sniffed.  He wuz right.  Busted!….but right.  I think the good ship LucaTania gave it 5 stars, with good reason.  It goes on smooth and sunny and blooms in the cold, without trying too hard.  It’s not quite ’summer’, just a nice fresh, juicy (without being ‘fruity’) rosy-green.

Speaking of rose…normally I am not a huge rose fan in perfume (love ‘em on bushes, though)…but something about winter brings out the Rose Love in me.    My favorite for this time of year is The Different Company’s Rose Poivree, with that hit of peppery zing! slicing through the redness.  First runner up is Rosine’s Big’un -  La Rose de Rosine.  Nothing but, uh, Rose….it’s great for snuggling under the blankets on a cold winter night.

Nava: So far, my first full Canadian winter has been less than impressive, but I should be careful what I wish for, correct? It hasn’t been anywhere near as brutal as what my mother’s childhood recollections had me fearing, but at least it was snow, ya know? Nowadays, it’s those pesky “ice pellets” (aka, sleet) I need to worry about; that and falling on my ass in the driveway while I scrape the protective coating off my car. But hey, at least I’ll smell good wearing Serge’s Five O’ Clock Au Gingembre and Guerlain Spiritueuse Double Vanille. I know I’ve been singing the praises of wood, incense and the like for a while, but when it comes down to chasing away the doldrums of winter, these two get it done. This is where I’ve landed on the journey from foody and gourmand, to, dare I say it…grown up.

Patty:  I’m a simple girl, and I feel like I’m flogging these two scents to within and inch of their life, but they are quintessentially winter, By Kilian Pure Oud and Amouage Tribute Attar.  Dark, rich, warm, pungent, a little bitter, but, like life, worn long enough, warmed up by the heat of your life, the become almost an extension of you, even while retaining an other-ness.

For more Top Ten lists, please visit Bois de Jasmin, Grain de Musc, Now Smell This, and Perfume-Smellin’ Things.

It’s tough to write a post when you’re pretty much exhausted and need to get up at a really early hour tomorrow to get on a plane, but let me try!

First, I got to Colette and tried the new Martin Margiella that was just released on Monday – Untitled. Yum!  It’s got a really nice nutty vibe that will allow me to forgive not naming it.  The notes I could find for it were galbanum, boxwood, mastic, incense, bitter orange, jasmine, cedar and musk.  I’m not sure where the nuttiness came from, I get almost no green, but that was one quick spray, and I hope I didn’t already have something on that hand.  Because if I did, it will be a mind-buster to try and recreate this very nice little scent on my hand.  It is exclusively at Colette in Paris right now, but it says it will go into other locations in March.

One of my favorite stops in Paris is Mariage Freres.  The smells of the tea in that  shop or any tea shop just are my idea of sniffling heaven.  We had lunch there, and I picked the Butterscotch tea.  The aroma from it was just amazing.  A combination of chocolate, caramel and honey – probably some other things – made this probably one of my favorite teas to smell as it brews.  As much as I know green tea and white tea are better for me, I just can’t help loving the smell of all the black teas.

For those of you that asked, the new Guerlain was not anywhere in sight while I was there. I’ve heard the release date is February’ish. Guerlain is pretty firm about releasing everywhere at the same time, so keep an eye out for it then!  Denyse says it is very good, and I trust her on things Guerlain, so I’m optimistic that it will be a nice addition to the line and make up for the vague disappointment that I have with Idylle, which  I finally sniffed while here.

And that Daphne thing from CdG?  Couldn’t even put it on my skin.  I was afraid I would have to stick a lit match up my nose to get even the quick sniff I did of the bottle out.  Toxic, but weirdly compelling. I think I married a guy like that once – or twice.  Well, too many times.

So au revoir, will be back to normal’ish life tomorrow.  You know, if anyone is ever interested in a Perfume Posse Paris trip for less than 10 people (more than this makes it tricky to do), just say so in comments.  Done in the low season, like January, not sharing a room, who knows on airfare, but it’s usually decent’ish in January, like 600-900, for four nights, probably $150 a night, so like 600-800 (there’s always pesky taxes and things), plus shopping/eating cash.  If there were enough interest, I’d be happy to organize one for like next January.

Sorry, no post today.  Between sick kids and a migraine, I’m keeping it short, so no hard feelings if you blow this off.

I wanted to mention briefly a couple of things I found at Sephora on my mall binge, one of them a reconsideration.

Chanel Allure Homme Edition Blanche – here’s a link to my original review.  For the longest time I only saw this at some (not all) of the Bloomingdale’s stores.  It’s now in much wider distribution at Sephora.

For any guy reading this, or you gal perfumistas, I don’t suppose Edition Blanche is of much interest.  But it’s the bottle of fragrance I gave to the Big Cheese, who doesn’t care much for scents, and it’s the one he wears of his own free will.  Edition Blanche is rather like the Cheese’s favorite gray cashmere sweater that he wears all the time.  It is well-made and unobtrusive; it is appropriate for most occasions; it appears to be luxurious without demanding attention.  If you’re looking for a guy-frag as a gift, and you don’t want to go the classic citrus-y cologne route, you might consider this.  The bottle is as handsome as the scent.  Jacques Polge did the scent, notes are lemon, bergamot, cedar, sandalwood, tonka bean, white musk, vetiver, ginger, amber, vanilla, white and pink pepper.

I also re-sprayed KenzoAmour Florale – the one in the white-fading-to-clear KenzoAmour bottle that I love so much it’s ridiculous.  I’m a huge fan of the original KenzoAmour, one of my comfort scents, and I can’t say I found this an improvement, being a more floral interpretation and a step in the direction of Flower.  Retrying it long after my first review, I am giving it further consideration.  I wish it didn’t do the ghost-of-Play-doh thing at the top (and I don’t know why it does, but so does Flower; notes are neroli, grapefruit, blackcurrant, cardamom, frangipani blossom, rosebud, gardenia, white musk, cedar wood).  That part only lasts for a few minutes, though, and I am left with a lighter, sweeter Amour, with a faint bitterness that I find unexpectedly compelling in contrast to the woodsy drydown.  It is not “clean,” and as surprised reviewers note on Sephora, for something that doesn’t wear heavily, it lasts and lasts.

