The politics of perfume in Canada.

You know, I’m a sensitive person to other’s comfort, I really am. I don’t care what those people say about me that know me. If someone found a particular perfume I wore to be nauseating, and we had to be in close proximity for any bit of time during the day, I would stop wearing it. I know I should be a little less cynical about this “perfume allergy” thing, but even the expert in the article says it’s a myth.

It is almost becoming like everything that has to do with humans and living is becoming an annoyance to others, so we ban the things that make us human and unique and create headaches. I’m all for the cacophony of smells and sounds that makes up the human orchestra, and that includes elevators full of Giorgio and even clouds of Angel in the bathroom and *gasp* the hospital and Church!

Okay, I’ll hush now and crawl back under my sensitive rock.

Rolling out of bed, so tired, bleary eyed, exhausted, another day of work and running and errands ahead. Hop into the shower, thinking about what perfume to wear. Too many take too much effort and will just wear out my nose before the day is done because they are too heavy, too sweet, too nothing, too unknown, I don’t want to think about this! Hermes, take me away!!!!

Hermes always has a perfume that requires very little effort to wear or understand, but are not so simple that they are boring, so I have several from them that I can spritz on with abandon, that feel like old friends, whether I’ve had them for years or just a month.

The best part about doing a post about my Best Fragrance Friends Forever is that I get the revisit them all and remember why I love them and depend on them. These aren’t necessarily my favorite perfumes as far as how I find them interesting or unusual or how they create a mood - most of them aren’t - but they are the ones that are the Deep Bench, the Pinch Hitters, the scents that don’t require any work for me to love or wear. There is no interpretation, they are comfortable old coats I can shrug on and not think about, but just enjoy being in their company.

Hermes Eau de Merveilles or Water of Wonders – ambergris, bitter orange, Italian lemon, Indonesian pepper, pink pepper, oak, cedar, balsam, vetiver and woods. This has everything I love in a fragrance. The citrus notes are bright and sparkly, but not overly sweet. The pepper adds a little oomph to it, and then all of that woods. This perfume is charming and comfortable. It’s effortless to wear. I don’t have to pretend to be anyone other than who I am with this friend, it reflects me instead of me wearing it.

Un Jardin Sur le Nil – from the Hermes garden series, this one celebrates the River Nile. Notes of green mango, lotus flowers, aromatic rushes, incense, sycamore wood. This one is more citrusy than the Merveilles, without feeling fruity. It is made for spritzing wildly all about and feeling like I can just float above my cares for the day, not worry about tomorrow. This is the friend that takes me out for a wild ride when I’ve been working too hard and makes sure I remember what it is just to laugh and be carefree.

Un Jardin en Mediterranee – another of the garden series and one that many people do not care for, though I can’t figure out why. Notes of fig tree, mastic tree, red cedar, bergamot, orange blossom and white oleander. It’s not my favorite of the Hermes scents, but it is the one that nets me the most compliments, followed by Merveilles, then Sur le Nil. I cannot wait for the next one in the Un Jardin series to come out. It is a friend because I feel so pretty when I wear it, adored.

Last in the Hermes line of friends, but not least, but newest to me are the Hermessence series. I do not know them as well as the others, but have fallen in love with two, alone or together. I won’t discuss the Nazgul. Even when I am not bearing the ring, it loves me not.

Rose Ikebana – The silk in the series, with notes of rose tea, infusion of petals, peony, magnolia, pink peppercorn, zest of grapefruit, rhubarb and vanilla honey. I cannot imagine a perfume that is easier to wear than this one. It is smooth and creamy, and I am a total sucker for peony and rhubarb. Throw those in a perfume and you own me forever. There’s nothing about this perfume that seems remarkable or outstanding, but in the total, from start to finish, it feels as easy as breathing to wear it, and in its ease is the thing of significance. It is the friend you meet who you instantly feel you have known forever. There is nothing horrible that is revealed as you get to know them, they fit into your life easily, and you feel blessed for having known them. Rose Ikebana is graceful and easy, as I find most of the Hermes scents to be, it never tries too hard or laughs too loud or stays too long, she always leaving you wanting more time with her. This has quickly become the one fragrance that I reach for when I’m in a hurry and just want to smell good.

Vetiver Tonka – The wool in the series, with notes of vetiver, neroli, bergamot, grilled hazelnut, dry fruit, cereals and tonka bean. Smells like chocolate to me. Not really chocolate, but all the best that is chocolate without being gourmandy. This one is the friend to go out drinking with, gossiping and laughing all night, content in sharing what’s been going on in your life, indulging in a wonderfully sinful dessert, wishing you could spend more time together, but so content with having the time that you have had.

Combining Vetiver Tonka and Rose Ikebana is bliss. I need a new language just to express how comforting these two together are. Any season, whatever my favorite clothes are, watching the Poseidon Adventure for the 300th time. How did I live my life without knowing them?

Marc Jacobs and Marc Jacobs Essence – Simple white floral, like a lovely child with no guile, this is spending the afternoon with my beautiful tiny nieces curled up on the couch or a day at the park with them smelling flowers.

(picture from De Rosado)
Caron Coup de Fouet – I tend to go on and on about this one, as anyone who has been reading here for any length of time knows. That clovey spicy goodness that is The Coup is my Very Best Friend Forever. It is comfort in a bottle, I can slip into that and do nothing but breath deep. It feels like Old Spice does emotionally, all the good things in this world. It isn’t just about the way it smells, this one is entirely about how it makes me feel. I feel loved and accepted and comforted and happy. There is no bad mood for me when the Coup is about. The Coup is my sister in a good mood. My sister’s a Scorpio and never reads this so I can say what I want. Lovely, loyal, wonderful person, but Good Lord can she get mad fast. Coup never gets mad, just stays with you faintly for days and weeks. Months can go by, and I can pick up a coat that Coup has been with, and peace and contentment just surround me. I have no idea why it has this effect on me, but it is powerful indeed.

It is odd that Poivre is not quite the same for me. Poivre is stunning, a more powerful Coup, deeper, richer, but it takes a little work for me to wear. I think Coup’s comfort is that it is rich without being heavy, deep without being terribly complex. I love them both, but Coup is the one that has such a deep emotional comforting effect.

What fragrances are you Best Friends Forever? Not your favorite or the most popular, but the one you depend on when all the others let you down?

Mood, emotion and scent are closely related for me and are how I evaluate a new perfume. While I can sometimes find some of the notes in a composition and generally describe what it smells like, the details of a perfume elude me. I greatly admire those who can give those details — I love reading them, and they add so much to what I already know or feel about a scent and often produce ginormous lemmings nibbling at my nose.

