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Patty White launched Perfume Posse in 2005, and we've been yapping on and on about perfume endlessly since.

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This N That: The Overappliers

Feb 272015
 
 February 27, 2015  Posted by on February 27, 2015 22 Responses »
nuclear

nuclearOkay, so I’m being lazy. I was going to review a new scent this week, but I found after wearing it for a week I could find nothing I could say that was nice about it. It was a powdery leather that was simply awful on me. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t go out of my way to trash things I just don’t like, I really have to be provoked, so no, I will not name the scent. Because it was well made and I am sure that there are many people out there that would love a well made powdery leather.

Just not me.

I think that sometimes the root of people being averse to perfume is that some people over apply in a way that borders on criminal. In my last office job during period close some days I would have to stay as late as midnight, and there was a very nice lady that came to clean who apparently either had burned out her sense of smell front the cleaning products she uses or feels she can drown them out by such a liberal application of whatever it is she’s wearing. It was like saying “good evening, how are you?” to a tear-gas attack.

One of my oldest and dearest friends is one- I can remember being in the Agent Provocateur store when they had a new scent out and the clerk mentioned that she liked the original better. My friend agreed, and proceeded to give about 53 pumps on it onto her ample poitrine. I swear her shoes must have been soaked. Instant migraine. She wanted to go get dessert; I wanted to get treatment for anaphylactic shock.

It’s not just the heavy hitters that can kill- I think I’d previously written about the (now thankfully ex) husband of a BFF to whom I gifted a lifetime-commitment sized bottle of Guerlain Vetiver that I had picked up on Broadway in DTLA. A splash bottle mind you, and strategically purchased to keep him from filching large quantities of her then Paris only Lutens. When Christmas came around she called me begging to get him a movie gift certificate, a bottle of scotch, a bus ticket, ANYTHING but cologne, because he had managed more that once to wake her from a deep sleep from his bathing in Vetiver.

Yes Vetiver.

I have a neighbor who run a store on Melrose. He wears Issey Miyaki. You might be saying to yourself that it’s impossible to stink-bomb the lobby of a building with it. It is not. Lobby and stairwell . For hours..

Please share your stories of over-appliers in the comments.

Photo: Wikipedia

Coven by Andrea Maack 2013

Feb 262015
 
 February 26, 2015  Posted by on February 26, 2015 4 Responses »
Coven Andrea Maack Fragrantica

Hiya Posse! Andrea Maack is cool, she is an artist from Iceland, a beautiful artist from Iceland, and I really like her fragrances too. Coven is the most interesting of them so far for me, and I think the most unusual. There has been talk on the scentbloggosphere that her fragrances are heavily influenced by other works, I’m not sure. It all seems beautiful and legit to me, even the simplicity of her packaging and the weight of the bottles feels good, I’ll tell you in advance that I am a bit of a fan.

Coven by Andrea Maack 2013

Coven Andrea Maack FragranticaPhoto Stolen Fragrantica

Fragrantica gioves these featured accords in one line:
Woody notes, green grass, soil tincture, oakmoss, whiskey, spicy notes

I bought this 5 ml atomiser in a split hosted by none other than the lovely RuthK on Facebook Fragrance Friends a while back, when it arrived I spritzed it on the back of my hand or somewhere on my arm and then promptly fell in love with something else from the package and have ignored Coven ever since. Yes, it’s one of the sad downsides of being a fragrance glutton, too much choice. So in the move it jumped back to my attention and I thought I should give it its time. Come fly with me…..

Coven andrea_maack NSAPhoto Stolen NSA (Problem using image, please get in touch)

Did you ever mow the lawns and put the clippings directly on your garden? Then maybe it rained and you were sent out to turn the clippings that had started to decompose and when you got to the inside it was so hot it gently steamed as you turned it? Imagine doing that under the orange tree in the back yard. There’s a little bit of dirt mixed in, it’s a hot and humid day and you are working up a healthy sweat. That is where coven takes me, right back to my early teens working in the garden with my Mum. Some of the happiest days of my life, we spent ages in that garden and we loved it.