I don’t need to own any more perfume (God knows), and since I already own KenzoAmour and KA Indian Holi, I’ve resisted buying this, in part because I know what I’m lusting for is that bottle.  But I can’t escape the feeling that, having removed part of my mental block of comparing it unfavorably to the beloved original, I’m falling a little in love with it on its own merits.

So that’s … it.  If you have a fragrance reconsideration of your own that you’d like to share, particularly if it’s a flanker of a much-loved scent and so you couldn’t take it seriously at first, I’d like to hear about it.

Excuse all typos, it’s late, I’ve had dinner/champagne/wine. While not anywhere near circling the intoxication drain, I’m just tired and very relaxed.

Probably one of the highlights of any trip to Paris is getting together with Denyse from Grain de Musc and just catching up with her and sniffing all the things she’s gotten her hands on that aren’t in stores yet.

So just to make sure I”m a complete Smell-tease.  Keep an eye out for a completely great Duchafour scent from L’Artisan in the late spring.  Can’t say anything beyond that, but it’s love for me that almost turned into undignified begging to get more.

Sniffed the new Parfumerie Generale.  It starts out as a very sharpish green scent that dries down to into a softening of its edges.  Denyse pegged it to Estee Lauder Private Collection-esque. I’d agree with that, but without all the really perfumey aspects you get with Lauder perfumes.

Vero Kern is also making EDPs of her three scents.  If you’ve ever smelled the Djedi-inspried Onda, you know it’s a parfum that you have to make a full day or two’s commitment to when you wear it.  I’m not sure the EDP of it requires much less of a commitment, but she changed it in some interesting ways that make it, for me, a lot more wearable.  I still would have to intentionally put it on and know we were going to be circling each other for 24-48 hours, but the new elements add a warmth to it.  Well, you’ll see. She did a similarly great job with Kiki and Rubj in the Edp. I don’t know what the price point will be ont hese, but they will be at Luckyscent for sure when they are ready, and the edp conversions should lower the pricing enough that y’all can Onda-up as you wish without losing the beautiful weirdness of all of her perfumes.

Lastly, but not leastly – Dior has added another to that line that we can’t seem to find anywhere except in Europe or the occasional Dior boutique or maybe Neiman-Marcus, and when you can, it’s in those monstrous bottles, Ambre Nuit. Notes are listed as bergamot, Turkish rose, cistus Labdanum, and oriental and amber accents.   This is all ambery incensey goodness, with some little spicy thing running around in the background.  It has the charm of that spice note in Iris Silver Mist, but the two scents are nothing alike.  Why are they calling it a cologne mystifies me.  Whatever bergamot you get on the open is quickly shoved aside by a much more interesting perfume.  Longevity -  I dabbed a spot on about 6 hours ago, and it is just humming along, mellowing out from a pretty vigorous amber perfume to this very muted, skin-hugging , velvety smooth, warm, rich concoction.  Now, word of warning, Denyse hated this, so there may be a chemical in there you could be sensitive too. I thought I might be sensitive to it as well, and on the open, it veered off into that alcohol area that warns me I’m not smelling something accurately, but then it pulled back and just went into gorgeous.

So why is it that that whole series that Dior does, Bois d’Argent, Eau Noire and Cologne Blanche (? is that it ?) are probably the best things they’ve done in years, and they seriously hide them. Not even an exclusivity thing, they just don’t distribute it, whereas you can smell every other non-original thing they’ve done in every shop up and down the Champs.  It remains a mystery to me.

Dear Dior, repackage these great scents you keep in the Dior Basement in cute packaging and roll them out in some exclusive way like Cartier and Van Cleef did, but add a couple of slightly more feminine scents to it.  Stop making Dior Forever and Ever, which is a perfectly nice scent, but is that really what you want people saying about your perfumes?  Nice, but dumb. And then go make me some more Diorling parfum in China or somewhere where they don’t care what you put in your perfumes.   xoxo – Patty

Here, you can write  quick  note to the perfume house that’s jumping up and down on your last nerve with some helpful advice in the comments.

Tomorrow (today) is my always wonderful lunch at the Musee D’Orsay, probably a trip to the Rodin museum, quick run by Colette, Bon Marche because, well, it always has to be done, and a nice dinner down the street.

When I did my post a couple weeks ago on swag, someone commented that it was obvious we weren’t corporate shills because if we were, there’d be a lot more reviews of mass-market celebrity-type fragrances.  Which struck fear into my heart, because what if my handlers at Proctor & Gamble realize I haven’t been reviewing that stuff?!?   They might come to my house and take back the Rolls Royce and the pool boy!  And we can’t have that, can we?  So here are my addled musings on some new mass-market celebrity scents (including a nice surprise or two) — reviews made even cheesier by the fact that I am basing one of these on a magazine scent strip.  Yeah, baby!  Always searching for new ways to lower my standards!

There I was, minding my business, all curled up with a bowl of caramel popcorn and the latest issue of Glamour, when I espied the ad for Sarah Jessica Parker’s new scent, SJP NYC. And my first thought was, here it is!  This is it!  This is the fragrance, the cool fragrance, the one she wanted to release that was based on CdG Avignon + some sort of musk oil blah blah but they said it won’t be commercial enough so she did SJP Lovely instead.  Followed by Covet, about which … well, the less said the better, but you couldn’t accuse it of being a shameless pandering to popular tastes.

SJP NYC is that shameless pandering to popular tastes, however.  The bottle looks like the tawdry spawn of Ed Hardy and the D&G animal-print Man/Woman bottles.  And the fragrance, as sniffed out by my discerning nose?  The consummate insipid fruity floral.  Notes are: mandarin, white osmanthus, wild strawberries, gardenia, honeysuckle, mimosa, red Damascena rose, vanilla absolute, sandalwood, rum and creamy musk.  I have one word: strawberries.  Ugh.  Nobody’s gonna build the Taj Mahal out of strawberries.  To be fair, five minutes of research online reveals that this is some sort of Sex and the City tie-in fragrance, so it’s meant to be insipid – er, youthful and fun.  SJP, you disappoint.  Maybe you could take some of the gazillions of dollars you’ll earn from this scent and do the interesting one next time.

I was still cross about SJP when, a few pages later, I ran across – wait for it – the new celebrity scent by Kim Kardashian!  Famous for … I have no idea what, being a fame whore?  Sisters Kourtney and Khloe?  I’m ashamed I know their names.  I asked 15-year-old Diva about Kim and she said, “she’s the genius.”  I am not sure what she meant by that.  Perhaps she was being sarcastic.