My day normally starts with me getting out of bed, throwing on some coffee to brew, sitting down to get two hours of work in before the youngest teenager has to get up to go to school. He gets up, I get a shower, dress, grab something to eat, and we are out the door. Most days, I have my shower time to think about what perfume to wear that day. This is why I so love my days when I work at home and the weekends. Smelling like I just spilled three bottles of perfume on myself is not unusual, nor are three or four showers on a weekend day, just so I can play in my perfumes again and again. (photo from Anne Scarlett)

March wrote about scent and memory last week, and it set me to thinking about my own scent memories. My mother has never worn many perfumes, and only when she goes out, so when I think of her smell, I think of clean Irish Spring soap and Jergens hand lotion. My Aunt Esther used to visit us every summer. She was such a classy, smart woman, and just a tiny ball of fire, but her scent for me will always be noxcema cream. At night she would put her hair up in a little pink hairnet and slather that crap on. We loved her because she would let us have homemade ice cream any time of day she was eating it, which was most of the day. Aunt Ruby would also come every summer. Yes, there are a lot of aunts, there were 13 kids in my dad’s family. Aunt Ruby brought her dog, a French poodle named Jacques. Having a fluffy, overbred, nervous, man-hating French poodle on a farm was pretty much a bad idea, but she would leave him there with us while she went on a vacation. For our entertainment, we would go get her shoes, slip them on and walk in the door, and Jacque would just go mad, barking and dancing and prancing, smelling whatever Aunt Ruby smelled like, until he finally looked up to find two very silly girls doubled over in laughter. We did this a lot, and it never failed to amuse us. Simple children, I know.

Some of my smell memories from my childhood are awfully disgusting smells. We were raised on a dairy farm. See that idyllic picture on the left? That was a true picture — much of our life was full of the outdoors and bucolic views like that, but the part of a dairy most people don’t see is very different in view and scent. I actually had a picture of this, but you don’t want to see that, do you? Maybe later.

The reality was a 5 a.m. wake-up call every morning of my life that I can remember, a huge breakfast that had to be consumed in about 7 minutes, one part of which was always a big-ass fried egg in the middle of my plate. I hate fried eggs. Hated them then, hate them now, but my father’s rural Kansas religious belief seemed to revolve around that egg being ingested every morning by every person in the family. To this day, I cannot smell a fried egg without bringing back memories of hiding it under my plate, in my orange juice glass, slipping some to my sister to eat, all under the baleful eye of my daddy, who often did look the other way. Scent memory is a powerful thing.

After breakfast, it was a dash to the pasture to get the cows rounded up and into the corral outside the barn and ready to milk. That part of the morning was just stunning. Crisp Kansas air, before the sun was up, dew in the grass, everything still sleepy. Good thing, because that feeling sure wasn’t gonna hold.

See the picture on the right, that’s what my morning started out like — the backside of cows, many who had been in snow or laying in mud or crapping down their back legs. I won’t go into when we had them on fresh alfalfa bales — let’s just say, when they coughed, we took cover. We had to run in a bunch at a time into the barn, put them in stanchions, then chain their back legs together, hopefully without getting the snot kicked out of us or have our toes stepped on (toenails went missing regularly in our house). They would poop there as we milked them, milk would leak out of the milking machines as you pulled them off or put them on, grain got wet, they would wait until you were standing between two of them and then just start leaning on you, crushing you between them. This was at 5:30 a.m. every morning, no mornings off. The smell of sour milk and cow crap was the scent that started my day for at least a decade. After we milked, we had to run to the house, wash up (five kids in one bathroom, that was superfantastic fun) and make the school bus. But every morning, once I discovered perfume, I would spritz on a little scent. Being poor, I normally only had one or two cheap drugstore scents. No memory of what they were at all, except I do remember Stephen B my senior year in high school.

Now, why would I tell you that story? For two reasons. One — that isn’t the smell I remember from my childhood. Easy to describe that smell, but I really don’t remember it now, it was just background noise. This and the fried egg smell are my most powerful scent memories. My Daddy wore Old Spice when he went out for the evening with my mom or to school functions. He would have worn it to Church, but he was holding a grudge and would only step foot in church for funerals and weddings. To this day, when I smell Old Spice, I can almost see him in front of me, laughing that big, booming laugh he had; can hear him tell a story or a joke, see his infectious smile, his massive arms that could bend crowbars. Smelling Old Spice can make me purr in contentment because it is comfort and love and everything good in this world and the next.

The second reason I told you that disgusting cow story — My mornings still start at 5 a.m. or earlier, but I don’t have to smell sour milk and cow crap, but I still have to pick out a scent to wear. There is something wonderful and delicious pondering which of my twenty-eleven scents I have that I will wear that day. What am I in the mood for? Is it rainy out or sunny? Winter or spring? Do I feel happy or sad? Do I need comfort, or do I want to be a baaaaaad girl? There are those mornings where I can’t decide, and I go to a handful of scents that are the standards that get me through life when I can’t decide.

This next week, I want to go through what scents I use for different moods. That is how I use perfume, to express my inner life in an outward way.

First up on Monday — Scents that are My Best Firiends

Marlen just opened shop on his new Blog for those of you that haven’t seen that announcement.

Can I have a moment to complain? Work really takes away from blogging and reading blogs and commenting, and I’m not very happy about that this week. I have missed all you guys.

But I’m back, just in time to talk about my favorite trashy shows at the end of the week, wahoo! You have something to look forward to tomorrow.

I have a shoebox full of fragrance vials. I call it the Halloween Candy. Some of the Candy came from eBay; I buy decants. But most of the Candy came from the same incredibly generous, anonymous donor in Colorado who owns this blog. She said, hey, let me send you a few things. I knew the Colorado package was here because one of the vials had opened in transit (Frangipani? Rosine?) and my front porch smelled like a fancy brothel. I mean, the sillage from the mailbox was breathtaking.

I play a game with the Candy. It’s a good game because it helps me fulfill one of my 2006 resolutions: to buck my control-freak tendencies. I just plunge my hand in there, no peeking, and come up with something, and that’s what I’m putting on.

So here are some brief, recent impressions from the Candy box (and a few from test-drives at the perfume counter). I’m not going to cheat on any of these entries by looking up the correct spelling, actual fragrance notes, or anything else that might add to what little credibility I have left. Go ahead, laugh at my mistakes.