Later Coven warms through with a pithy resinous warmth and I imagine how the witches cottage may have smelled in Hocus Pocus with Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy. It’s green, earthy, warm and slightly fetid. I am surprised by how pretty Coven is, I was expecting it to be much more dark, murky and dense. What we get is this lkovelygreen to warm resinous fragrance that is filled with light and beauty.

Coven andrea_maack Hocus Pocus IMDbPhoto Stolen IMDb

Have you spent time with Coven? Do you like a green scent that turns warm and cuddly? Maybe you have another fragrance that does it, I’d love to read your suggestions

Further reading: Australian Perfume Junkies and Colognoisseur
LuckyScent has $135/50ml + samples

If you thought this was fun or interesting come over to AustralianPerfumeJunkies  and say hello too. We love visitors.
Portia xx

Coven by Andrea Maack: I Put A Spell On You – Hocus Pocus 1993

 

Musette’s Musings & a giveaway

Feb 242015
 
 February 24, 2015  Posted by on February 24, 2015 45 Responses »
dreamkitchen

Hello, Darlings!!!!

I’m out of town and awash in cat dander so I can’t really smell much – and even if I could I am focused on KITCHENS!  (kiiiitchens).  I just got a phenomenal gift – on the way home from visiting his mother, El O had an epiphany:  once we get the 2nd floor done he could move his den upstairs…..um…that will give me an extra (gulp!) 9’x8’ft.   My dad had a saying about not knowing whether to defecate or lose his eyesight.  Well…!  Like that!  I’m so crazed with delight!  My kitchen will be …..o.m.g. …..it will be 25’x15’…..I…..o.m.g.  I can have a sitting area!  And a real island.  I…wow.  I have 5 Dutch ovens, 8 casseroles, 6 stockpots, I can salsa, tomato sauce, pickles, peppers, make sausage, bread, etc…I freeze 90% of our produce for the year and cook 3 meals a day at least 6 days a week.  I NEED THIS KITCHEN!

 

dreamkitchen

Okay – enough about the kitchen – for now

 

Let’s talk about Stuff.  Stuff we like.  Stuff that gets on our nerves.  Stuff that freaks me out.

1.  I like….I like Chanel 1932.  I don’t like it in extrait.  It’s has that Springtime Freshness that I love in Chanel Eau de Cologne.  Extrait sort of defeats the purpose, imo.  Ymmv.  The boutique SAs looked at me like I told them their baby was ugly.  Yikes!  But I realized that I really like the lightness of these two colognes.  They are just so pretty!!!

2. Public bathrooms.  Department store bathrooms in particular.  But pretty much all public bathrooms.  Personal peeve?  The stalls with the cute little hooks that are not hooks at all – just pokey-out little pokey out things.  The only thing you can hang on that pokey-out thing is a piece of duct tape.  You can’t even hang a HOOK on the freakin’ thing.  And if you are in a handicap stall…and the hook is at the TOP of the door.  WTH?  90% of the folks I know who have a need to use that stall are in a wheelchair…..?????  I always wonder if there is some passive-aggressive designer out there ( I should be designing AIRPORTS, & Cathedrals, dagnabbit!  Not bathroom stalls…(gnashingteeth) ……or maybe the purchasing dept got a big payoff…..I understand that bathrooms are secondary (or tertiary) in most average retail places but..common sense, people – and a general respect for your customer.  I don’t need (or want) a chaise-longue in the stall but…could a sistah at least get a hook to hang her handbag?!