But look at that ad up top.  You know what?  I LOVE that ad.  No, seriously.  It’s all retro-fabulous (those lips! those nails!), she looks pretty, her bits are covered, I see no giant, ugly tattoos, she doesn’t weigh 82 lbs., and I love that bathing suit (lingerie?)   I knew my kind thoughts were going to come crashing down when I smelled the scent strip, so I ripped it open and smeared it on my wrist and … okay, fine, Kim Kardashian, you are messing with my mind, because I like it.  I really do.

Notes for Kim Kardashian via Sephora are mandarin, honeysuckle, orange blossom, jasmine, tuberose, sensual spice, lush gardenia, jacaranda wood, tonka bean, vanilla orchid, musk, creamy sandalwood.  As the notes would indicate this is a rich white floral, musky/woody rather than sharp.  I get mostly creamy tuberose, a touch of orange blossom and a clean gardenia on a light musky/woody base.  It’s sexy and heady at first and kind of man-candy-ish, assuming your man doesn’t want you to smell like a sugar cookie.  It’s not fruity, fresh or gourmand (yay!), and I thought the drydown, which is where some mass-market fragrances completely fall apart, was still decent – woody tuberose and a spicy vanilla musk.  Even the girls liked it, which surprised me.  I didn’t buy a bottle, but I’d wear it.   Okay, okay, it ain’t Fracas (what is?) but for me it’s a manageable tuberose that doesn’t threaten to smother me.  I wouldn’t necessarily wear it to work in a regular office job, but it’d be a fine going-out (or staying-in) scent.

I went to two Sephoras looking for Kim Kardashian – the one at the mall and the fancypants one smack-dab in the middle of our snooty local retail area.  I wish I had a photo of the face of the sweet young man at Snooty Sephora when I told him they were getting it in.  Poor guy probably went in the back after I left and sobbed into his hankie.

For those of you reading this who think either a) I must have fallen and bumped my head or b) the blog’s been hijacked, CHECK IT:  When I went to the online Sephora reviews of Kim Kardashian, the lowest (one-star) reviews consistently use descriptors of this scent like OLD-LADYish, or TOO STRONG, or SOMETHING MY GRANDMA WOULD WEAR.   Ding ding ding!!!!   The sure sign of a (potential) winner!    Several Sephora reviewers mentioned White Shoulders by way of comparison, and the notes look right, although I can’t remember the smell of White Shoulders at all, except to say that (like everything else) I think it used to smell infinitely better in the 1950s than whatever they’re selling in the drugstore right now, next to the execrable current version of Emeraude.  Any opinions on that?

While at the mall looking for Kim Kardashian … (cue the music from Jaws) I tried the new Beyoncé fragrance, Heat.  Notes are vanilla orchid, magnolia, neroli, peach, honeysuckle nectar, almond macaroon, musk, sequoia milkwood (?), tonka bean and amber.  I have a soft spot for Miss B, her body is slammin’, I love her in spite of her hideous clothing line, House of Deréon, which I always mis-remember as House of Derriere, although I think that’s in a song of hers so it’s not all my fault.

I squirted it on my hand and inhaled.  Heat is … well, it’s … it’s … it’s … okay, imagine yourself in a perfumery course, which I have never done.  And in this perfumery course the instructor whips out a small vial of civet, or castoreum, for everyone to smell and says, well, yes, it’s terrible – but you just use a drop of that to add sexy interest to the base of another, much more complicated fragrance.  Heat smells like a thin veneer of canned peaches in syrup over the most powerful, intensely animalic stank of unwashed ladyparts that I have ever smelled in a perfume, and I don’t mean that in a good way.  It doesn’t even smell like a finished perfume (good or bad) – just … well, like I said.  So I triple-dog-dare you: go try Heat and tell me if I’m nuts. I tried two different bottles because I couldn’t quite believe what I was smelling.  Just don’t spray it on anything you can’t wash, and one small spray is plenty.   If I stood next to someone wearing Heat in an elevator, I’d probably throw up in my hands.

I decided to bury my stinky fingers under Queen by Queen Latifah, because … it was sitting right there and I was desperate?  Although I went back another day and tried it again.  Notes are tequila, bergamot, mandarin. rose, jasmine, cognac, coriander, patchouli, sandalwood, vanilla, tonka absolute, Egyptian incense and musk.  Queen opens big and a little rough, and then settles into a not-terrible fruitchouli – let’s thank Melissa for that term – that, again, I won’t be rushing out to buy, but you could do a lot worse.   I like it better than half the Miller Harris line.  It’s neither terribly bitter nor overpoweringly sweet, and it (sort of) ate the worst bits of Heat.  The drydown becomes a little more resiny-spicy without getting especially sweet.  You wouldn’t want to soak yourself in this one either, it’s got a ton of sillage, which strikes me as appropriate from the Queen, but it doesn’t smell like the candy aisle in the grocery store, and it’s an identifiably adult fragrance while still being warm and flirty.  The boozy bits, which are not my favorite notes in perfumery, weren’t dominant.  If I had to choose between this and Kim Kardashian I’d likely take Kim, but really, a pleasant surprise.  Here’s a link to Robin’s review at Now Smell This, she was pleasantly surprised as well.

A note on bottles — whether you like the looks of a perfume bottle is obviously a matter of personal taste.  And opinions can vary widely — I like the cheerfully vulgar Betsey Johnson bottle but hate Van Cleef Feerie, which makes me think of Avon.  I think many perfume people feel the opposite about them.  In general, a visual stroll through the celebrity-bottle section will inspire new appreciation for the bottle designs of other perfumes, mainstream and niche.  I know it sounds snobby, but many celebrity bottles appear to aspire to a kind of bling, or “fancy” concept, that has the opposite effect in reality — the fancier it strives to be, the more cheap it looks.   A very simple bottle (think Chanel) can look expensive.  The fussy, blinged-out, and/or oddly-shaped gold-etched bottles as an Expression of The Celebrity’s Vision are kind of painful to look at.  From a “celebrity” perspective, the Kim Kardashian bottle is a model of restraint, although in person it’s a little cheesier — the KK logo (pink plastic?) is raised and embedded on the bottle front rather than printed.   Heat, Queen, and SJP NYC I wouldn’t want to look at on my perfume shelf.