Santa Maria Novella Heliotropo – strong almond, heliotrope, a hint of something bready or PlayDoh-ish, and then – poof! – it’s gone. Completely. In less than 5 minutes. I repeated this test; same result. Three hours later: I am aware of a bitter, herb-y drydown that reappears, but very close to the skin. It reminds me of what’s left after some of the iPdF fragrances, which is actually quite pleasant.

Frederic Malle En Passant – bread (why bread again?) lilacs, rain, a hint of cucumber from an adjacent garden, and smelling the lilacs with my face pushed up against a cold, wet fence (chain link? Possibly iron). I find it ineffably sad, which is confusing – is this an association I have with lilacs? Beautiful but I could only wear it to cry. I’m so curious about the emotional aspect I ask my 11-year-old what she thinks. She says: “It smells like flowers and rain. It makes me feel happy and sad at the same time.” Decent sillage three hours later. Still makes me want to cry.

Shiseido Feminite du Bois – I know this is a Major Love for Patty. I think the French translates roughly to The Femininity of Wood. (If this is a howler of a mistake, have fun – I’m not going to fix it.) What I get first is lovely and strange – cedar, something sharp and turpentine-ish, lavender or rosemary, iris? And then roughly 2 minutes later, the inevitable Serge Cedar Trainwreck – whatever compound Chris Sheldrake is using (and I know, this is pre-Serge, but I’m betting it’s the same) turns into unadulterated B.O. on me, as if I’d applied it directly to my armpits post-workout. I have the identical problem with SL Bois de Violette and Iris Silver Mist. Oh, well – plenty of other things to love. Postscript: 5 hours later, right on the skin, is that unbelievable honey drydown you get if you suffer through the initial hell of Miel de Bois.

Frederic Malle Iris Poudre – a perfect-for-spring fragrance that pretty much captures its name – Powdery Iris. On me it is a light, close to the skin scent that reminds me strongly of Apres l’Ondee in terms of its initial impression (powder and a hint of violet) and in its transparence. However, in the drydown it has a bit more edge, more cedar-y and musk. Reminiscent of the great 1950s powder scents, with a twist.

Annick Goutal Eau de Camille – what kind of skin do I have? I have the kind that can transmogrify a lovely, ethereal scent into something so manifestly evil that the chic SA at my local Neiman Marcus makes a moue of distaste upon sniffing my wrist and says, hurriedly, “er, it’s not supposed to smell like that, the bottle must be spoiled.” No, madame, don’t blame Annick. It’s me. I have not the slightest idea how this is supposed to smell, but if you were here right now with me, you would smell burning rubber and trampled grass resting on a base of the merest whiff of vomit. No, I am not funning you. Four hours later: gone, mercifully.

Annick Goutal Muguet – I take back every snarky, hurtful thing I ever said about muguet (a.k.a. lily of the valley), which generally makes me think of sugared plastic. One of the AG soliflores (using the term loosely), Muguet is the precise smell of a handful of lily of the valley stems and leaves plucked from the shady spot of your yard, way back over there by the roses where the grass doesn’t grow so well, misted lightly with water, and tied with a white organdy ribbon for you to carry in a bouquet toward the altar on what is possibly the happiest day of your life. (Have I mentioned that I hate muguet perfumes?) Considering how deliciously swoony I find this, I wonder what a true muguet fan would think. If muguet is your thing, do yourself a favor and try this one. Lasts until the next morning, if I sniff for it.

Annick Goutal Folavril – Ack!! Nooooooooo, get it off me!!! White pepper, dandelion greens and the grape lollipop I found under the back seat of the van. Some masochistic impulse compels me to re-smell it. See note for Camille, above. I brought this on myself by commenting on Cait’s blog that AG scents never seem to sour on me.

S-Perfume 100% Love – I wanted to hate this. How I wanted to hate this. Rose, chocolate and incense… I find even the idea nauseating. And if you had to come up with a concept for a perfume house designed to irritate me, you’d be hard-pressed to do better (worse?) than S-Perfumes’ cutesy minimalist sperm thing. So. I opened the vial with a flourish of barely concealed contempt, affixed a sneer to my face, and waited for the punch line… which is, of course, that it was love (lust?) at first smell. 100% Love is a harlot of a fragrance, a wanton woman in a brown velvet dress flashing her red silk garters at you, so dig out that roll of $100 bills, baby, because she’s going to do things you’re too shy to ask for, and you’re going to like it. In terms of Sex in A Bottle, it’s right up there with Bal a Versailles. They have a “S-ex” perfume (they paid people to come up with that name?!) but as far as I’m concerned they must have mixed up the labels. This one goes all night on me… if you know what I mean.

Images:
jordan almonds — americanbridalshop.com
rainy street – East Germany (uncredited)
hat from suzannemillinery.com
lily of the valley bouquet courtesy of derouinfloral.com
Bettie Page, pinup queen – grrl.com

In my earliest memory she is pulling me on a wooden sled through the soft, wet snow. I watch her black leather boots trudge before me, her long brown velour coat dusted with white along the bottom. It is still snowing, and as she walks the wet flakes drift down from the gray sky and melt on my cheeks. I watch her boots, and her brown coat as it swings. I can remember this moment of utter happiness so vividly that it still stuns me to realize she died almost 20 years ago.She wore My Sin.

She was brilliant – she read anything and everything. She graduated from boarding school at 16. She received a special citation when she graduated from college, Phi Beta Kappa, for the grades she earned in her combined major of chemistry and mathematics. Then she married my father and stayed home and had children and became a 1960s housewife. She read. She drank tea. She talked on the telephone. She volunteered at the PTA and fed the dog and made us dinner. She didn’t drive. She was restless, and sad, and bored senseless. She balanced the checkbook and used her mathematical gifts to wow the cashiers at the local grocery store by keeping a running tally of what we were buying in her head. She had the total figured, with tax, before the items were rung up.

I used to look at her picture and and wonder: Did you ever love me? What were your dreams? Were you ever happy?

Long after she died I held my firstborn daughter in my arms, the daughter I had named after her in spite (or because) of everything. And suddenly I understood how it must have infuriated her to love us. Because at its core, there is nothing more terrifying than the knowledge that you have given your heart so completely, and you will never, ever get it back.

I visited my father before Christmas. We talked about her. I mentioned her perfume. He told me he had kept her bottle of My Sin all these years. She was not a frilly person, completely unsentimental, and it was the only perfume she’d ever owned. I thought he was referring to the empty bottle he kept in his bureau. But he surprised me by giving me an almost-full bottle, opaque black, still in its box. I put it under the tree.

I was afraid to try it. Because I wanted it to bring her back to me, the smell of her, warm and comforting.