My favorite department store bathrooms are in Neiman-Marcus.  Aware that women are shopping (imagine that!) they have designed their stalls with nice insets so you can put your handbag and a couple of shopping bags therein while you take a genteel leak.  What a cooncept~

3. My MIL’s fabric softener.  Let us just pause for a moment and ponder the notion of Yet Another Laundry Incident.  What is it with me and laundry?  I have no idea what the hell she uses but ….so, El O got home from his ma’s.   He put on a shirt…and for an hour I kept walking around, feeling a mild headache coming on…and there was this smell…like a cheap headshop….and I couldn’t imagine what the hell I’d spilled and whatever it was how the hell do I find it and extirpate it from my life!!!  It got worse and then I realized it was happening every time El O walked past me…and finally it got so bad that I couldn’t be in the same room with him!!!  Remember last year, when I was in thrall to the Sunnyfield Greenhouse guy’s laundry detergent?  This is NOT that detergent.  It took 3 washings to get that smell out.   What weirded me out is that I couldn’t imagine how a laundry detergent could trigger that type of olfactory response.  It’s laundry detergent!  What the hell are they doing to laundry detergent now, that it could be that hard on a gal!  And I thought your senses were supposed to decline as you aged.  Seems my nose is getting sharper.  Ow.

 

That’s all I got!  WhaddaYOUgot?  Tell me what you’re liking, freaking on….etc…I’ll pull a couple of winners and send y’all some fun stuff to repay you for reading this lame post!!!

 

March Perfume Sample Fairy Godmother

Feb 232015
 
 February 23, 2015  Posted by on February 23, 2015 45 Responses »
perfume posse - perfume reviews, perfume blog

 

perfume sample fairy godmother

Esperanza the Perfume Fairy Godmother

 

Doing this a little early for March because what i had planned for today didn’t show up in time.

 

Hey, it is time again for the Perfume Sample Fairy Godmother for March 2015.     So here’s how Fairy Godmother works – this post will be open for the entire month of March 2015.   I’ll start a new one at the beginning of April 2015.   For those of you new or that need a reminder of how this works – in comments you can list one or two things that you are yearning for and can’t seem to get –  a perfume sample is the easiest wish to grant for me.  Or you can wish for a full bottle, decant, vintage perfume or discontinued perfume you can’t find.  If someone has it and can help you out, they can reply to you in comments and then you can arrange to go offline through e-mail to work things out.  

Please don’t post e-mails in comments unless you spoof them somehow, like this – patty at perfumeposse dawtcawm (spelling the dotcom at the end that way prevents robots from finding it as easily). Caveat Emptor and all that, don’t send people money, check out their references on MUA or Basenotes or the Facebook groups before you send something in a swap, if you wind up doing a swap.  We have some amazing Fairy Godmothers that show up every month, granting wishes right and left. If you’ve been the recipient of some kindness, do give back when you can. I know people have gotten wishes granted, and every month they comb through the posts trying to find one or two people they can help out, and it just makes my heart happy.  If it’s a gift, send away.  I should note that  it’s more likely that a Fairy Godmother will happen along if you are a fairly regular commenter on The Posse and people recognize your name. I’ll sometimes play Perfume Posse Fairy Godmother and go through the list and grant some perfume sample wishes. I’ll pick from ones that nobody has been able to help with – I’ll spin my random.org wheel  – and send them The Precious. 

perfume sample magic wand

So what is it that your heart desires?  (pulling out wand from the back of the closet and blowing off an inch of dust)  

Flavorful scents Monday: Coffee and tea ... ahhh

Flavorful scents Monday: Coffee and tea … ahhh

After doctoring up YSL’s Black Opium with Bond No. 9’s New Haarlem on last week’s post, I found myself smitten with NH and craving its coffee for several days. And then I was mixing it with other things, just to see, you know, how they behaved when “caffeinated.” A favorite The rest, please…

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Making Perfumes is Easy - summer course in Rimini, Italy

Making Perfumes is Easy – summer course in Rimini, Italy

Dominique Dubrana is teaching a summer course in Rimini, Italy this year from June 10 through 15 – “Making Perfume is Easy.”  A summary of what you will get from this course – “The classes will cover a range of issues. One key point will be natural raw materials, including The rest, please…

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