I’ll wrap this up by saying that, as a consumer, the whole celebrity-fragrance trend baffles me.  Obviously I’m not their target demographic, whatever that is.  I think in general they can be hugely successful in terms of a celebrity brand extension.  If I were Liz Taylor’s number one fan I still wouldn’t want to wear White Diamonds.  Besides, if I were Liz Taylor herself, I wouldn’t wear White Diamonds.  Wouldn’t one perk of wealth and fame be to bathe in Chanel No. 5, or hire Thierry Wasser to make you a bespoke perfume?  I guess it’s just my envy talking.

Sources:  SJP NYC, scent strip, Glamour; Kim Kardashian, tester, Sephora; Heat and Queen, testers at Macy’s.

When is patchouli not patchouli? When Tom Ford puts his name on the bottle.

I’ve made no secret of my stormy relationship with patchouli, and I don’t think we’ll ever achieve the sort of détente that will allow me to completely embrace the full-on sweaty, stinking glory of it. But, I do appreciate it when it’s done right. Tom Ford seems to do everything right; including direct movies. I am dying to see “A Single Man”, mostly because I love Colin Firth, but mainly because Tom Ford is one of those individuals for whom whatever he touches turns to gold. Does vicarious proximity to someone like that result in a reversal of fortune? God, I hope so.  Hang on…I need to check the movie listings.

Here’s some important criteria I consider before wearing a scent containing patchouli:

• The fragrance in question must not contain fruit. See my recent review of Ricci Ricci by Nina Ricci. “Fruitchouli” should be outlawed, thereby banning all sales of Angel, Bond No. 9 Bryant Park and any other scent that dares to smell like fruit and two week old laundry.

• Patchouli must be paired with things that are inherently complimentary, like vanilla, amber, labdanum, tonka; stuff that sweetens it up, but doesn’t make it smell like chocolate cake served with a potting soil coulis. The one exception to this would be Profumum Patchouly, which is quite possibly the dirtiest patchouli scent out there.  The listing of four harmless notes – patchouli, amber, sandalwood and incense should mean it would smell good, right? WRONG. This stuff is a “two weeks since my last shower, haven’t done laundry in months, poured a sack of ground cumin over my head, lost my stick of deodorant, atomic body odour bomb”. One spritz of this in a crowded gym would clear the place out for days.

• Those who want respect, give respect; these are the scents containing patchouli deserving of accolades (in my opinion): Chanel Coromandel, Le Labo Patchouli 24, Etat Libre d’Orange Nombril Immense, and the scent du jour, Purple Patchouli. There are a few others, but in the interest of staying focused, I’ll stop here.

Purple Patchouli was love-at-first-sniff for me. And that’s saying something, considering the first time I smelled it was at Bergdorf Goodman during the 2007 Sniffapalooza Spring Fling. It’s very easy to overwhelm your sense of smell at the big Sniffapalooza events, but Purple Patchouli left such an impression on me, that I bought a bottle of Tobacco Vanille instead. I fell for Tobacco Vanille because I sampled it on my skin. I only sniffed Purple Patchouli, and rationalized that it was one of those, “smells great in the bottle, but goes all hideous once it hits your skin” scents. As we all know, the first impression isn’t always the correct impression.  It was over the summer that I went back to Bergdorf’s to give it another shot, bee-lining for the bottle and trying it on without anything else on my skin to alter my perception.  Now, I sheepishly admit it was the second impression that totally won me over.

This is yet another scent I find challenging to articulate. I’ve recognized a pattern, here: the more well done a scent is, the more trouble I seem to have putting what I like about it into words. I had this issue last week when I wrote about Andy Warhol Silver Factory, and I’m experiencing it again now. Tom Ford has pretty much changed the landscape of fashion over the last two decades and is still finding ways to reinvent himself. Even though he is an American, he doesn’t fit into the same category as Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein. That can be said about his fashions, as well as his fragrances and accessories. Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein have something for everyone, but Tom Ford has managed to hang on to a certain aesthetic which clearly states his wares are not for the masses. That includes his fragrances. The Private Blends are not widely available, and are expensive to boot, but there is something special about them. Love them or hate them, they are exquisitely crafted scents. It would be impossible to love or even like them all, considering there are now 20, including the White Musk Collection and the latest Private Blend, Bois Marocain.  And, it takes a certain degree of confidence and good, old fashioned cojones to even consider trotting out a line of that many scents. After all, he’s not Guerlain, Caron, or even Annick Goutal.

What I love most about Purple Patchouli is that it doesn’t smell like any one of its individual notes. According to TomFord.com, the notes are Orchid Accord, citrus notes, Noir Leather, Signature Patchouli Accord, exotic spices, amber, patchouli, Peru Balsam and Vetiver. My skin pulls out a lot of citrus and orchid, some slight spice, the balsam and vetiver. I get no leather whatsoever, and nothing that I could accurately describe as patchouli. This is the ultimate no-patchouli, patchouli, but it definitely has that devil-may-care, headshoppy quality that makes it fun and easy to wear. I’m sticking with that description, but there’s a little voice inside me whispering, “This stuff smells exactly like Erno Laszlo Light Controlling Lotion”. Since I haven’t used that product on my face in close to 20 years, I’m telling my little voice to shut the @#$& up.

Disclosure: The bottle of Purple Patchouli reviewed in this essay is from my own collection. The term “fruitchouli” was coined by Melissa, a frequent Posse commentator, and a real sweetheart.

Note to anyone expecting a perfume post for today. This will touch on smell, but it’s mostly a Travelogue.

Our trip to Costa Rica was wondrous.  You never really believe a place can be that lush and almost untouched, until you drive down the backroads and see this simpler life unfolding around you.  Then all you feel is a wave of gratitude that it doesn’t look like Cancun and hope fervently that it never will.

The first part of our trip was up to Arenal to see the volcano.  Well, mission so not accomplished there.  The hotel, The Springs Resort and Lodge or Lodge and Resort, something like that, was gorgeous and wicked expensive.  Yeah, it had 18 hot springs to swim in, the hotel was immaculate and built in a way so every room had an amazing view, even when it was cloudy and misty for the four days we were there.  I’d recommend it if you have money to burn.