“My Sin Perfume was created by the Parisian house of Jeanne Lanvin and has top notes of bergamot, heliotrope, neroli, aldehydic accord and carnation. Middle notes of ylang-ylang, lily of the valley, violet, iris, rose and jasmin. Dry down notes of musk, vetiver and sandalwood. My Sin Perfume is a classic, sensuous beauty.” — nellbutler.com

I smelled My Sin again today. The top notes are somewhat damaged, no great surprise after so many years. The bergamot is gone. On me it dries down sweet and floral, with a hint of spiciness, what I think is the heliotrope-carnation dynamic, and it is as well-mannered as a strand of pearls. It’s beautiful – a consummate 1950s powdery floral, although it was created in 1925. But on her…. my God. It was stunning. She brought out its musky darkness, rich and spicy and vaguely sinister.

I can find out very little else about My Sin, but here is another opinion cribbed from VintageVogue at basenotes.com, who clearly gets a whole different side of the scent:

“If you like Chanels’ Bois des Iles, you’ll like My Sin, and vice versa. Bois des Iles is very close to My Sin, which makes me wonder how much the Houses of Lanvin and Chanel drew from each other. My Sin is a classic aldehyde, but sharper than Arpege or Chanel No 5. It has a major sandalwood kick coupled with an animalic tang in the drydown. It’s supposed to have florals in it, but on my skin they tend to get lost. I smell mostly lemon, sandalwood, civet, and musk. This is like a triple martini, extra extra dry. An acquired taste.”

My Sin is available fairly regularly in vintage bottles on eBay, and in a well-regarded dupe from longlostperfume.com. I haven’t compared it to my bottle, but given that mine must be at least 40 years old I’m not sure I could judge which is closer to the original.

And now, with apologies to Marina, here’s something from one of my mother’s favorite books, Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal. There are many translations, but this is the one I remember.

Invitation to the Voyage

My child, my sister, dream
How sweet all things would seem
Were we in that kind land to live together,
And there love slow and long,
There love and die among
Those scenes that image you, that sumptuous weather.

Drowned suns that glimmer there
Through cloud-dishevelled air
Move me with such a mystery as appears
Within those other skies
Of your treacherous eyes
When I behold them shining through their tears.

There, there is nothing else but grace and measure,
Richness, quietness, and pleasure.

Furniture that wears
The lustre of the years
Softly would glow within our glowing chamber,
Flowers of rarest bloom
Proffering their perfume
Mixed with the vague fragrances of amber;
Gold ceilings would there be,
Mirrors deep as the sea,
The walls all in an Eastern splendour hung -
Nothing but should address
The soul’s loneliness,
Speaking her sweet and secret native tongue.

There, there is nothing else but grace and measure,
Richness, quietness, and pleasure.

See, sheltered from the swells
There in the still canals
Those drowsy ships that dream of sailing forth;
It is to satisfy
Your least desire, they ply
Hither through all the waters of the earth.
The sun at close of day
Clothes the fields of hay,
Then the canals, at last the town entire
In hyacinth and gold:
Slowly the land is rolled
Sleepward under a sea of gentle fire.

There, there is nothing else but grace and measure,
Richness, quietness, and pleasure.

My Very Own Darkly Gothic Poem

Untitled

Slender beams of accusation enter
this darkened church as I kneel,
always alone, always supplicating,
frozen here,
waiting.

Accusing forms wrought in panes of glass loom as
dust dances in the air,
forming an image in my mind,
sparing not my darkened soul.

Tears on humanity’s face.

I raise my head, now crying out for
this uncaring salvation.
_______________________________________________________

I have been wondering how my 16-year-old son was getting A’s for his poetry in English. You don’t suppose? Anyway, you too can create a “Put Me out of My Misery” angst-filled Goth Poem. Just click on the link at the top.

Poetry, ballroom dancing, fashion and perfume. Now, this is a seriously cultured-up blog.

Found at Crazy Jay Blue

Fifi first came into my life back in October. As I spritzed her out of the little decant I’d bought on The B*y, I was in love. Sweet, but not too sweet — tobacco, amber, coriander, powdered rose, mandarin, lily of the valley — sweet elixir. As I Googled my way to the Fifi Chachnil Cute Underwear Emporium, drilled down to the perfume area, the beautiful notes… ruh-roh, something has gone wrong here. Do I like this still?

Too late. There was that bottle, pink, with that cute little pink atomizer and the crystal stopper. Do I really care about the scent anymore? Furiously putting in my order before I could change my mind, it was done, and I had the e-mail confirmation of my order for 85 mls of something that really was turning on me like a high school drinking buddy. The brakes lights came on screaming, I dashed off an e-mail to please, please, please cancel this order.

Whew, saved from the charms of a cute little pink spritzer bottle. But it wasn’t over yet. I tried that little decant again and again, trying to make Fifi love me, and she would for a while, and then the little vixen would turn into the smell of an ashtray, it seemed like. Repelled and attracted, she kept calling me to try again. Every note of her was perfect for me, these are all things I loved, but alas…

she had to be sent away, that was all there was to it, if i was to have any peace at all. So I socked what was left of her into a swap package, closed my eyes and dropped her into the mail. It was over, we were finished.

Then Mrs. L. Monger (Perfume Smellin Things) had to go and write this review.

She was back…
the little tobacco-puffin hussy was haunting me again. Everywhere I turned, MUA, blogs, it was All Fifi All the Time. I went to sleep thinking about her, perplexed as to why. She wasn’t right for me, I had sent her away, enough other people loved her, she was a Loose Perfume of the worst kind, the kind that will not leave my head!

Then in the middle of the night one night, I decided the only thing to be done was to buy her. First I found her in parfum on MUA in the swap pages and arranged for her adoption into my home. Then I knew that that little 10 ml of parfum would never be enough, so I sent away to Paris again for the full 85 ml in the pretty pink bottle with the beautiful spritzer and the crystal top.

Menopause is a funny thing. What smells good one day does not the next, and vice versa. Everything is changing daily. I have been spritzing and dabbing Fifi with abandon for three days now, and she seems to love me at long last. The ashtray note has been tamped out and she is just a joyous little concoction that has me looking around for Pepe and a beret.

She’s one of a line of perfumes that have gone this route. What ones have been like that for you?

This is how I hoped Sand & Sables
would make me feel, young, thin, glamorous…
smelling of coconuts and hopefully my coconuts closer to my neck — like they were 20 years ago. March’s pick of Sand & Sables was pretty good. It was my runner-up and almost the winner until I spied Antonio languishing at the bottom of a shelf in Rite-Aid. I was so shocked because I thought this would have been in the locked cabinet, but no, so I was not cheating by buying it, though it was in the $20 range instead of the $5 range that I probably should have stayed.

I was glad I found it because I knew March would pick the Sand & Sables.
It was the only decent choice in a Sea of Musk and strippeddowntohorrificcheapreissuesfromformerlyoldclassics. Do I like Sand & Sables? It’s not a bad little perfume. It’s definitely beachy smelling, it’s not offensive to my nose or to others. It comes in a cheesy bottle, but almost everything in the drugstore does now. You can’t gift drugstore perfume without looking cheap.

Spirit by Antonio Banderas was way sweeter on me. I don’t have that incredible sweet-eating skin like March has. It’s not so sweet that it is offensive, and I could wear either without apologizing. The problem with both is that they are so inoffensive as to be forgettable and quite ordinary.

Did this picture scare you? The main reason I had to get the Antonio Banderas perfume is so we could talk about something really important, unneeded and bad plastic surgery that is destroying our society and women’s faces, as evidenced here with Melanie’s plastic surgery disasters. I’m getting older, I have wrinkles and things settling in places I didn’t know they were able to go, and I really don’t have a fundamental objection to plastic surgery for those who really want it. I’ve seen good surgery that has made people feel great about themselves, but their goal wasn’t to stay looking like they were 22 forever. But, Melanie, sweet Mother of God, you were and are a beautiful woman without the size 14 lips and the skin pulled so far back that you probably have a banana hairclip on the back of your head holding it that tight.

How could you think this is an improvement? Cheap perfume would not hurt this look at all.

And another Jessica - Ms Lange - Stop. For the love of all that is good and beautiful about women, please stop committing this violence on your face! Eyebrows do not belong halfway up your forehead, seemingly held up by invisible wires, looking like they belong to the person behind you.

Many years ago I read an interview you gave, and this was when you had wrinkles starting. You looked like a woman should look, and you were still incredibly smoldering. In that interview, you stated you would not do plastic surgery, that wrinkles were a part of you and your life. Apparently you changed your mind… the one that is tucked and sucked behind those overarched, way-too-high caterpillars masquerading as eyebrows.

Ladies, get a mirror, you look awful!!!!

Thank you for indulging me.

Does this make me a perfume snob? Yes, probably, but I will always long for the days when a trip to the perfume counter at the drugstore was an adventure in scent. For the price of a Cherry Sprite and an hour of your time, you could walk out reeking of perfumes that were really pretty charming, many of them classics. A time when women with wrinkles and sags were charming as well, classics, never trying too hard to be what they were not, content to be Women of a Certain Age, women to look up to who wore their years well, for all the laughter and sorrow was etched on their faces, the signs that they had truly lived and loved. It is the attempt to render the life out of classic perfumes and women that make them cheap and, well, ordinary.

If you’ve been following our posts you know all about the drugstore losers Patty and I selected, and the general sorry state of affairs at the drugstore perfume counter.

Here are the bright spots:

1) The “winner” I picked to send to Patty: Coty’s Sand & Sable. Notes: gardenia, tuberose, rose, jasmine, musk. This one made me smile the moment I put it on. It took me a few minutes to remember why: tanning oil. Although it’s not listed in the notes above, this has a definite hint of the old Hawaiian Tropic tanning oil (remember those dark brown bottles?)

Sand & Sable is the smell of being 16 years old and driving home at the end of the day from the boardwalk at Ocean City, Maryland with a wicked sunburn, some friends in the car, a lot of sand, and the 8-track cranking Lynyrd Skynyrd while we all sing along. A survey of the MUA boards reveals that Sand & Sable has a 3.9 rating out of 5, based on 30 (!) reviews, and elicits comments along the lines of: “very beachy,” “takes me back to my high school years,” and “the perfect summer vacation scent.” Sand and Sable is Bobbi Brown Beach for about $30 less. I could think of worse things to say about a fragrance. It’s basically the same smell start to finish, and it has decent sillage and surprising lasting power. I hope Patty enjoys it. (But is that an ugly bottle or what? Yeesh.)

2) The “winner” I picked for myself: okay, technically, it would have been Sand & Sable for me too. But I decided I had to pick something else, and that something is… Wind Song Perfume by Prince Matchabelli. Go ahead and laugh, I don’t care. I picked it because of everything it wasn’t: another drecky musk, a nasty frootylicious floral, or whatever else it is they’re flogging. Here’s a crib from fragrancenet.com: “Launched By The Design House Of Prince Matchabelli In 1953, Wind Song Is Classified As A Refined, Flowery Fragrance. This Feminine Scent Possesses A Blend Of Florals With Fruity, Green Middle Notes Finishing With Hints Of Musk And Amber. It Is Recommended For Evening Wear.”

Wow, when they capitalize all the words like that it just screams classy out the ying-yang, huh? Anyway, it’s strong, it’s mean, it’s green, it’s a little skanky on the drydown, the sillage approximates the left hand of death on your shoulder, and I guess it’s so cheesy it doesn’t even appear on the MUA boards. Be the first person on your blog to own it. Which brings me to…

3) The “winner” Patty picked for me: Antonio Banderas Spirit for Women. I’m thinking about telling Patty she cheated, because I was at the hair salon leafing through Self (or possibly Shape) and they had an actual ad with Antonio and some hot young thing (NOT the current Mrs. Antonio, Melanie Griffith, who’s had so much done to her face she’s no longer recognizable, but I digress….) posing for this fragrance, with a genuine scent strip.

Not sure if something that appears in a magazine with a scent strip truly captures Eau de CVS. But I’m not complaining, because, you know what? It’s not half bad. It’s too sweet, but it’s got a little spice, and it got a whopping 4.5 rating on MUA. Here’s the description: “SPIRIT fragrances for men or women by Antonio Banderas were launched in 1996. This designer fragrance is a flowery blend of flowery aromas. SPIRIT by Antonio Banderas fragrances are recommended for evening wear.”

So I took them up on it and wore Spirit to a dinner party and elicited feedback, while keeping the perfume anonymous for its own (and my) protection. Comments included “sexy,” “romantic,” and “I’d wear that on a date.” Results averaged an 8 out of 10 score! It’s not very complicated development-wise (starts spicier and gets sweeter on the drydown) and has good lasting power. On MUA someone compared it to Dune. So I went and sniffed, and I don’t think they’re similar, but to me it’s a quite similar to …. Givenchy Amarige! Heh. Antonio, you sly devil.

Stay tuned for Patty’s post on her “winners.”