The driving!  I just can’t think about this too much without hyperventilating.  There are no road signs in Costa Rica, no highway signs.  It’s like the one-person transportation department made up a big game of travel checkers with the $1200 yearly budget and left no directions except the 12 road signs in the entire country – all of which poorly painted and come up about 100 feet before you might need to turn.

An argument broke out in the car over the No Hay Paso sign.  What do you think that means? I thought it meant I couldn’t pass, but it’s a wrong way sign of sorts, as I found out when the other cars coming right at me in my lane pointed out to me with their horns and some other visual cues with their hands and fingers.

Another good recommendation if you plan to drive in Costa Rica – just rent the GPS they offer at the car rental place.  With all the extra insurance you’re paying for – with great reason! – it’s a small amount, and apparently they have a monopoly on accurate GPS mapping, as we found out after we downloaded one that people raved about, only to find it had no idea where we were exactly most of the time and figured out how to take us on a longer route back to San Jose than the already convoluted way we had gone going in the other direction.

We returned the car, paid off the debt with my arm and leg and get a taxi to the teeny domestic airport, Bolanos, to catch our flight to the more remote Puerto Jimenez in the Osa Peninsula.  They weigh you before they let you on the plane. then they put you on a van to drive you to the teeny prop plane. It sets down in Puerto Jimenez, which is this sleepy little fishing village by the ocean, they clip the trees with the landing gear on the landing, wheel around and stop – right  next to a cemetery.  I was laughing too hard to remember to get a picture of it, and I was distracted, too, trying to figure out which person waiting at the gate (and I use that term exactly – it was a gate that swung back and forth exiting the landing field) was there to take us to our home for the next week. Ah, the guy that nods yes to “La Pina?”

No road we had taken up to this point prepared me for the road from Puerto Jimenez to Pan Dulce.  It was the worst road ever.  I have some authority in this because I grew up on a farm in Kansas, where we had to deal with narrow, washed-out bridges, sand roads, dirt roads that became mud pits when it rained. This road had a bridge that was made of rebar and just fit a vehicle on it.  Driving through water with lots of rock on the bottom made me a lot happier.

We finally got to La Pina, which is so darn cute.  It’s a bamboo house, all solar, with a huge porch to watch the monkeys, macaws, coatis, pizotes and butterflies from.  Which is what we pretty much did that whole first day. The monkeys were swinging by as we arrived, and 40 or 50 of their friends went back and forth through the trees like three times that afternoon. We were mesmerized.  The first howler monkey howling – more like a woofing roar – made me look in the trees for the dinosaurs.  Amazing beyond belief. Rugged, beautiful, untouched, pristine, where you feel like you are definitely not the one in charge of anything.

The beach we had all to ourselves most of the time, though we did share it with Ticos and pelicans fishing.  The pelicans would dive bomb right beside you in the water.  As remote as you can get, staring out at the waves and an old inactive volcano across the water.   I could happily spend my life just watching the waves come in.  It reminds me that I always need to live my life from my center – the part that knows who I am and needs no one or no thing to define me – and that we should all live like water, never resisting, just flowing.

We walked everywhere.  Down to Martina’s, the little dive by the side of the road 15 minutes’ walk away, for beer. We walked up the super-steep hill to Lapa Rios.  It’s perched in the hills up from the beach, surrounded completely by rainforest and has a view that almost makes you weep because it breaks your heart that you can’t hold that sight forever in your memory.

The smell?  Clean, lush, ripe, green, alive.  In our yard was a ylang tree that the caretaker, William, showed me.  I’d never smelled fresh ylang before, and it wasn’t exactly what I was expecting.  Yeah, it smells like Chanel No. 5, but lusher, overripe.  I went out and picked some every day and wore it in my swimsuit strap.  It was enchantingly perfect for where we were.
Then there were the bug wars.  The sun went down at 6 p.m. every night, so we’d turn on the lights so we could see a little to read on the deck.  The bugs didn’t bother you at all until the lights went on.  We quickly beat a retreat to our beds by 8, so we could crawl under the mosquito netting.  But then it would just get weird because we’d have the light on reading, and you’d look up and around the mosquito netting and see some scary things crawling ont he netting surrounding you. Some mornings there were strange bugs just hanging around, really BIG ones.  Normally spiders, bugs, snakes makes me scream and cry like a little girl, but for some reason they didn’t bother me there, they just don’t move fast, it’s like Jurassic park bugs, you don’t really believe the big ones are real.

Our alarm clock was the howlers.  4:30a on the dot, and it would go on for a couple of hours as they moved through the trees, on all sides.  Since we went to sleep at 8 most nights, the early wake-up call was pretty great.

All of that are just the things that we saw/experienced, but you can never really get a feel the Osa Peninsula by the details.  It is much more than that. It is a pacing, the attitude of manyana manyana – there’s time for that tomorrow.  It was perfect because it felt real – not a vacation spot, but a place where people live – really live.

Then it was time to go home, and I cried a little, and I miss it still.

Two of the fragrances that came up repeatedly in comments when I mentioned exploring sandalwood as a perfume note were Guerlain Samsara and Chanel Bois des Îles.

Guerlain Samsara is a fragrance many people love to hate – it’s identified as a big 80’s office-ban-type fragrance (although technically I believe it’s from 1979) and (quoting here from The Guide): “Samsara felt to many like an irreversible break with tradition, confirmed by the subsequent (awful) releases of Mahora and Champs-Elysees.”  Although please note The Guide still gives it four stars.  Notes are jasmine, ylang, sandalwood, narcissus, tonka, iris, vanilla, although most people would identify it (accurately) as pretty much jasmine and sandalwood.  Guerlain fan though I am, I couldn’t even remember what Samsara smelled like, except: a) not Guerlain and b) not me.

It was clearly time to reconsider.

My first stop was at Saks to sniff the current EDT, which – predictably for a Guerlain – I hated.  Seriously, if you’re just dipping your toe in Guerlain, at least smell an EDP if you’re talking about a classic Guerlain.  They get so much better.  “Vintage” – something even five or ten years old – is likely to be that much better.   Anyhow, current Samsara EDT smelled very much not me in that it smelled like the overpoweringly sweet, aggressively woody fragrance that would best be worn by a deeply tanned woman wearing a lot of shiny gold fabrics and with a smoker’s rasp to her voice.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  But I am not that woman.

The thing that kept me curious was the occasional whiff that skeezy Samsara on the back of my hand – jammed inside my leather glove for the rest of the day and kept at a distance … well, it was really pretty.  More investigation was called for.

So I hooked up with two different versions – a vintage EDP and a vintage parfum.  While I won’t argue with the rest of the notes listed, most of what I get is jasmine and sandalwood, with the vintage EDP being a little more aggressive at the top, and the parfum (naturally) smelling much more seamless.  Both of these feature the old sandalwood that Samsara lovers are familiar with.

And both of them … well.  Here’s the thing.  Samsara, on me, is heavily jasmine, although, yes, I can smell the sandalwood just fine and it’s gorgeous.  And I like jasmine very much, but it’s a difficult note for me to ignore.  If I want jasmine, I want something nice and indolic; I have a bottle of Montale Jasmin Full, a very ripe jasmine (faint hints of banana, diaper and rotting garbage), a few sprays of which would probably clear most normal people from a room.  Also I quite like the Donna Karan Jasmine Essence.  If I want jasmine, I want JASMINE, and I wear one of those.

Moving on to Chanel Bois des Îles, which dates to the 1920s, and notes via Basenotes are jasmine, Damask rose, ylang-ylang, bitter almond, gingerbread, vanilla, tonka bean, sandalwood, vetiver.  (Here’s a different list from Fragrantica: aldehydes, bergamot, neroli, peach, jasmine, rose, lily of the valley, woody iris, ylang-ylang, vetiver, sandalwood, benzoin and musk.)   More recently it was reissued in Les Exclusifs in the 200ml bottle, and I think (?) production ceased on other sizes except parfum.

That new Exclusifs version – meh.  I wish they’d made it twice as strong and stuck it in a 100 ml bottle.  It’s just too tenuous, and that’s me talking – I don’t often complain about things being too light.  The original EDT I’d tried years ago was no powerhouse, but it was stronger than that.

So I tried two pre-Exclusifs EDTs.  The first, interestingly, is doing that Bois des Îles thing, and I’m taking a survey – has anyone else had the problem with their BdI sort of reducing itself to expensive scented water?   Vintage Coco EDP tends to collapse in on itself, as if it were a walnut and someone ran over it in the driveway.   Vintage BdI in the EDT concentration seems to lose much of its smell.

The new BdI parfum was, predictably, stunning, although I can’t help but wonder if it would smell different if I bought a bottle now, right this second, with the Mysore sandalwood situation rearing its ugly head – I have no idea what Chanel uses for sandalwood.  The BdI parfum starts out much more sandalwood, where the EDT that’s still good is quite gingerbready and aldehydic on me.  Bois des Îles is a much more complex smell than Samsara, although other than the sandalwood, iris and gingerbread I’m hard pressed to pick out individual notes.  But it’s more of a kaleidoscopic fragrance, with different aspects seeming to reach out over time.  The EDT and parfum both smell very “Chanel” if that makes any sense.  They both smell expensive and dry and not overly sweet.

While I am blathering nonsensically I will say that No. 22 and Coco and No. 5 and most of the classic original Chanels smell not-romantic to me, by which I mean: they smell smart and opinionated and are the sort of scents you buy to wear because you like the smell, not to woo random strangers around you with your flower-like (or cupcake-like) sweetness.  If your beloved happens to like the smell of Cristalle or No. 19, well, lucky you, but I can’t imagine picking a classic Chanel as a man-hunting scent, Marilyn Monroe’s pulchritude notwithstanding.  This is obviously my opinion and yours might be quite different.

Paradoxically, if the whole Cult of Chanel leaves you cold – if they all strike you as bitter or aloof or too man-in-drag: I still think you should try Bois des Îles.  Maybe it’s because the scent construct itself is so old that it feels timeless; I find it mysterious.  And there’s something heartbreaking about the luminous florals next to that woodsy base.  Bois des Îles is singular, it reminds me of absolutely no other perfume.

Notes on sources: new Samsara EDT tester at Saks; vintage EDP and parfum, private sample.  Two different vintage (pre Les-Exclusif) bottles of Bois des Iles EDT and one new BdI parfum, private sample.

I’m just going to follow March’s rules on this. I do try, as much as I remember, to note when the manufacturer has sent something, and then I usually try to give away samples of it to run out the amount I got, which is usually small.  The number of full bottles of anything I’ver ever gotten I can count on one hand, and most of them are tragic and get given away or tossed.

Some comments in March’s original post noted  my association with The Perfumed Court could be looked at as a problem.  I do see how that perception could come about and really have nothing that I can say that would change anyone’s mind if they thought it was or might be. I do have a financial interest in TPC.  I have a full-time job in a totally nonrelated field that provides the bulk of my income.   I tend to review a lot more of the new things because I get ahold of them pretty early, either by buying them for my personal collection, getting a sample with an order I placed for other perfume, or because I’m doing the decanting of them for TPC, or I asked Lisa or Diane (my  partners in TPC) to send me a sample of something to sniff that I didn’t have.

I’ve always thought that because I like some things and trash some things, most of which is carried in TPC by me or someone, would suffice to indicate that I’m not willing to sell an opinion on a bottle of perfume for maybe a couple of bucks proft.

So either you think I’m honest about my opinions or not.  Nothing I say will persuade anyone thinking my opinion could be impacted by that assocation otherwise, so I don’t spend any time worrying about it.  I make no secret of my association with TPC, but I also never flog or link to the site in posts because that would be just, well, wrong.  But knowledge is usually the key – as long as y’all know that I’m involved with TPC, you can assign any skeptitude you feel appropriate to any of my perfume opinions.

Can we talk about Costa Rica now? We had an amazing time.  That little Capuchin monkey picture at the top was taken while he sat in the tree right next to the house we rented, along with about 30 of his friends and 30-40 of his Howler friends and even more of his spider monkey friends – not all at once. They’d make the circuit daily, sometimes several times.  It was like Monkey-vision entertainment off our deck.  Howlers woke us up every morning at 4:30 and serenaded for hours, and sent us to bed every evening.  If you’ve never heard a howler, google it.  They used that sound, with modifications, for some of the dinosaur sounds in Jurassic Park.  It’s spooky, but incredibly beautiful in some weird way.