I’m blonde, so I can do this, but this really is…. Best Blond Joke Ever

On our previous post, Drugstore Cowgirls, Patty and I took the drugstore challenge – sample drugstore scents and pick three: one for ourselves; one to exchange as a gift; and the biggest loser. Patty’s already posted her loser.

This post is about my big loser – but really, it’s about more than that. Because, honestly, I was hoping to find some decent drugstore scents. And I emerged from the CVS pretty battered.

First off, what is the deal with Coty? Think about it and weep. This is a perfume house with an amazing history, the house that gave us one of the greatest perfume gifts of all time – Coty Chypre – a fragrance your average frag buff would give his/her right arm for. Seriously, follow this link to boisdejasmin.com for a fascinating, brief look at the house of Coty.

And now look what the world has come to. Based on my visit, Coty has cornered the market on crappy perfume. And some of the scents used to be wonderful – help me out here, Victoria? Robin? – I mean, maybe my memory’s bad, but Back in the Day, Emeraude was a gorgeous, shimmery, seductive thing. I’m a huge fan of vintage L’Origan, too. The current incarnation of Emeraude I sampled this week isn’t just a ghost of its former self, it’s a force of evil – as if Coty decided to take the original scent, delete the beauty, and overemphasize the darker, bitter elements, making the current version smell both incredibly dated and nastily synthetic. Is this where Guerlain is headed with its non-oakmoss reformulations? In 20 years, will I be buying Jicky at CVS for $3.99 in a plastic bottle shaped like a teddy bear? It’s keeping me up at night.

And why all the musk? White Musk, Pink Musk, Wild Musk, (just) Musk, Vanilla Musk, ad nauseum, until I got tired of writing the names down. They aren’t good musks (okay, what did I expect?), nice sexy skin scents. They’re mostly too sweet (are horny teenage girls the demographic?) and too synthetic-smelling, frequently with some dreaded marine note at the top.

My other big issue was the staying power. Given the way some of them smelled, maybe zero lasting power is a blessing. And I understand at this price point (under $10) most of them are basically colognes, there’s not going to be amazing sillage. But, man, these scents weren’t just fleeting, they were evanescent to the point of non-existence, like spraying on Canned Air. Like the Emperor’s New Clothes. (How’s that for a scent name? Jovan marketing team, are you reading this?) You’d have to empty half a bottle onto your arm to be able to smell it long enough for the ride home.

I was FRUSTRATED. Because I wanted it to work, because I love perfumes, because I’m anti-snob, because this is a free-market economy and so there must be some reason people are buying these things, because otherwise nobody’d make them. But who? And why?

I guess at the end of it I felt like – wait for it – a confirmed Perfume Snob. I sent Patty the one I actually liked, for reasons I’ll explain in the Winner’s Post. But it’s heartbreaking and wrong to be faced with so many losers, to have my high (okay, modest) hopes dashed.

So, without further ado, my Biggest Loser: Coty Ici. Not sure if you pronounce that “Itchy” or “Icky,” but either one’ll do. A cologne of such throat-closing, mortifying, plastic sweetness it makes White Shoulders look butch. Here’s the description:

“Launched by the design house of Coty in 1995, ICI by Coty is classified as a flowery fragrance. This feminine scent posesses a blend of: crisp and citrusy, with exotic florals. It is recommended for casual wear.”

Sure, if you’re completely smell-deaf and you hate every living thing around you, go for it. Put the whole damn bottle on. It’s so cheap you can buy three of them for $10, so why not? Just stay the hell away from me. I’m going home to have a good cry in the shower.

Chandler Burr writing in The New York Times

L’Artisan’s Fleur d’Oranger 2005 has an almost violent impact, a rough, meaty presentation of the raw material. Givenchy’s Amarige Harvest 2005 is the ingredients shown off to polished, velvety effect. They have one thing in common, however. Just as the great Veuve years vanish, these perfumes, and their great years, too, will disappear.

As annoying as these Limited Editions are and as expensive, I have to say, the L’Artisan Fleur D’Oranger is stunning. Every time I decant it or spray it on, it makes me happy because it is beautiful and unforgettable. It makes me a little sad because I know once it is gone, it is gone forever, but knowing that makes me appreciate its beauty and uniqueness more.

If it takes one great harvest to make an exquisite thing, and then that exquisite thing is gone from the world, I’m okay with that. That is what we are, after all, exquisite and unique, irreplaceable.

Go read the rest of the article, it is a good take on what may be the future of “New Niche” perfuming.

Quick review just because I’m smitten.

Kanebo’s Nihohi Sakura, I believe found only in Japan and from a very nice seller on The Bay (not affiliated) is the best cherry blossom scent I’ve run into. It has that cherry blossom sweetness, but not so much that it is too sweet, just delicate and fresh and incredibly wearable.

It runs about $58.00 without shipping and comes in this way cute pink square bottle with delicate little cherry blossoms on the front. He also has a parfum that looks swoony for $130 for 9 ml. Too rich for my blood, but for those of you so inclined, do let me know if it’s worth it.

Part of the Great Drugstore Challenge was to find the worst. When first my boots hit the ground outside the drugstore, I was fairly certain that I could find a perfume that would be a reasonably good purchase. Finding the worst perfume was bound to be more difficult, there had to be many contenders. In a sea of Musks - pink, green, skin, soft, rat love - this could take some effort to proclaim one the worst.

As I rounded the corner of the locked cabinet, there was a display on the end. So bright, so pretty, so pink!!! What could this confection be? Oh, yes, now I remember that episode of “Newlyweds” where Jessica got sick during the photo shoot of her new beauty products, Dessert. Well, this was going to be sweeeeet, I was sure, but sometimes sweet can be fun. March loves sweet perfumes. The more it smelled like cotton candy or a ding-dong, the closer I was going to come to finding the Perfect Perfume for her. I reached down and picked up the pretty bottle with brightly colored gee-gaws on it, unscrewed the pretty pink lid and took a big sniff…

OHDEARGODNO, THAT IS THE WORST, MOST SICKENINGLY SWEET SMELL THAT HAS EVER FOUND ITS WAY TO MY NOSE!!!!!

We have a winner with so very little effort. Worst smelling thing in the drugstore or anywhere perfume has ever been carried is the whole Jessica Simpson Dessert line. This is some seriously nasty potion, with names like Cotton Candy, Butterscotch Toffee, Lollipop, Bubble Gum, Banana Split, Big Candy and the.worst.thing ever…. CUPCAKE.

I still want the boots.