I’m not going to touch on our stupidity when we were shocked that it got dark at 6 p.m.  Earth, angle, sun, seasons just weren’t computing for an hour or so as we puzzled our way through it.

I’ll have more about the trip on Thursday, today’s post just needed a little bit of follow-up on the Swag Wanking with respect to the TPC association.  My best advice, though, if you ever the chance to got to Costa Rica, do, and go to the Osa Peninsula. It is still so wild and beautiful.  AND one of our perfume friends that comments on here and I did manage to find each other. How weird that we were both going to CR and staying in the Osa about 2 miles away from each other.

Thanks to everyone who chimed in on the Swag Wank.  I knew it was going to be a controversial topic, and I’d like to say how proud (and unsurprised) I am that we could natter on and people could disagree and even get their dander up a little, and yet maintain civility – no tears, no drama.  As many of you have figured out, the blog is part social experiment for me.  I like to watch the commentary unfold, and the way it does is often interesting and thought-provoking.

I thought I’d go over the new source disclosures I’m going to use on an experimental basis for, let’s say, the next month – because enough of you voiced why you valued it.  I’m looking for a balance that provides those who care with some useful information in terms of provenance, without the process being a big inconvenience for me or a bore for those who don’t care.  I’ll make these notations at the bottom of my posts.  I haven’t actually done it yet, so things could change, but I’m thinking along the following lines:

1) Disclosing when a perfumer/distributor is the direct source.  I mean, I’m not ashamed of it.  If you guys can live with my getting some freebies, I can live with you knowing it.   If I got the bottle or sample from the house/perfumer/distributor, it’s probably the good stuff, right?  (Unless it isn’t; based on my recent pan of TDC Oriental Lounge, Carmencanada at Grain de Musc thinks I got an early, bum version of the juice.)

2) “Private sample.” This is going to cover a multitude of sins, but the point is it’s a sample or a decant from my private collection,  and thus of indeterminate age and/or origin.   This also covers sampling where an acquaintance of mine is the source, but that information is private.  No friend is going to share Doblis, Nombre Noir, or Coty Chypre with me and then thank me for putting his/her name on the blog.  I am hoping this needs no further explanation.  Private samples may be old, or tainted, or dissimilar to “the new stuff.”

3)  Mall blitz fragrances.  If I sniff something in one of my occasional mall or department store blitzes, I might only have tried it once; I was probably unable to score a sample for further consideration (stingy bastards!); and – hey – there are a lot of bum testers out there, at Neiman Marcus as well as at Macy’s.  Testers sit around until they’re broken, empty or stolen.  I’ve casually smelled any number of testers of fragrances I’m familiar with that seemed off, subjected to bright light and heat — the enemies of perfume.   If I discover later, having tried a fragrance two or three times elsewhere, that I like it and that my initial impression seems badly mistaken, I generally do a re-consideration post.

4) A special note on older/vintage perfumes.  I have built entire posts around perfumes – e.g., Chanel Coco, YSL Paris, and Dior Poison – that smell different than I remember from the bad old 80s, even though these scents are still in production.  It’s probably worth mentioning here for perfume newbies that many (most?) scents appear to be reformulated over time, although which ones, when, and how much is a topic of hot debate and mystery on the perfume blogs and boards.  Fragrances are reformulated for any number of reasons: cost of ingredients, lack of availability of ingredients, IFRA regulations, inventions of chemical replacements, etc.  In some cases the goal appears to be to produce a fragrance that smells as much like the original as possible; in others there appears to be a subtle tweaking (toning down the aldehydes, adding a gourmand note) to try to make the scent more “current” in terms of popular trends in perfumery.

Perfume houses don’t issue a press release telling you they’re messing with your fragrance.  Off the top of my head the only frank revelation I can recall is Serge Lutens discussing the reformulation of Feminite du Bois.  I actually assume that older fragrances have a different chemical composition than their newest versions, whether you or I can smell much difference.  And reformulation isn’t just a problem with 20-year-old fragrances.  Particularly given the new IFRA regs, there’s no guarantee that the scent released a year or two ago smells like what’s being produced today.  (Someone chime in: I think the consensus is that fragrances heavy on oakmoss and/or citrus seem the most impacted in a noticeable way?)  In any case, I will try to note at the bottom of a review, even if it’s obvious in the review, that I’m blogging on what appears to be an older iteration of a scent that I got on, say, eBay, that is rumored (or appears to me) to have been reformulated to a degree that even I can smell the difference.  And, obviously, my old bottle of Chanel Coco bought on eBay is likely to smell different than your old bottle.

This is a full-disclosure conversation so I’m disclosing.  I’m stating.  I’m pointing it out: there are no guarantees.   Any sample, tester, or bottle I run across might be “off.”  Unless I’m standing directly in front of Frederic Malle or Isabelle Doyen saying, hey, does this smell funny to you?, which I am not – I have no way of knowing.  If you like what you read and you buy a bottle of something, even if you tested it in the same store you bought it, there is no guarantee that what you tested and what you bought will smell the same.  (Raise your hand if this has happened to you!)  Shit happens.  This blog is meant to be my impressions of what is under my nose and on my skin.  I am not a professional perfumer.  I am not conversant in the chemical components.  What I am is honest and enthusiastic, and occasionally prone to fits of self-doubt and reassessment, which you end up reading about (several fragrances I hated at first sniff have become favorites.)

Okay, enough of this foolishness, this is already waaaay too long.  I’ll be back on Wednesday with a look at several versions of two of the sandalwoods that came up repeatedly in comments on my sandalwood post: Guerlain Samsara and Chanel Bois des Iles, including some vintage.

My teenage daughters do all sorts of nail art with pens and fine-tipped brushes.  I think it’s great, but I am a little long in the tooth for that sort of thing.  However, when I saw Louise recently, she’d done a nail-art trick that is so easy and so lovely – and grown-up appropriate – that I can’t resist blogging on it.  Louise had done the tips of her nails, where the white in your French mani would go, with a very light touch of pale gold glitter over a vampy crème polish — more at the tips, fading down to no-glitter by halfway down the nail.  It ended up looking like a Japanese abstract on lacquerware, or a tiny detail from one of those stunning Whistler Japonesque works.