Penicillin and the wheel have already been invented, so we thought we’d do our bit for all mankind by testing drugstore perfumes. This idea was born partly from the fact that we’re bugged by the whole niche fragrance snob concept, and mostly because it sounded like fun. We wanted to answer that Eternal Question: could you get a decent fragrance at your local drugstore? So we kicked the idea around and established the basic rules:

1) We’d go to the drugstores separately (which makes sense, since one of us lives in Denver and one in Washington, D.C.), sniff a few things, and select three scents: one for ourselves; one for a gift; and one worst-in-show scrubber.

2) No “cheating” by selecting a classic, a dupe (”smells like Giorgio!”), or an otherwise perfectly respectable fragrance that’s wound up in the locked glass case in Drugstore Purgatory – it has to be a genuine drugstore fragrance, something you can’t get at your local department store.

3) No diddling around, sniffing and resniffing – one trip and you’re done.

4) Then we’d exchange the gift fragrances via mail, for further praise or derision.

March’s First Impressions: I haven’t shopped for perfume at the drugstore since I was sporting braces and a tube top. My visit to the local CVS this week was an eye-opener. First, I couldn’t believe the drugstore has TWO separate little dishes of coffee beans to clear the palate after you’ve sampled, say, Shania, before moving on to Stetson. Second, the locked cabinet was surprisingly well-stocked – nothing on my wish list, maybe, but plenty of fragrances priced in the mid-$40s (helloooo, Oscar and J.Lo!) that could be gifted. Unfortunately, those were off-limits for our experiment. Third, CVS is a little light on testers, and let me tell you that if you open up enough little boxes in a furtive manner for discreet spritzing, eventually you will garner the attention of the store security personnel.

Patty’s First Impressions: My memories of shopping for perfumes at the drugstore were formed in the ’70s, and those were the bonanza years of many cheap little fragrances, some of them quite good. You could stop at the fountain for a Cherry Sprite, sit on the naugahyde stool, spin around and get your friend who worked there to bring out the smelly stuff while you tried on the whacky plastic sunglasses. Things have changed. In between snagging some deodorant and cookies, I finally found the “unsecured” winner at my third stop. My first stop was a new Walgreens where they seem to have hidden the $4.95 perfumes. My second stop was a Walgreens that was older and had a handful of things that I could lift out of the cheap packaging and sniff and try not to laugh. Beyond Musk, Musk, Musk and his other brother, Musk, there wasn’t a lot to go through. After looking longingly at the locked case, I made my choice between the three stores. Motivation for shopping for perfume at the drugstore — you can pick up a lot of things you forgot you need to stock up on, plus get a pack of cookies and a cold drink. Drawbacks — Lack of selection and testers, but no lack of musk.

March and Patty Joint Conclusion: Musk is the New Black and the Old Black at the Drugstore.

And the winners?!?!? Tune in next week for the thrilling results.

A very wonderful friend and fellow perfume enabler swapped a great package with me recently, full of samples of the Carons and some other things I’ve been dying to try. So I’ve been dabbing up a storm showering, rinse, repeat. This is my favorite thing.

I can tell you one sniff of Poivre - the more potent urn extrait of my beloved Coup de Fouet! - almost laid me flat. The same, but not the same, deeper, richer, and I love them both, even though they are “the same.” Yeah, I know you other perfumey peeps will feel me on that. My nickname at work is P-Diddy or paw-dawg or p-dawg. I don’t know why exactly, I’m a middle aged woman, but it really does cause me to borrow my kids’ language. Watching re-runs of “Making the Band I, II, III” may not be helping either.

So I’ve got Naimez Que Moi on today, and THIS is what Aimez Moi was supposed to smell like. More on that later. Carons need at least an hour to settle down, except Poivre and CdF, which seem to go on as the best smelling things in the world right out of the bottle.

Also showing up today were my Shiseido imports of Saso, Murasaki, Tentatrice and Myth of Saso (not sure how this is different from Saso) and one Kanebo Twany Nihohi Sakura (I think it’s the Cherry Blossom one?).

First off, Shiseido’s Saso packaging is just beautiful (see March’s post on Sweet Olive to Saso for the picture and how I came to buy these). I’m not sure yet if Saso got the Russian Olive blossom smell exactly right, my olfactory memory isn’t that good, but I’ll know at the end of May. Regardless, these are some very pretty perfumes that I’m glad I have. I suspect most of these are “drugstore perfumes” in Japan. Oh that I wish our drugstores were full of these.

When I was six, my mother took us to watch Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. We didn’t own a television, so we wandered down the street to a neighbor’s house to watch it on their giant console TV with the built-in speakers and grainy, black-and-white screen. I still remember the watching the grownups’ faces as they stared in rapt attention at the eerie glow as Neil skipped and bounced his way across the moon’s face.

Then all the adults had a celebratory glass of champagne, served in those short, wide glasses you never see anymore. It looked so beautiful, like ginger ale, only sparklier. Like all the stars in heaven in a bottle.

I was in my mid-twenties when the Big Cheese and I started dating. We were still in the awkward, early stage, trying to sort out why we’d fallen so hard, so fast, when our differences were not just monumental — they were galactic, he being Mercury to my Pluto. And on one of those nights, I showed up at his place and was greeted with a special token of his affection — champagne and caviar.

I still thought all champagne tasted like Cold Duck — which is to say that it tasted marginally better going down than it did coming up three hours later in the gutter, while you were clinging to the trunk of your boyfriend’s Camaro for support.

So I eyeballed the caviar on the plate (he wanted me to eat fish eggs?) and took a swig of champagne for courage. It was a decent bottle of bubbly — the sort of thing I’d take to a good friend’s house tomorrow to celebrate a special occasion.

And as I sipped that champagne, and the bubbles danced over my tongue, I caught the first slightly nutty taste, and the smell, and the sky opened up and the stars danced. And I thought, Oh. So this is why people drink champagne.
Guerlain was like that for me. I tried on Mitsouko, basically, as a joke. And lo! I stood there at the Saks counter with my mouth hanging open, gobsmacked. So THIS is why people wear perfume! And I experienced that weird, all-too-rare conviction that this perfume had been created just for me.

champagne glass in water #2
mariaflurry.com

In the parlance of addiction, Mitsouko was my gateway drug. You know how it is. One minute you’re standing in Saks, sniffing the EDT. But pretty soon you’re jonesing for the harder stuff, up late at night, on line, red-eyed and frazzled, trying to score a half-empty bottle of Jicky parfum, wondering how high you should bid. It’s not a pretty picture. But it’s my story, and I have to tell it.

What I love about classic Guerlain scents is their their Guerlain-ness, that cold, often citrus-y champagne fizz atop the warm oakmoss-vanilla base, with a dollop of something even I admit is a little funky and animalic. Mentally I term it the Guerlain Skank. My guess is that you either love it or loathe it– there probably isn’t much room for compromise. Jicky has the Skank. Mitsouko has it. Cuir Beluga and Angelique Noir, lovely as they are, don’t have it and are not interesting to me. And let me be brutally clear: the Skank is not gracious, or nice, or even fundamentally pretty. The Skank is about sex, and only sex. It’s a rump-grinding, head-shaking invitation to a booty call, no matter how politely the scent’s been dressed up at the opening. I walk around wafting, on average, four or five fragrances a day, and the only one my husband ever noticed was the Jicky EDT I’d spritzed at Saks. He noticed the Jicky so enthusiastically that I ordered a bottle of parfum, unsniffed, the following day. It’s worth every penny.

There is only one exception to my Guerlain Skank Rule: Apres l’Ondee, which to me is completely missing the Guerlinade and lasts about two hours on my skin, but who cares? Because it’s so heartbreakingly beautiful that no rules apply. I wear it when I need to cry, and sometimes when I need a cheering-up. It makes no sense, but that’s the way it is sometimes with perfume.

Now I’m working my way through the old or rare Guerlains — sampling them one at a time, when I can get my hands on the right concentration, because the other thing I’ve learned about Guerlain is that the EDT versions, the only ones for sample in my city, are mostly worthless because they’re simultaneously too harsh and too weak. (If you’ve based your assessment of Guerlain on just the EDTs, humor me and get your hands on a decant of at least an EDP. Then you’ll know you’ve made an educated decision.) So far the Skank factor has been detected strongly in Attrape-Coeur, and (oddly) in Chant d’Aromes, which I’d initially dismissed based on reviews because it sounds so flowery. Metalys has the Skank but goes off in an odd, dark direction on me, somewhat like Vol de Nuit, which I adore in the bottle but not on my skin. I have thus far failed to appreciate Shalimar, Nahema, Chamade, l’Instant and Champs Elysees. L’Heure Bleue is a winner, one of the sweetest perfumes I own, kept honest by the hint of Skank. Vega has it, and so does Liu. Parure has the Skank but the jury’s still out — it has a winey drydown on me (plum?) that’s very reminiscent of Serge, and I don’t mean that as a compliment, because it’s not supposed to be Serge.

I get my kicks from Guerlain.

Yesterday’s post had a mix of Bois D’Encens and Pierre de Lune (which I have now fallen in love with PdL), and Ambre Soie and Bois D’Encens.

First up today…

Ambre Soie/Pierre de Lune

Man, you have to be careful to keep the right rock on the right bottle. At this point, I’m thinking Pierre de Lune could cover up the smell of cat pee. Ambre Soie is no slacker in the potent smell department, being very ambery, but PdL stays with it intially, though the amber asserts itself and warms the cassius and Violet and green notes of PdL. This keeps surprising me, how much what seems like a light scent just comes on strong. So far, this isn’t a great combination, went a little soapy, though the PdL tends to have a soapy phase in its drydown. Perhaps in different amounts, this would work, either more PdL or less Ambre Soie. Will update.

Pierre de Lune and Eau de Jade.

I’m not supposed to be doing this one today, but I can’t help myself, I’m thinking these two are going to be great together. ::::anticipation:::::: Oh, tinkly goodness, the notes of the two just wrap around each other and sparkle, it feels a little Eva’ish to me, but with more depth (oh, Eva is shrieking, thinking that I’m saying she is shallow, which she is NOT), in that bright effervescent way Eva has. These two definitely belong together, though they each are lovely on their own. The best combination yet

Giorgio Armani | armani / privé

I have all four of the Armani/Prive scents now. Originally I bought Bois d’encens, it was the one I had to have on first sniff and remains the one I like the most, for its deep cedary incense, which I prefer to all the other incense smells out there that I have tried thus far.

As the other three scents, Pierre de Lune and Eau de Jade and Ambre Soie, have come into my collection, I wind up admiring and liking each of them, but not really loving them. They seem lonely somehow.

It occurred to me, thinking of my perfume’s loneliness — which strikes me as odd that I would think about that at all, not to mention it’s disturbing and worrisome as well, thinking about the well-being of my perfumes. Anyway, I have heard they were meant to be layered. To test that theory, I am embarking on the Great Armani Prive Layering Marathon.

It is my intention to layer each one with the other one to find the best combination. I think I can do two combos a day, one on each arm, without scenting the entire household and office out so that they start taking a 10-foot berth. I may have to confine this to my home office, with the doors shut, and poor Buddy will just have to cry as he covers his poor nose. He is such a long-suffering dog. His sense of smell is just warped at this point. Poor Buddy.

Bois D’Encens/Pierre de Lune

For those of you not familiar with the line at all, Bois D’Encens is, as the name implies, their incense/woody scent, cedar, vetiver, incense. Pierre de Lune is violet, cassie flower, green notes, iris, belambre. (Robin at Now Smell This has most of the notes listed in her reviews here and here).

The BdE and PdL combination give a unique green incense kind of smell. It’s not bad actually. It tamps down some of the cedar from BdE, which can be fairly strong, and gives it a little softness. I’ve gotten to the drydown, and they both seem to have canceled each other out and left a very faint smell, which is weird, given how potent the BdE is, though the remainder is not an unpleasant smell at all, just not what I expected. Okay, not a great duo, I had no idea green notes and violet could cover cedar and incense. In the rock/paper/scissors world, I would have bet my life BdE would have smached Pierre de Lune.

UPDATE: As this has dried down, I’ve actually become enamored. It almost seemed to disappear, and then it has come back with this lush green tinged with incense smell. This is not a bad combination at all, but you would have to be patient with it.

Ambre Soie/Bois D’Ences combo.

I know others have done this combo and swear it is wonderful, and given the notes in the two scents, that seems likely to be true. The Ambre Soie on its own is just too much for me, too much amber. This goes on as a very nice combination, each complementing the other — the amber weaving into the cedar so neither is too much. It almost becomes gourmandy, though I don’t know how that is possible, like a bitter chocolate with woody ambery notes. This is a great combination and makes each of them better, though different. Neither of them seem to retain themselves, but together it is a warmer scent.

Update: As this has dried down, the incense has asserted itself more and overpowered most of the amber. I still like the combination since the amber did soften the cedar and made it softer and much more wearable.

Tomorrow — Ambre Soie with Pierre de Lune and Eau de Jade and Ambre Soie.