She forwarded the details, and I am using the image here with permission from the Polish Hoarder, which is also where the instructions come from.  As you can see in the photo and directions, this is a variation where you start the glitter from the bottom, the base of the nail, but the concept is the same:

“I painted my nails light blue and let it dry completely (overnight).

Then, with the glitter, I put a small drop on the inside of my nail, removed the excess from my brush, and spread the glitter out lightly across my nail.

I repeated that 4 times for each nail but with each time you do it, you spread the glitter less. You want the majority of the glitter to be on the inside of the nail.

I suppose it depends on how much glitter is in your polish. I wanted to keep the tips un-glittered so I was careful not to get too much glitter on my nail at once. Less is better because you can build it slowly.”

* * *

I was so taken with Louise’s nails that, armed with the info above, I tried it (also at the tips) with a small silver glitter (China Glaze Tinsel) over the pale pearlized-pink mani I was already sporting, and got subtle but smashing results.**  My only suggestions/clarifications — I’d do one nail at a time, I don’t know your climate, but I worry about the glitter setting up too much and not spreading properly if you let it sit on your nail for long.  Also: you definitely want to clean the glitter off the brush before you start using it to spread what’s on your nail, otherwise you’re adding to what’s already there.

The first time I did it my nails weren’t uniformly perfect like this photo, but they still looked great – both my girls commented on it.  Instead of doing a small dot of glitter at the tip, I painted the tip with a narrow horizontal streak of glitter – like a sloppy French mani – and dragged it down with the cleaned-off brush.   As Polish Hoarder notes (she did 4x for each nail) it’s easy to add more, but it’s hard to add less!  I just did 1x per nail and then added more to the ones that looked a little sparse in comparison.

If you are like me, I don’t change my polish until it starts to look tired – usually micro-chips at the tips.  The silver glitter gave my mani a whole new look and bought me an extra four days of wear.  If I’d slapped some Seche Vite on top it’d probably have lasted even longer.

In terms of color combos, two basic strategies: the more subtle pale (gold or silver) glitter on a light base, and the more striking pale glitter on a dark base (vampy, dark blue, green, etc).  Personally I feel that the results are more elegant if the base is a crème.  If your base is light-colored the glitter polish needs to be suspended in a CLEAR base – I made that mistake, testing things, with a blue microglitter that was in a pale clear-bluish base, and it looked terrible.   Obviously you could do a dark or colored glitter or what have you, but if you’re concerned about the propriety of the bling, probably gold or silver microglitter on a crème base is the way to go.

I am going to add a link here to a gorgeous, much trendier look:  a dark-colored nail on MUA with two different colors of glitter on top, pulled down the nail like this – the perfect party nail – but I don’t know if the link works if you’re not a MUA member, apologies in advance.

I know some people are doing this/spreading the glitter with Orly Smudge Fixer.  I haven’t used that, and would be curious to hear from anyone who has in terms of advantages (the disadvantage I thought of is, you’d have to clean the brush carefully, right?  That’s the nice thing about using the glitter brush itself.)  Also, anyone who has winning glitters, or color combos, or questions, please chime in!

**For whatever reason, my natural nails are long just now – nothing that would raise an eyebrow on a nail polish blog, but of a length that would pass as a set of acrylics.  I used CG Tinsel at the tips of my existing base coat of CG Tantalize Me – an opalescent pink with a slight blue tinge that I have a soft spot for because it’s a dupe of a L’Oreal polish called something like Pink Pearl that I wore the heck out of in high school.

It’s raining outside as I type – that fine misty rain that causes aches in all the wrong places. It’s replaced the snow. Roll on spring, baby.

I don’t buy many perfumes any more. In fact, I don’t even test that many. Of our shared list of the best of 2009 here at the Posse (I didn’t exactly pull my finger out to contribute, knowing little of the territory…), I’ve tried precisely one out of the twenty four or so mentioned. Ouch. Isn’t it time someone disbarred me from contributing?

It’s not that I like, admire, or love smells any less. It’s just somehow my puppy energy is now being sent out on errands to other obsessive ports of call, still wagging its tail, nose moist, eyes eager. Instead of trying and buying new things, I’ve been ploughing through my three boxes of decants, and methodically considering if there’s anything there that might become fbw.

Front runners – long term, have been l’Artisan’s Timbuktu and Parfumerie Generale’s Cozé. They have some connections – both strike me as strong on patchouli and vetiver, and are exotic enough to say, ‘hey, I’m different’, without being wacky enough to say ‘bring on the gimp outfit’. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, if it’s your bag, my beloved kinky reader.

Long story short – I received a 100ml bottle of Cozé from Les Senteurs last week. Let me make this clear – I paid for it; it was no gift. And yes, you got that right – 100mls.

See, there’s something about Cozé that has haunted me ever since I first smelled it, back in 2005 or something. It’s clearly the sum of its parts. You get all the ingredients exactly defined – the vetiver and patchouli already mentioned, the triumvirate gourmand thrum of chocolate (dry, dust, dark – think 85-90% cocoa solids), coffee ( a hint on the breath of a secret lover, if you’ll pardon my silly whimsy) and vanilla (but not in overkill or plastic doll head sense – it never dominates), peppery wood and spice facets, and that ever-present allusion to hemp/cannabis/ganja/weed/draw – at times a touch of ashtray, other moments a hint of the great green outdoors – all leading to a strangely surprising earthy, rather than oriental, effect.

But it isn’t the ingredients that haunt me. Like all brilliant scents, it’s their interplay. This is Pierre Guillaume’s best work (imho, naturellement) and I’ll tell you why. You can intellectualise this scent into the sum of its parts if you want to, and the whole smell of the thing isn’t diminished by it. Wearing it, however, you realise that each element weaves impressively in and out of the others, shifting the shape of the smell each time you catch a waft of it, and never settling on a fixed form. I love mutability in scent, and though the earthiness dominates throughout its wearing, though the heart of this perfume is a hippie (even if he’s more dedicated to cleanliness and hiking than covering up stank with headshop oils), this wonder tells you that you can be whoever you want, godammit, and that whoever smells bloody wonderful. Isn’t that what great perfume is all about?

As for Timbuktu – I need to decide whether I need another green earthy oriental in my life.

If you’ve never smelled Cozé, I can help you out. Three samples to people chosen at random from the comments below. And oh, if you have a shapeshifter you want to nominate as top notch, spiffing, da bes’, please do so!